It's October?

How did it get to be October? We had some nasty snow/rain/sleet mix today.

Not a lot to report here. Huck is crawling and generally doing well. He's very curious, and his favorite things are shoelaces and lamp chords. I am very much looking forward to a time when he can give hugs instead of just pulling hair (especially beard hair).

In an unrelated matter, when I wear my rain pants I can't escape the feeling that someone is following me.

2 Things

According to the song, there are 2 things that money can't buy -- true love and home grown tomatoes. Thanks to Elaine, I have both.

Happy birthday my love.

This picture has nothing to do with this text

I have read 2 novels recently where contemplation of divorce was part of the plot, Walter Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome and Garrison Keillor's Liberty. In addition, an essayist I usually enjoy, Sandra Tsing Loh, chronicled her own divorce in The Atlantic Monthly and questioned whether lifetime monogamy was really all that praiseworthy. This unfortunate set of reading led to nightmares and conversations with Elaine along the line of: "Sure our marriage seems swell now, but what can we do to keep the odds in our favor?

We didn't come to any grand conclusions other than the standard ones: keep communicating, spend time together, work toward shared goals, blah, blah, blah.

At any rate, I was primed to receive a spirit-lifting story, and here it is: Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear by Laura A. Munson. Munson might have a slight New Age-y vibe, but her story also feels very New Testament.

Ross Douthat's column today that uses Judd Apatow films as jumping off point to discuss the difference between talking the family values talk and walking the family values walk is good. So is Timothy Egan's on the danger of misinformation.

TKM

In ninth grade English, we read To Kill a Mockingbird (TKM). We enjoyed lively discussions, and our term papers on the book were our first real attempts at literary criticism. Now I’m wondering how my beloved Mrs. Spurlock would have graded Malcolm Gladwell. Here’s a paragraph from Gladwell’s essay:

"In the middle of the novel, after Tom Robinson’s arrest, Finch spends the night in front of the Maycomb jail, concerned that a mob might come down and try to take matters into its own hands. Sure enough, one does, led by a poor white farmer, Walter Cunningham. The mob eventually scatters, and the next morning Finch tries to explain the night’s events to Scout. Here again is a test for Finch’s high-minded equanimity. He likes Walter Cunningham. Cunningham is, to his mind, the right sort of poor white farmer: a man who refuses a W.P.A. handout and who scrupulously repays Finch for legal work with a load of stove wood, a sack of hickory nuts, and a crate of smilax and holly. Against this, Finch must weigh the fact that Cunningham also leads lynch mobs against black people. So what does he do? Once again, he puts personal ties first. Cunningham, Finch tells his daughter, is “basically a good man,” who “just has his blind spots along with the rest of us.” Blind spots? As the legal scholar Monroe Freedman has written, “It just happens that Cunningham’s blind spot (along with the rest of us?) is a homicidal hatred of black people.” "

Agree with him or not (and I think he goes a little overboard here) Malcolm Gladwell can flat out write. He makes connections that I would never ever see on my own.

Random Thought on the MLB Allstar Game

(image from http://www.playatgatech.com/blog)

There have now been 13 All-star games since the National League last won one. That's fine, it's just an exhibition. But if a game between two relatively evenly matched squads can have such a lopsided run, does that mean that Tech might never beat Georgia in football again?

I really need to stop caring about football.

This is not a picture of Huck

I spent the last week figuring out how to draw this figure with the Statistical/Graphics software R. I don't mean the last day, or the last hour, I mean the last week.

Needless to say, Elaine is the most programming-savvy member of the family. Huck might be a close second.

Run-Walk-Run

I am not a runner, I am a jogger. I jog, not because I enjoy it, but because I don't want to get fatter, and many things I do enjoy require a degree of physical fitness.

Huck really cuts into my frisbee/volleyball/basketball etc, so I've been jogging a little more regularly recently, often pushing a jog stroller.

I don't get too worked up about pace, but lately I've been very slow, creeping well above 10 minute miles when I have Huck in tow. I was primed to be susceptible to advice, which came in the form of an NYT article . (Yes I know its annoying to endlessly cite the Times and NPR, get over it)

The gist of the article and a companion piece here is that breaking up a run into running and walking intervals can be a good training technique and can actually INCREASE speed. Adding in walk/rest periods contributes so much recovery that you can offset the walking with faster running during the run intervals. At first glance, it seemed bogus, but then there were quotes from folks finishing marathons under 4 hours using the technique. I was also compelled by the notion that run-walk-run could reduce fatigue and injury.

Anywho, on today's jog I alternated 4 minute running periods with 1 minute walking periods and low and behold I cut 4 or 5 minutes off my route, with a total pace right around 10 minutes per mile. It feels like cheating to walk in the middle of a run and it doesn't keep your heart rate as high as long, but it's a training tool worth trying if you aren't alrealy a superstar.