Sitting and reading
I'm sure that a catchy, action-packed header like mine will grab lots of new readers....but that's mostly what I've had to do this weekend.
My foray into locomotor life has been brought to something of a halt by a strange new pedal affliction. My feet hurt like stink! And I'm not talking about the normal sore feet of the unaccustomed walker. Even before my little experiment, I did a lot of walking and never had foot problems. My wife thinks it's gout. This would be so unfair as I know I can drink far more red wine than I have been, especially as one of the ten biggest liquor stores in the province has just opened within a five minute walk of my house! I have a different theory. I think that I was cocky enough to believe that my regular old worn out sneakers, riddled with gaping holes in the uppers and flattened and crooked on the soles, would be fine to support my corpulence through 10-15K of walking a day. In short, I have buggered up my feet for a bit by acting as though I'm 20 years younger and weigh 40 pounds less than I do. Either way, my feet are sore, red, swollen, barely able to bear my weight, barely able, even with the assistance of nice doses of anti-inflammatories, to calm down enough for me to sleep, let alone walk.
Rather than take to the car, though, I did what I could. I shuffled Uptown yesterday to visit aforesaid liquor store for a nice bottle of Irish whiskey -- a good treat for a cold, windy, snowy, rainy weekend. I shuffled a few steps further to unleash many children in our fantastic independent bookstore. The store is small, but they organize killer reading series every year, push the best books (one of the managers won a 'handseller' award last year, in part for convincing vast legions of buyers to buy a wonderful book instead of (or at least in addition to) the book that shall not be named but which includes part of the name of an artist influential in developing the rules of perspective and ends with a word important to cryptographers). Having let my children run the staff ragged, especially after they unexpectedly met up with two of their neighbourhood friends and so staged an impromptu book eating competition, I felt duty bound to put an enormous ding in the credit line by purchasing a wonderful assortment of new books. Ok, I was probably a bit jealous of Janeen as well, on her wonderful bookbuying spree of a weekend -- what a fantastic present and special friend to have thought to give it to her.
So, on the locomotor front, I've been thinking much about walking, transportation, illness, money, power, resources, and the like. I had choices. I had the family support and the economic clout to allow my life, if I wanted it to, to click on as normal this weekend, even though I could barely walk. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to imagine a world where I wouldn't have had those kinds of choices. If I had to rely on nothing more than my feet and legs to carry me wherever I needed to go, and if I didn't have ready access to all kinds of help from family and, failing that, from the resources of my wallet, I would want to pay an enormous premium to preserve those bits of my body. I'd take better care of myself than I do. So another part of the puzzle falls into place. If I need to rely on my physiological motor for more of my mobility, it'll need some regular tune-ups and I might want to consider some of that high octane gasoline. The changes I'll need to make run quite a bit deeper than merely hanging the carkeys on the hook, it seems.
Just to recap the week before the fall of my golden arches, I should say in all honesty that it was unavoidable that I use the car on a few occasions this week. One day I needed to get two of my kids to school -- they don't both fit on my bike, especially as the older one is 19. On another day, I had to get a big bunch of family to a high school graduation. The suburban spread is going so wonderfully well in this area that the new high school has been built somewhere about halfway between here and Minnesota. It's a half hour drive from our house. Walking, even if feasible for me (if I'd skipped an afternoon of work and paid a babysitter about an extra 40 bucks -- again, we trade money for mobility, we pay for an enlarged footprint with the paper in our back pockets, though it isn't always clear how that paper gets in there in the first place) was out of the question for the group of us. Interesting to reflect on what choices would have to be made if my children were not finishing with this school instead of starting with it. Home schooling? Is there room for a horse in our yard?
But the weekend has been mostly about books. We all bought some and we all spent time reading. My wife commented that there had not been such peace in our house since before we left Nova Scotia. She's a perceptive woman.
Ending on the bookish theme, the more perceptive of my vast legions (what's the definition of a legion? If it's the size of the crowd at the old Canadian Legion Hall down the road from us, then I think I've got it right) of readers will notice a new widget on the blog. I'm a bit obsessed with keeping track of what I read. This all started when somebody once told me that the average North American reads 500 books in their lifetime. I became so worried about this that I raised my threshold for quality immediately and also began keeping track of what I read. My score will be considerably more than 500, but at my current rate (25-35/year) it won't go over an additional 1000 unless I live to a very ripe old age. This, given that I could probably name close to 1000 books already that I'd like to read but haven't, is a depressing little thought. But it does make sense to keep track. Librarything is a wonderful tool for doing so. Anyone who loves books should take a peek. I'll add books as I read them. It's fun.
My foray into locomotor life has been brought to something of a halt by a strange new pedal affliction. My feet hurt like stink! And I'm not talking about the normal sore feet of the unaccustomed walker. Even before my little experiment, I did a lot of walking and never had foot problems. My wife thinks it's gout. This would be so unfair as I know I can drink far more red wine than I have been, especially as one of the ten biggest liquor stores in the province has just opened within a five minute walk of my house! I have a different theory. I think that I was cocky enough to believe that my regular old worn out sneakers, riddled with gaping holes in the uppers and flattened and crooked on the soles, would be fine to support my corpulence through 10-15K of walking a day. In short, I have buggered up my feet for a bit by acting as though I'm 20 years younger and weigh 40 pounds less than I do. Either way, my feet are sore, red, swollen, barely able to bear my weight, barely able, even with the assistance of nice doses of anti-inflammatories, to calm down enough for me to sleep, let alone walk.
Rather than take to the car, though, I did what I could. I shuffled Uptown yesterday to visit aforesaid liquor store for a nice bottle of Irish whiskey -- a good treat for a cold, windy, snowy, rainy weekend. I shuffled a few steps further to unleash many children in our fantastic independent bookstore. The store is small, but they organize killer reading series every year, push the best books (one of the managers won a 'handseller' award last year, in part for convincing vast legions of buyers to buy a wonderful book instead of (or at least in addition to) the book that shall not be named but which includes part of the name of an artist influential in developing the rules of perspective and ends with a word important to cryptographers). Having let my children run the staff ragged, especially after they unexpectedly met up with two of their neighbourhood friends and so staged an impromptu book eating competition, I felt duty bound to put an enormous ding in the credit line by purchasing a wonderful assortment of new books. Ok, I was probably a bit jealous of Janeen as well, on her wonderful bookbuying spree of a weekend -- what a fantastic present and special friend to have thought to give it to her.
So, on the locomotor front, I've been thinking much about walking, transportation, illness, money, power, resources, and the like. I had choices. I had the family support and the economic clout to allow my life, if I wanted it to, to click on as normal this weekend, even though I could barely walk. I've spent a fair bit of time trying to imagine a world where I wouldn't have had those kinds of choices. If I had to rely on nothing more than my feet and legs to carry me wherever I needed to go, and if I didn't have ready access to all kinds of help from family and, failing that, from the resources of my wallet, I would want to pay an enormous premium to preserve those bits of my body. I'd take better care of myself than I do. So another part of the puzzle falls into place. If I need to rely on my physiological motor for more of my mobility, it'll need some regular tune-ups and I might want to consider some of that high octane gasoline. The changes I'll need to make run quite a bit deeper than merely hanging the carkeys on the hook, it seems.
Just to recap the week before the fall of my golden arches, I should say in all honesty that it was unavoidable that I use the car on a few occasions this week. One day I needed to get two of my kids to school -- they don't both fit on my bike, especially as the older one is 19. On another day, I had to get a big bunch of family to a high school graduation. The suburban spread is going so wonderfully well in this area that the new high school has been built somewhere about halfway between here and Minnesota. It's a half hour drive from our house. Walking, even if feasible for me (if I'd skipped an afternoon of work and paid a babysitter about an extra 40 bucks -- again, we trade money for mobility, we pay for an enlarged footprint with the paper in our back pockets, though it isn't always clear how that paper gets in there in the first place) was out of the question for the group of us. Interesting to reflect on what choices would have to be made if my children were not finishing with this school instead of starting with it. Home schooling? Is there room for a horse in our yard?
But the weekend has been mostly about books. We all bought some and we all spent time reading. My wife commented that there had not been such peace in our house since before we left Nova Scotia. She's a perceptive woman.
Ending on the bookish theme, the more perceptive of my vast legions (what's the definition of a legion? If it's the size of the crowd at the old Canadian Legion Hall down the road from us, then I think I've got it right) of readers will notice a new widget on the blog. I'm a bit obsessed with keeping track of what I read. This all started when somebody once told me that the average North American reads 500 books in their lifetime. I became so worried about this that I raised my threshold for quality immediately and also began keeping track of what I read. My score will be considerably more than 500, but at my current rate (25-35/year) it won't go over an additional 1000 unless I live to a very ripe old age. This, given that I could probably name close to 1000 books already that I'd like to read but haven't, is a depressing little thought. But it does make sense to keep track. Librarything is a wonderful tool for doing so. Anyone who loves books should take a peek. I'll add books as I read them. It's fun.
posted by Colin at 11:36 AM
2 Comments:
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Librarything is a wonderful site. I've only entered about ten, but it's so cool to see them all listed. Thanks Colin.
Hey Robin,
Yes, it's pretty fun, isn't it? Maybe I'll bump into you over in the Thing.
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