Well, it’s Monday, and you’ve all had a brief respite since Saturday, but now here I am with a new blog post to torment you.  I’m cruel that way.

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday here in the US.  I watched most of the 1st half of the game, but it got boring because it was pretty obvious that Philadelphia’s defense was all but impregnable.  I was certainly impressed, and I admired their skills, but a blowout is never as exciting as a close game.

I tried to get in a little walking this morning, and I got in roughly 2.5 miles before heading in to work.  I don’t know whether it will do me any good, but I’m trying to begin a new regimen*.

I often like to paraphrase‒in my own head‒the last words of Doc Ock from Spider-Man II:  “I will not die a monster”.  Well, I try to say to myself, “I will not die a fatty.”  That may sound bad according to modern, politically correct social mores, but I certainly intend no body shaming for anyone else.  The only reason I might suggest weight control to another person (if asked) would be with respect to health, not aesthetics.

For myself, however, I have always been a sadistic, judgmental asshole of a martinet, psychologically and often physically self-abusive, and I hate how I look now.  I am objective enough about myself to admit that, at times in the past, I was reasonably good-looking**.  But that is not the case anymore, not for quite a while now.  I’ve been through and seen some serious shit since the last time I looked my “local” best, so I have some legitimate excuses, but that doesn’t satisfy me.

Fortunately, I’ve been changing my dietary patterns, and that has apparently been altering my appetite, and the decrease in certain kinds of foods has increased my physical energy at least a bit.  So I hope to be able to ratchet that up into regular walking, using time with which I don’t have anything better to do so that at least I can leave behind a decent looking corpse.

We’ll see what happens, but it can’t be too bad a thing to want to try to get more exercise.

I’m also rereading The Chasm and the Collision, just to see if I can get back into the mood to write.  I doubt it, but at least I’m still finding it enjoyable.  You should all buy it and read it.  You can get it for someone for Valentine’s Day if you want.  It’s got a little bit of innocent romance in it (the main characters are middle-schoolers, so there’s nothing very steamy).

If you want a sample, I recorded myself reading the first nine chapters, and that’s up on my YouTube channel, here.

Also, I decided to use the time while I was walking to begin listening to and using the Audible version of the Pimsleur beginning Russian course.  I’ve always thought Russian sounds nice, as a language‒at least when women speak it.  I have no particular interest in interacting with Russian-speaking men (though I have nothing against them) so I leave them out of my calculations.

I probably would have seemed peculiar, walking along the streets of south Florida at 4:30 in the morning, periodically trying to match Russian phrases and words out loud, but no one was really around.  I’m a pretty good mimic, so I hope to get decent results.  It’s a productive use of the time, at least.

That’s about it for today, I think.  I hope you all are at least not too unenthusiastic about the new work week.  Do your best.  I don’t know how to say that in Russian yet, so here it is in Japanese:  Ganbatte! [頑張って]

*And it’s “regimen” for something like a disciplined and planned program of activity, not “regime”, which refers to the reign of some sovereign, either literally or metaphorically.

**I had a girl friend (not girlfriend, at least not at the time) in high school who once told me I was just as cute as [redacted], who was one of my three best friends.  This was a generous exaggeration, as far as I can see.  Even when my (then) fiancee met [redacted], she told me that he was “every girl’s dream”.  Based on my experience as his best friend, I think she was probably right, but that’s something not even she ever said of me.  That’s okay, [redacted] is a good dude.