Eli 24.0!
I'm not sure if Eli 24.0 is in Scotland or not, but he did tell me he ran fifteen miles this morning to celebrate his birthday. Very on-brand.
Here's a picture from when he was in Zambia earlier this summer:
Eli 24.0 (almost)
I don't remember how old Eli was then (maybe 5.5?), but there was a version of Tiger Woods that had the driving range at St. Andrews. We would hit balls on the range, then turn around and aim shots at the clubhouse. You could even break windows, which never failed to send him into gales of laughter.
I told him if he plays at St. Andrew's tomorrow for his birthday that he has to turn around on the range and take a picture of the clubhouse from the same spot where we broke windows together.
"Way ahead of you," he said, laughing.
A New Technique
I was holding my mouthpiece in my hand on Friday morning and it snapped in half.
I don't know how, exactly. I must have been squeezing it, but not hard. The mouthpiece didn't care. It snapped in half anyway.
I went to the dentist today to get impressions done for a new one (I grind my teeth). The way it's always been done in the past is they put a kind of green goo in trays, put it in your mouth, and you bite down on the goo.
I'm not a fan of this method because I didn't get a great fit last time and kept going back for adjustments which never quite got it right. This is the way it's been done since I was 30.
Today, though, no green goo. Instead, the technician put a wand inside my mouth and started taking pictures. 3,000 over 20 minutes, and they were all stitched together into a 3D-model of my upper and lower teeth. It was amazing, to see all these pictures being slotted into their proper place in real time.
It will take three weeks to get the mouthpiece, but I'm curious if it fits better (it's supposed to). And the procedure was fast, compared to making impressions.
So much better.
Moving
I really thought this was all under control until yesterday.
The moving truck comes September 3.
This seemed fine, until I realized what's actually happening in August.
C is taking an 8-day trip, a 7-day trip, and (probably) a 2-day trip.
I'm taking two 4-day trips. I'm also trying to manage five different doctor visits (three essential), a new pair of glasses, and a new mouthpiece (which snapped in half three days ago--thanks). Plus Eli 23.11 will be here for one day, then with me on the 4-day trip, then here for a week, then with me on the second 4-day trip.
It just worked out that way.
The second 4-day trip is a friend's wedding, which just happened to bump up right next to the moving date. The other trips are important, too.
It's going to be a long month.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, an incredible real estate fraud: The Most Charming Fraudster in Real Estate.
This is excellent: After independence, Mexico was in search of identity. These paintings offered a blueprint.
Also excellent: Andrew Wyeth in Taiwan.
A lovely, touching story: Thank You for Finding Me.
Excellent: Disneyland of the Dead: London’s Highgate Cemetery shows us just how hard it is to keep the dead buried..
A terrific read: Burying Leni Riefenstahl: one woman’s lifelong crusade against Hitler’s favourite film-maker.
Knowing Texas, this is no surprise: Texas Lawmakers Largely Ignored Recommendations Aimed at Helping Rural Areas Like Kerr County Prepare for Flooding.
From Chris P., and it's a fantastic article: The Most Interesting Email I Ever Received: Remembering the Incredible Life of DIY Geneticist Jill Viles.
From Wally, and it's so bizarre: NYC's gladiatorial combat scene is growing, so I took a swing at it. This is interesting: The Kids Are All Right (Just Not at a Brewery). Incredible: Killer Train: Brightline death toll surpasses 180, but safeguards are still lacking. A deep, DEEP dive: A TIMELINE OF THE HISTORICAL MINIATURES WARGAMING HOBBY. Inevitable, for some: We asked clergy if they use AI to help write sermons. Here's what they said.
Rollercoasters: a Young Man's Game
C wanted to ride rollercoasters for her birthday.
There's a regional amusement park about 45 minutes from here. Six Flags bought it for (presumably) a song recently as they scoop up smaller parks with poor cash flow and high debt (again, presumably).
It was 80% empty, and I can't imagine it being open much longer. The location is terrible, advertising is rare, and there's no real reason to pour a ton of cash in it for improvements.
They had four rollercoasters, though, and three were open.
Two were wooden, and one, in particular--"Shivering Timbers"--is the fourth longest wooden rollercoaster in the world.
It was rough. Wooden coasters are way more physical in general, and this was no exception. Not from the height (it's very tall), but from the track itself, which gave us a real pounding. Still great, though.
The best park about a semi-abandoned theme park? The lines. We never waited for more than 10 minutes for any of the coasters. Shivering Timbers basically had no line at all.
C screamed her lungs out on all of them and is hoarse today. A good time was had by all.
Speed
I went to the gym today and watched other people lift for a while before I started.
Most people have terrible form. It's easy to have terrible form with machines because so much of the work is done for you. I was watching these people hoist weights and pump out eight reps in twelve seconds and it made me wonder why they were wasting so much of that time. The only moment they were getting any work was in the tiny bit of time it took them to lift the weight.
I decided to try a set where instead of lifting weights I tried to control them. I get bored lifting, so it wasn't a bad thing to try. Anything to break up the monotony.
As it turned out, it worked really well. Each rep took about ten seconds, and it was a very different feeling to control the weight at all times. There was never any slack, if that makes any sense. So I'd do my ten reps, but it took over a minute and a half. It was substantially harder, even with much lighter weights (25% lighter than usual).
If you lift and get bored you might try this out. It's a definite change of pace, and I'm more tired than usual.
A Risky Birthday Request
C's birthday is today.
Originally, we were going to be in Queens with her daughter's family, but wound up cancelling the trip because we'd already found a place to live near her (which was going to be a major part of the trip, hunting real estate).
Her daughter was going to bake a cake for her birthday. Now she wasn't getting a cake.
I asked her if there was any kind of cake she'd like baked for her birthday. She chose a cranberry crumble.
I mean, I've had baking experience. Cookies from a tube and cinnamon rolls from a can and brownies from a box.
Baking something from scratch from a recipe? Nope.
Still, I was game, in spite of the potential disaster.
"Is 911 on standby?" I asked, as I started to take ingredients from the pantry. "What about FEMA?"
She'd chosen a very simple recipe, one even a beginner should be able to do.
Theoretically.
I was focused as a safecracker, making sure there was no deviation from the recipe. If it had been a movie, my upper lip would have been sweating. The only thing I know about baking is you never deviate from the recipe, while you can do that all the time in cooking.
I kept waiting for disaster (a personality trait), but it all turned out okay.
Perfect
Sometimes, my hair looks better after I sleep. I can't explain it.
I woke up yesterday and my hair has never looked better in my whole life. It was flawless. "Look at my hair," I said to C. "Model quality."
She laughed because I never have a positive comment about my appearance (nor should I).
"How should we commemorate this?" she asked.
"After my death, if someone makes a statue, this is the hair I want. Don't forget."
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, an incredible read: Conversations With a Hit Man.
The Guardian long read is usually fantastic, and this is no exception: ‘A relentless, destructive energy’: inside the trial of Constance Marten and Mark Gordon.
This was an amazing man and oh, the irony: World's 'oldest' marathon runner dies at 114 in hit-and-run.
Just staggering: Documentary uncovers forgotten 1946 football game months after Nagasaki bombing.
This is excellent: Nearly Forgotten, a 1969 Double Murder in Austin Still Haunts Some.
Selling suicide kits on the Internet: Merchant of Death.
No surprise: Large study squashes anti-vaccine talking points about aluminum.
From Wally, and it's one of many things I'll absolutely never understand: Popcorn buckets are the new frontier in movie branding, and fans are eating it up. Useful for writers submitting their work: A shout out to the Submission Grinder. This is true, or not true, because it's difficult to predict the future: We’re Light-Years Away from True Artificial Intelligence, Says Murderbot Author Martha Wells. This is fascinating: The Politics of Printing in China. This is the deepest of deep dives on comparing grocery prices: To Hell and Back for Cheap Groceries: The Epic Investigation (and Shocking Results) of My Grocery Store Price Comparison Quest.
I'm Just Being Honest Here
C isn't an introvert, but she understands that I am.
"Introverts are called many things by mistake," she said. "Uncaring. Snobbish. Disinterested."
"To be fair, we usually are disinterested," I said.
Dynasty
I picked my first team in Dynasty Mode in NCAA 26.
These guys.
The Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens. Program Prestige (or whatever it's called) an F.
Ironically, more people come to the home games of the real Fightin' Blue Hens than my imaginary team. My pregame stadium run-in is to mostly empty stands, which feels appropriate, somehow.
This game has problems and always will. But taking charge of the Fightin' Blue Hens is so much more fun than taking charge of, say, the Broncos in Madden. The fight songs and huge variety in uniforms add so much atmosphere, and so do the nearly-empty stands.
I'm in Conference USA, in case you're wondering, which means I get to play Connecticut and Kennesaw St. And Jacksonville St. and Sam Houston and UTEP, among others. No hopers.
I've seen lots of empty stands. As it should be, for now.
The Vietnam War: An Intimate History
I finished reading this today.
It's based on the Ken Burns documentary, and it's a genuinely brilliant book. I've read a fair amount about the Vietnam War in the past (particularly, the degree to which North Vietnamese intelligence agents penetrated the South to the highest levels of government), but there are so many additional details here, based on recently declassified information.
The degree of incompetence by which the war was administered (both by the South Vietnamese and the U.S.) was staggering, to a degree almost beyond comprehension.
If you want to have a much better understanding of how U.S. politics and military policy work, this is a phenomenal read. And on a personal level, it's excellent at focusing on individuals and their own experience in war.
Strange
It's been an unsettling day.
There was a Groupon for $89 for a coronary calcium test. That's quite a deal, so I signed up and took the test this morning.
If you remember, that was the same test that blew up my life two and a half years ago. Also saved my life, probably. Because I took the test (on a lark, basically, because of a friend's recommendation), I found out that even though my cholesterol levels were within normal range, I still had substantial blockage in one coronary artery.
That's when I opened my pantry and threw out everything that had saturated fat. And got a cardiologist. And had an ultrasound which confirmed the blockage and also found a small cardiac aneurysm that is checked annually now. Oh, and changed my statin.
Those are all good things, but felt like bad things at the time. Very bad things.
Now my LDL is in the 60s and my total cholesterol is under 120 (and has been for the last two years). The aneurysm isn't growing, and it appears that the blockage has even reversed to a degree. Everything's good.
Still, though, I saw that Groupon and wanted a number (besides my cholesterol number) to compare the previous test's results with. Which is stupid, because it's generally regarded as an imprecise test. I had no reason to take it.
It's roiled up many of the emotions (anxiety and fear, essentially) that I felt when I first found out what the first score meant. Which surprises me, but there's no denying I've felt it strongly today.
I'm not even feeling today's emotions. I'm feeling ghosts.
An Excellent Change
When I was a kid--obviously a long time ago--women's sports were almost never on TV.
Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. That was the only coverage of women's sports I can remember. And the Olympics.
Other than that, women's sports were almost invisible.
Change can take a long time.
Today, I'm watching the final game of the Euro prelims featuring Switzerland and Finland. Switzerland scored in stoppage time to tie the match 1-1 and advance to the next round.
In the middle of the afternoon. On a Thursday.
Tonight, I could watch a WNBA game, or college basketball this weekend, or the LPGA.
Oh, plus Wimbledon. That's this weekend, too.
I'm glad I was around long enough to see it.
It's Not Long Now
We're going to a wedding two hours north of here at the end of August, returning on September 1.
September 3, the movers are coming to load up the condo.
September 4, it's all headed to Queens. As are we.
It's a strange feeling, even though I'm not going to miss Grand Rapids. At all. On the west side, too many people aren't well. I was walking out of a grocery store today and a man just started yelling at me. No reason, just random yelling. It's happened before, and I don't handle it well.
So it's not our destination that's difficult, it's that the entire process of moving is a logistical tangle with so many tasks attached. There's always more to do, and it's going to be that way for a while.
This morning, though, after many weeks of feeling uninspired about the book, I had one of those magical two-hour periods that only happen if you keep showing up every day.
Without those moments, no one would ever write a book--or finish one, at least.
Scientific Method
C was holding a kitchen magnet up to her ear last night.
"Hmm, what's happening?" I asked.
"I need to find out if my earrings are magnetic," she said. She was having an MRI on her spine today (sciatica, like me).
"Is a kitchen magnet with a smiling bagel on it the best way to determine this?" I asked.
"I really don't want to take these earrings out," she said. "I don't think I've taken them out in decades." She has multiple ear piercings and a little hoop in each one.
She searched Google for 'Can I use a kitchen magnet to determine if my earrings are magnetic?' Second slater, she looked at me. "It looks like I can, according to AI."
"Those last three words are concerning," I said. "And so is the strength of kitchen magnets."
She took them out in the end, and not easily, either.
NCAA
There were plenty of things wrong with College Football 25 (I could give you a list), but the list of things it did right was significantly longer than the list of what was wrong.
26 just came out today. I'm watching an exhibition game and the new progressive lighting looks fantastic. The animations are also substantially smoother, at least to my eyes.
I complained plenty about 25 and still played it for 100+ hours, and I'm sure this will be the same. The developers are seriously constrained by EAs bullshit, but they've also listened to the community and fixed a laundry list of annoying issues. Let's hope the new ones inevitably cropping up are minimal.
Fully Aware
I understand why wars were fought over cinnamon.
A Trend
I went in for an MRI on my shoulder today. It's bothered me (slightly) for years.
I didn't realize that orthopedists have a new gig now, or their offices do, at least: performance training. All those "certified" personal trainers, many of whom are more salesman than trainers, are now going to have to compete with major orthopedic centers.
I mean, it makes sense, having it all together. But personal trainers were a huge cottage industry, and lots of those jobs will dry up now because orthopedists want a big chunk of the business.
Also, there's this: ‘Am I just an asshole?’ Time blindness can explain chronic lateness - some of the time.
Remember the investigation we did a few months ago into people's perception of the length of a minute? It was uniformly true that people who were always on time consistently knew, within ten percent, the length of a minute without looking at a clock. The people who weren't on time, in contrast, were all over the place.
Apparently, it's an actual thing:
When Shepard learned about time blindness as a symptom of ADHD, which she has, it all clicked. Russell Barkley, a former clinical psychologist and expert on ADHD, coined the term in 1997 to describe what he calls “the serious problem people with ADHD have with governing their behavior relative to time intervals and the passage of time more generally”. Time blindness can be a symptom of ADHD or other conditions such as anxiety or autism spectrum disorder.
This is different from "time optimists," or people who consistently underestimate how long it takes to do something.
Some people still do it on purpose, of course. Those guys. I avoid them.
Cheat Codes
I talked to Eli 23.11 and he said what he learned from being at Wimbledon again is that there's a cheat code: the practice courts.
He saw some great matches on Court One (Sinner, Draper, Gauff, and Fritz), but everyone ignores the practice courts, and they were able to sit on benches and watch many of the greatest players in the world practice (Alcaraz, Djokovic, Sabalenka, Navarro, Auger-Aliassime, Monfils). They were so close they practically could have touched them.
He also said most of the players were locked in walking past the line of spectators to get to the practice courts, but Gaël Monfils was a clown in the absolute best way--cracking jokes, talking to people, taking pictures.
The Fritz-Perricard was suspended the day before Eli got there, so as a bonus, the fifth set was played on Court One. Perricard is the guy who hit a 153 MPH serve (a record). Eli said he was routinely serving in the 140s and that the ball sounded like a cannon coming off his racquet.
How much did a one-day pass and tickets to Court One cost him? About $110. The U.S. Open, in comparison, is over $400.
It All Happens Very, Very Fast
We apparently have emerged as the preferred candidate for a lease on a duplex in Astoria which is only a few minutes walk from C's daughter. And it's a really lovely space, too, and bigger than I ever expected.
So just like that, we have a place to live when we move in early September. The moving company came by and gave us an estimate.
Also today, the realtor is preparing to put C's condo on the private market for two weeks (after receiving the appraisal yesterday).
Oh, and someone you know is sitting here today:
Court One at Wimbledon, in case you're wondering. He said camping out for tickets overnight works wonders.
