Hello and good morning.

It’s Thursday!  You know what that means, right?  It means it’s time for my traditional weekly blog post, the format of which antedates these ones I’m doing now on every workday.

In these Thursday blog posts, I generally include a picture of some kind, whereas that’s very much a matter of whim the rest of the week.  I also title the posts with some relatively (to me) “pertinent” Shakespearean quote that has been altered to include a form of the word “blog” in it.  The biggest problem with that is finding a quote that I haven’t used before, since all the best, most recognizable, most memorable quotes tend to get used early on.

That’s how the sausage is made, I guess, in case you wanted to know and hadn’t already figured it out for yourself.

I’m back at the bus stop this morning, by the way, which is cool.  Well, it’s not literally cool—it’s already about 73 degrees Fahrenheit at 5:20 in the morning, and a comparable number in relative humidity.  It makes walking to the bus and whatnot just a little bit unpleasant, if only because I sweat.

I mentioned yesterday (I think) that when I get up really early I consider walking to the train station, and that’s just shy of five miles.  The walk isn’t intimidating; it’s good for me, and I have more than enough endurance to deal with it even first thing in the morning.  But I don’t like getting to the office all sweaty first thing in the morning.  That’s one of the reasons I didn’t keep biking to work, way back when.  I always ended up smelling like mildew, at least to myself, though I learned to buy big cans of Lysol to deal with that, which worked pretty well.  Still, it’s a bit annoying.

That’s all relatively boring.  Sorry.

However, on a related note, I’m planning on trying something new today.  I use two main brands of walking shoe, chosen mainly because of their price to star-rating ratio, but with the absolute criterion that they must be black.  They are all the same official size, of course, but the newer brand—to me, I mean—has a tendency in the right foot to rub against my big toe, though it’s not as bad in the left foot.  So, I ordered an extra pair one half-size bigger in that type of shoe, to see A) if it makes a difference, and 2) if it’s comfortable and stable enough for me to wear in that size.  This is apparently a recognized phenomenon, this tendency for different shoe manufacturers and even different designs of shoe by the same manufacturer to have different sizes even within the same “size”.

That’s why I originally started wearing New Balance shoes, way back in the day when they were still trying hard to become competitive, and so were lower priced than the other big brands.  They were designed in such a way as to be slightly roomier, width-wise, which was more comfortable for me than other brands.

New Balance is the “older” brand I described above.  If the newer brand in half a size larger is good, though, I may focus on it a bit more now, because the design and model—if that’s the term—in question is slightly lighter and has a breathability that the Noobs don’t have.

Okay, that’s not just relatively boring, that’s thoroughly and completely boring.  Again, sorry.  I’m being most unkind.

Still, if I can find the right shoes and make the rest of the arrangements, I mean to try to do something that will be less boring, and perhaps even slightly interesting.  I’ve been working my way up to it for quite a while now, and I’m getting closer, step by step*.  If I do last long enough to try to carry it out, I imagine I’ll be announcing and detailing it here, so watch this space—so to speak—for further updates.

As for other things, well, I think I’m mainly over my little gastrointestinal bug.  I suspect that was related to some frozen, pre-cooked burgers I had that must have thawed during shipping at some point before being refrozen.  Thus, when I ate them they were slightly contaminated by some bacterial pathogen, which would explain both the quite painful enteritis and the low-grade fever.

It wasn’t anything too severe, thankfully.  But I’m not going to be eating any more of those for a while!

I didn’t do any calculus “homework” yesterday.  I did have a chance, since even though I had missed a day, I caught up and then did the payroll and everything else with surprising speed, because I’ve done it for a long time, and I prepare things relatively in advance, and I start working on it all early in the morning before anyone else gets there so there aren’t any distractions and it’s quiet; it’s especially nice not to have the loud background noise playing as it is during the workday.

The fact that they have to have “music” blaring all day because that’s just what is done in this business is maddening.  I don’t understand it.  I don’t respect it.  I think it’s pathetic.  But I don’t have veto power, and I certainly don’t have Vito power**.

Anyway, that’s enough for today, and indeed, it’s probably more than enough—for today, for the week, for the year, for my life—and so I’ll close with the wish that you will all try to have a good day and then a good weekend and so on, and to be kind to your family and friends and to enjoy their company.  It’s a bleak old world and universe out there, and it does not owe you anything.  Get the good of it where you can get it, in the time you spend with those you love and who love you.

TTFN

*This is a joke to myself related to the idea I’m not fully revealing, but you can also relate it to the discussion of shoes.

**Ha ha.  A reference to The Godfather.