GeoffBrown.net

It is amazing, sometimes, how time can get away from you. I haven’t posted here since New Year’s Day, and I had every intention of posting a bunch of pictures and stuff from past travels. So far, not so much. To ring in the new year, I had a nice little hospital stay to deal with right after I got back from my dad’s. Life hit a few obstacles after that, as it is bound to do, but things have gotten quite a bit better.

I am still quite happy with my decision to move from Movable Type to Wordpress. At the very worst, Wordpress is as versatile as MT was, but much, much easier to set up and use. And, frankly, I think it’s more versatile, too. I’ve added a couple of new plugins — one renders the blog in an iPhone/iPod Touch/mobile-friendly format for those of you who want to read on the run (and it gives you the option to switch to the real site, too). I’ve also added a plugin that will send a Twitter update when I make updates. Which I’m hoping to do more often.

And yes, I’ll get those pictures up — I want to get the pictures from last fall’s Civil War geek weekend up before the next one rolls around.

Until next time…

Happy New Year 2010! I won’t call it a resolution because I resolved many years ago never to make any more of those (a resolution I actually managed to keep) but I will say that I intend to write in this thing more often in 2010.

Well, my computer converted itself into a paperweight again, and my backups are at home, so this is another test run of the WordPress app on the iPod Touch.

I’ve been spending the holidays at my dad’s place in Florida, which has been nice. In the final hours of 2009, we’re watching bowl games and dispatching beers and shrimp. All in all, good times.

One common theme among a rather startling number of my friends and acquaintances has been how bad 2009 has been. Certainly, things were looking pretty grim as I was waiting for 2009 to begin, and looking back, 2009 quite definitely got off to a frankly pretty bad start for me. But it is ending on a pretty good note, and for that, I am quite thankful. (Still not quite ready to get into specifics.) And 2010 is primed to get off to a better start than 2009 did. And, well, that’s good, too. I hope the same is true for you.

Well, for the first time in a long time, I’m spending Christmas and New Year with my dad in sunny Florida (which hasn’t been too sunny the past few days, but it also hasn’t been snowing). The last few years, I’ve spent the holidays back home in Michigan, usually with the now-ex’s family. I’ve been wanting to actually spend some time with mine for a while, but, for one reason or another, it just hasn’t happened in a while. My grandfather is also down here, and I hope to see him again for the first time in, well, too long.

As usual, I generally feel pretty fortunate, but as I look back over the last year, it has been a pretty rough one — and as rough as it’s been for me, it has seemed even more so for some of those I know. There are a lot of signs that things are looking up, though, so at least there is that. The job is going well and my health is much better than it was a year or so ago. There is another good development that I’m probably not at liberty to talk about just yet, mostly because it’s not quite clear how that particular development will unfold. But it’s a nice development, one I’m trying very hard to enjoy without overthinking it too much. Whatever happens, I think I will end up having benefited from it.

Another bad thing about the past year is that rather short shrift I have paid this blog. I think I will see if I can at least use my time off to post some of my pictures from my Civil War trip this past fall. All three of you who still read this will no doubt be delighted.

I got a new iPod Touch, and apparently I can use it to update this. Or, perhaps more accurately, I now have a new way to not update this.

This is the first of many pictures that I took from my trip with the Civil War roundtable I belong to. I stopped by Manassas on my way down by myself. This was my second stop of the day, after my first stop at Harpers Ferry, on what, as I mentioned before, turned out to be the 150th anniversary of John Brown’s infamous raid.

It seemed like a good place to stop, since it was the site of the first major land battle of the Civil War. Many of you may remember it by the name the “Battle of Bull Run,” which is what the Union called it. The Union tended to label battles after nearby bodies of water, while the Confederates labeled them using the nearby towns.

I didn’t have as much time here as I would have liked — aside from it being a kind of crummy day, I also needed to be in Fredericksburg in time to meet up with my group so we could get our itinerary for the weekend. But I figured that since I had even a little time to spare, it would be worth trying to stop at a couple of the many Civil-War-related historical sites that I would be driving past on my way.

Among the many landmarks at the Manassas Battlefield park is this monument to Stonewall Jackson. It was on this battlefield, during the first Battle of Bull Run, that Confederate General Thomas Jackson earned the nickname “Stonewall.”

I’ll post more of my Manassas pictures here later.

So United Airlines baggage handlers were tossing this guy’s guitar around, and, surprise, it ended up broken. United gave the guy the run-around for months and finally said they weren’t going to do anything about it. So he wrote some songs about it. Here’s one of them. It’s actually a pretty good song.

It’s kind of hard to believe it’s July already. It’s been a good two months since my last post, highlighting my slackitude in posting.

There hasn’t been a whole lot happening lately. Lots of working. The running program has been sidelined a bit, especially now. Recently had a tooth extracted, and replaced with a dental implant — basically a titanium bolt that will hopefully have the bone in my jaw grow around it. Once it heals, and assuming it integrates with the bone, they’ll put a fake tooth on the end, and it’ll look just like it was never taken out. It goes something like this:

But I have been kind of sidelined with pain medications and ice packs for a little bit, and I guess I want to make sure I won’t shake the damn thing loose if I start running again. So back to walking for now.

Life otherwise has been pretty mundane. Mostly going to work, going to the gym, coming home, and repeating, with some meetings and a little time for friends thrown in. I think I need to do something to break up the monotony a bit. Like maybe update this thing more often.

This is pretty funny.

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As ‘Fun, Watchable’

Seriously, however, take it from a hardcore Trekkie: this movie kicks ass.

So they say that part of the reason people who like to run like running so much is the so-called “runner’s high.”  This is supposed to be the result of endorphins being released while one is running.  Endorphins are, more or less, chemicals the body releases as a sort of natural, internal pain reliever. I have decided to start running a little bit, and I think maybe my endorphins are broken.  Because I have yet to experience the “runner’s high” — for me, it’s more like the “out-of-shape dude’s low.” (And let me just say that I don’t think it’s just a coincidence that the body’s response to running is to release its own painkillers.)

I had resolved that it was time to get up off my ass, start eating better, and get more exercise just before my doctor gave me the news that I have diabetes.  That, actually, cemented my resolve.  I started a reasonably regular regimen of going to the gym and doing brisk walking and some weight training.  I also made some relatively dramatic changes in what I ate, and I have managed to drop around 35-40 pounds.  That has led to what my doctor calls a “dramatic improvement” in my health (for example, for you fellow diabetics, my A1C was 10.9 when I was diagnosed in September.  By November it was 6.0, and last month, 5.9.  For the non-diabetics: doctors like diabetics to try and keep the A1C number under 7 at the very least, and tend to prefer keeping it under 6.5.  10.9 is really pretty bad).  But I could still stand to lose more weight and get into better shape, and the walking hasn’t been seeming to do the job as well lately.  Plus it seems like a rather ridiculous number of people I know run.  So I decided I was going to start myself.

Until the last few weeks, I haven’t done any kind of running on a regular basis in maybe 15 years or so.  So it has been every bit as hard as you think it might be for a guy who could stand to lose weight and could be in much better shape.  There certainly hasn’t been anything like a runner’s high.  I have been starting out slow, alternating running and walking.  It gets less and less difficult to run each time I do it, so I suppose that’s a plus, even if my damned endorphins are sleeping on the job.

The biggest challenge has been finding the time to do it.  It hasn’t been easy — after a long day at work, it isn’t always easy to drag oneself to the gym.  Nor is it any easier to drag oneself out of bed at the crack of dawn on a cold day to go before the start of a  long day at work.  But I’m trying to keep up with it.

The next biggest challenge is all the guys at the gym who seem to feel the need to wander around the locker room bare-ass naked.  One of the last things I need to see before or after punishing myself on the treadmill is a bunch of dudes’ schlongs waving around.  And we’re not talking fleeting moments of nudity while changing clothes, either; rather, some of these guys are walking around, having conversations, shaving, all the while letting it all hang out.  Worse still, some of these dudes have freakin’ towels hanging around their necks! As if to say, “man, I wish I knew what to do with this towel!”  Well, sir, I HAVE A SUGGESTION!!!

But I digress.

So, anyway, I will be continuing on my quest, to run farther, and maybe faster.  And hopefully someone will fix my damned endorphins in the meantime.