Weekly free associations

1. Confirmation :: Day


2. Verse :: Chorus


3. Authorize :: OK


4. Blog :: Glob


5. Thirty :: I wish


6. Heir :: Apparent


7. What are you doing? :: Twitter


8. Complaint :: Department


9. Leave :: It To Beaver


10. Tune :: Out

HT to Unconscious Mutterings.

Exercise log

Another after-dinner session: I squeezed in 37 minutes. I really wanted to do something because I doubt I'm going to have time tomorrow. (Nothing yesterday.)

The top lie of 2008

According to the Burlington Liars Club:

"My grandson is the most persuasive liar I have ever met. By the time he was 2 years old he could dirty his diaper and make his mother believe someone else had done it."

George W. Bush was ruled ineligble because he's a professional. (That's my entry for 2009.)

Exercise log

I did it after dinner, but I only had time for 47 minutes. I don't like to do it past 9:00 because it might disturb the neighbors. Again, I raised the leg effort setting.

Guide to converting to metric from xkcd

Click on the image to see the whole thing.










I think the use of penises and cars as examples of length are quite problematic. Both vary a great deal--and the former does not even have a fixed length. Ditto for moms as an example of mass.
HT to Victoria Marinelli

Exercise log

I left it too late, and I only had 48 minutes before I had to take a shower before dinner. I had the leg effort on the higher setting the whole time, and I really felt it going over the highest "peaks."

Sad news

Richardson withdraws bid to be commerce secretary

Bill Richardson was my first choice for president at the start of the campaign. After he withdrew, and my second choice was elected, I was hoping Obama would choose him for secretary of state. I'm sure he would have done well as Commerce secretary.

I have no idea whether there is any truth to the allegations. I'm hoping that there is none, and that Richardson is just taking advantage of a face-saving way out of the Commerce post--which I suspect he realized too late was in no way a career advancement for him. (He has already had a cabinet post.)

Places I slept in 2008

New York, NY
Albany, NY
Lee, MA
Boston, MA
Lowell, MA
Las Vegas, NV

A rather short list for last year.

HT to Veronica

Exercise log

I only had time for 65 minutes today, but I pushed up the leg effort a notch during the second half.

Why I don't have kids

Boss: My daughter's turning two tomorrow.
Employee: What can I get her? Anything she doesn't have that she really needs?
Boss: An "off" button.

from Overheard in the Office

Exercise log

Ninety minutes for my first workout of 2009. Yay me! I'm going to try to exercise at least 4 times a week. (I have a combination recumbent stationary bicycle-rowing machine.)

Movie mini-reviews

• Valkyrie: Pretty good, but I wish they had shown how the conspiracy started. Cruise was OK.
• Defiance: I liked it, despite a couple of instances when Daniel Craig's character makes eloquent, articulate speeches totally uncharacteristic of his rough-hewn, poorly educated background. Some of what appear to be movie clichés (e.g. the white horse) were true, according to someone who met one of the brothers. (I have also heard that white horses are quite common in that area.)

Donald E. Westlake died!

My favorite mystery writer died suddenly yesterday. Donald E. Westlake, creator of the humorous crime series featuring the very talented (but equally very unlucky) burglar "Dortmunder," apparently had a heart attack while on vacation in Mexico.

I love his books. I'm reading one of his more recent books now, Put a Lid On It. Though he wrote a lot of comic crime novels, he was just as good at writing serious ones. He wrote another series of books about a totally "hard-boiled" criminal, Parker--though Westlake used the non de plume "Richard Stark" for those. And that wasn't the only pseudonym he used.

I heard him speak a couple of times, and he autographed a few of my books after one talk. I remember him being asked how he felt when a successful book of his was made into a not-so-successful movie. He said he thought of them as he did his children--he raised them as well as he could to adulthood, and then wished them luck and sent them out to succeed or fail on their own.

He wrote more than a hundred books in all (using manual typewriters!), and I'm not sure I've read even half of them--so there will be plenty of Westlake in my future. And there is one more scheduled to be published this year. Still, it's sad he has died. He was only 75.

Happy New Year! (except...)

There are already two unsettling events to start off 2009.

• Petitions were filed to reverse the Kalamazoo, MI ordinance adding gays, lesbians and transgender individuals to their non-discrimination law.
• Helen and Betty have taken down their message board (where I am a semi-retired moderator). Hopefully this is just temporary, while they figure out how to handle the recent trends of "me-ism" and partner-unfriendly posts. (They took the board down once before for a couple of weeks or so, to revamp.) They have just journeyed from Brooklyn to Wisconsin, where Helen will be teaching for the next several months, so they are a bit pre-occupied. When they get things sorted out, I'm hoping they will figure out a way to make the board work again. I miss it already.