Wedding Bliss-ters

What a wonderful wedding weekend this turned out to be. Plus-zero weather, beautiful sunlight streaming in the church through the colourful stained glass windows, and a night of plenty of good eats and treats and Dancing the night away.

I should have taken off my shoes but otherwise no complaints. Everyone was beautiful.

The only mar on the day was our hotel experience. We came in at 1 a.m., careful not to be too loud in the hall in deference to our... obnoxiously loud neighbours? They were partying it up for a lot of the night, some even chatting directly outside our door.

In the morning, we found out they were parents because they let their kids out at 7:30 am to go running up and down the hall, screaming until all their friends had been found. As a Canadian, I heartily disapprove but didn't actually make a complaint.

Next time we have a plan: Ask for security to bring up earplugs. They bring us appropriate gear AND stop the problem, all at the same time.

Roomba Rumba Grumble

I bought an older 400-series Roomba robot vacuum off Craigslist around Christmas and it ran wonderfully the first time I plugged it in. It cleaned the bedroom...

... and then "doooop dodoop dooop!" It died.

For the past 5 weeks I've been researching online in my spare time, trying to find information on how to save my poor little Arthur.

This is a list of my currently available options:

1) RoboticVacuums.net suggests trying to reset the unit. (Inspiringly not helpful.)

2) RobotReviews.com instructs you on how mod your own battery pack with new NiMHs. (Cost and work involved is not necessarily worth it.)

3) Buy a new battery from Amazon.com, though many of the vendors won't ship to my Canadian address. (This one does, and it's only $23?)

4) Junk the unit. Not cool.

5) Get a refund. Also not cool. (Probably not possible.)

Knowing my limited options, it makes it much easier to choose a path. That being said, I've been looping around #1 for the past few weeks with little or no improvement. I keep thinking: well what if I do it this way this time?

"Dooooop dodooop dooop."
I'd better move into Phase 3 soon, I'm missing out on some prime robotic cleaning time. (Plus that song is driving me nuts.)

Jogger Blogger

Went for a 5 km jog this morning, up to the gym and back.

It's been an incredible feeling, getting more into an exercising rhythm this year. The weather's been so unseasonably WARM lately it's silly not to take advantage of it. True, tomorrow's a little chilly at -1 degrees Celsius, but Tuesday is looking positively hot at +7!

About a month ago, I joined "the largest running club in the world", or so Nike boasts. Haven't regretted it -- I even made an online running buddy because we were trash talking each other... Now I HAVE to go out regularly so I don't fall too far behind! It makes me want to catch up and keep it up.

Friends can be such great motivators.

Getting on the Wagon

Tonight I'm finishing up the draft of my second eBook, a work of selected poems I wrote several years ago. My task now is to search for the right title... Maybe a look through my photos will help trigger a memory of something relevant. It's tougher than you think, getting the right name.

So why this sudden movement to write? I wouldn't say it's sudden so much as "surfacing". (OH-HO! Great title!?!) I was reading "101 Secrets of Highly Effective Speakers" recently and it got me thinking: how can I become more effective at my job? Then I read "Outliers: The Story of Success" (Gladwell) and tried to think smarter: how can I become effective efficiently so that I can get on with all those other projects that I want to finish before I turn 60...?

I was astounded by the examples Gladwell provides in "Outliers", essentially that all these phenomenal people have simply turned out to be regular people living through extraordinary circumstances.

Are we not in extraordinary times now? I can be that regular person -- I can search for those extraordinary circumstances. That's part of what life's all about!

I think everybody has at least one good book inside, waiting to be written. I'm starting to think that I'm getting closer to writing mine...

Musical Motivation

This morning I watched an amazing documentary about the culture of art in media. You can watch it here: PressPausePlay

It's inspiring and cautionary all at once. That is, I want to produce MORE (books and music and inventions and more), but there are more talented people that are doing exactly that and not getting noticed because of the grey goo of everybody else, so I actually also want to produce LESS.

So of course I had a good idea while watching the end: What if I composed music that WAS the training program for getting off the couch and out jogging?


There are plenty of Couch-to-5K programs out there, but you choose your own music. And there are plenty of music playlists out there available for different BPM training -- that's along the same lines of what I'm talking about. RunningMusicMix.com is a good example of that. Running to music according to BPM makes sense to me, it's motivational and gets results.

But what about actually creating a varying musical rhythm that is in itself a song? A song for running? A song created specifically for your training program?

Run2Rhythm is more like what I'm talking about but not exactly -- they just produce fun beats and drums and instruments to jog to -- it's quite repetitive and boring. I want dynamic music. When I'm jogging, I want variation in my music but I don't have time sort it out myself. I want a package I can download quickly and know that it is the right program for my level of exercise.

I wonder what I should call it? Jog Pulse? Musical Motivation? Rhythm Racing? Any other ideas?