And now, of course, it is Friday.  For me, this Friday is like that which is typical for those who work a traditional modern “work week”, in that I will be off work tomorrow, and so I will not be writing a blog post.  I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but if it does, you probably should reevaluate your priorities.

I tried out the new shoes I mentioned yesterday for a bit.  I didn’t walk very far in them—probably only about a mile or so—but I mean to test them a little more this weekend.  So far, I think I’ve made a good call.  Putting them on after the other shoes I’d been wearing that morning was a revelation; they felt almost as light as air.  It was very nice.

I have to restrain myself from trying to walk a long distance in them tomorrow, though.  I’m nervous about a recurrence of what happened two Saturdays ago when I accidentally got myself trapped into going farther than I intended because of ambition and “whatthefuckery”**.  That was when I was trying out a new pair of Timberland hiking boots, which are quite nice, but which gave me some minor blisters when I walked too far in them without getting used to them.

I also think that I would rather try to use light shoes for longer distance walking rather than such boots, even though the boots will almost certainly last longer.  It’s just more pleasant to walk in lighter shoes, and I have spandex® ankle braces to give me necessary ankle support…as the term suggests.

In case anyone was waiting, by the way, I still haven’t done any more audio stuff.  I actually recorded a reading of one of my blog posts from Iterations of Zero, but it was rife with footnotes and I hadn’t planned ahead how I was going to deal with those, so I stumbled around a bit.  I didn’t even bother editing it, because I would have had to do extensive cutting and pasting, which is more difficult with audio than with written material.  I’m not sure if I’ll be going back to that experiment.

Maybe audio is something better done de novo rather than with reading—except when it comes to stories, of course.  I like reading my stories into recordings, but I don’t think that many people have ever listened to any of those, and certainly no one has made any requests that I do more—for instance, no one has gotten to the last chapter I’ve read aloud of The Chasm and the Collision and asked me to continue.

No biggie.  If I undertake the quest that I’m considering, I will probably make videos about it and post them on YouTube and embed them here—I may even make passing comments here exclusively—but that is something that will have to wait.  It involves part of why I am trying out new shoes and boots and practicing walking and so on.

Because it will be a serious undertaking—in the sense of being no minor task by any means or by anyone’s likely estimation—I’m sad to think that I probably will not be using the Timberland boots for it.  I like them.  They’re good, there’s no doubt about that, but they work my feet in ways that are a bit too atypical, and also, I don’t really like having to deal with the hooking-lace thingies, whatever those are called.  I find it hard to trust them, as well as simply to get them to work right, though the Timberland ones are WAAAY better than ones I’ve had on other boots I’ve tried.  It’s not even a fair comparison.

Also—and this is rather silly and petty—I don’t like the fact that I can’t just kick them off when I get to the end of a day; I have to bend down and unlace them.  Now, I can bend down without any real trouble.  It’s much easier now than it was even a year ago, since I’ve been increasing my activity levels.  But at the end of a long day, it’s just a pain.

Hey, they’re my shoes, and they’re my feet, so I guess it’s okay for me to assess and decide such things regarding matters that have no significance to anyone but me.  I don’t like being too self-indulgent, but in this, since I mean to put my shoes (and my feet) through quite the wringer, I guess I can excuse myself.

And, once again, this has been a bizarrely boring blog post, and for that I can only apologize to those who stuck through it until the end, hoping for some surprising depth or esoterica.  I’ll try to get back into the mathematics and physics and philosophy and psychology stuff soon.  But, at the very least, one could probably consider every blog post I write to be related to the field of abnormal psychology, or even xenopsychology****.  Take comfort in that if you can.

And have a good weekend.

[P.S. Speaking of reading stories, if anyone out there works for Amazon—specifically for Audible—tell them that they need to improve their ordering system, and this need has existed for quite some time.  I tried to order an Audible book yesterday and it didn’t process, despite repeated attempts.  This morning, when I wanted to listen to it, it still wasn’t in my library…and I’ve retried ordering it multiple times today already.  I’ve been an Audible member for quite a long time now, and it’s irritating that this issue—which I’ve had several times before—continues.  I’m tempted just to find and download pirated audio of these fucking books, but I’d rather get royalties to the authors!  For those of you who might consider membership to Audible, or using its services, all I can say right now, based on this, is:  I don’t recommend it.  I’ll change that assessment when the problem is addressed.]

*Thank Cat, it’s another peculiar and boring blog post.

**Specifically, the form that comes across as “What the fuck, let’s just see what happens,” rather than the more puzzled, startled, confused, and sometimes frightened form, as in “What the fuck is that?”***

***Apologies for the profanity if anyone is bothered by it, but I think there’s nothing magically scary or “problematic” about any words, and there are things that can be expressed through profanity that cannot be expressed as well in other ways.  I will use it when I feel the desire, at least here in my own blog.  I do try not to use it in places where other people have a reasonable expectation that there will be none.

****I just made that term up, as far as I know.