Lovely swim, clunky spin, cranky rant

After shoveling the driveway this morning I wasn't completely sure I wanted to go to the pool today. I'm glad I did. As soon as I took the first strokes I knew it would be a good swim. 750 m  just a bit faster than a 19 minute K pace. Some kick and pull. All the time dodging a slower woman that wasn't terribly considerate. The girl in the next lane was a rocket.

Then everybody got out and I had a lane to myself, just in time for intervals. I've been struggling with those. Today was 8x50 on 60 seconds, all faster than 51 seconds. Today the water feel was there, and I wasn't breathing as hard as I have been for these. My flip turns were a bit sloppy though. Then some water running, really pushing it, imagining myself sprinting down the path nearly full out. All so good.

Then onto the bike after work. There was no way I was going to risk the sidewalks. Clunkly. 20  minutes to get up to 85 rpm. Nearly 30 to get to 100, all in an easy gear. The top of my left calf was grumpy and complaining the entire time. I didn't push too hard, and bailed at 45 minutes, then stretched and rolled it with the ball for a while.

Planning a 10 K easy run on the weekend. Neither day looks especially good, but I'd still like to do it outdoors. I'm not sure I could face doing 10 K on the 200m track at Talisman. That is 50 laps. Yuck. Let me know if you want a weekend run buddy. There seems to be reasonable odds for tusks.

Work is transitioning me to a new pair of projects. One is equipment I'm really familiar with; but I need to figure out the database they've been using. Calling it a database is being polite. The other is to help manage some pipeline data. This ought to keep me out of mischief at work for a while.

My readers are still chewing through the novel. I've had some hints that they are liking it so far. I've been working on one scene that I wasn't happy with, trying to figure out exactly how long it takes. The tricky bit is that one of the women is pregnant. If the bit is short, she's still pregnant for the following scene. But if it takes longer than I've got it written so far, I need to change the following scene. Decisions decisions.

I wish I could put a news filter to block certain news stories. For instance, there is a particular "celebrity" that is in the news lately, something about a drunk driving charge and assaulting a limo driver. (And you thought I was going to talk about the Olympics. Surprise!) Here we are, Harper ruining the country every chance he gets, and selling off whatever is left, Trudeau making a startling change to the Senate, to say nothing of the various Senate scandals, plus the always odious Rob Ford, and what do the media focus on? An idiot 19 year old. It's a measure of how twisted our society is.

I don't care what a celebrity has to say on any topic. I don't care who they sleep with, or what their next project is. I don't care how much money they make, or where they live, or what toys they buy. I don't want to know any of it, though it's nice they buy things, as it's one way of recycling their obscene wealth. But it's all part of the bread and circuses that distract people from what's important. Like an economy going into the toilet. Massive income inequality. Environmental changes that might kill millions, perhaps billions of people. Many of them are a waste of skin and breathing air and we won't miss them. Like celebrities. Them first, please.

But if humans can't cope, there will be a lot of innocent critters that will go first, and their blood is on our hands.