Running Journal - 2025-07-13 (Half-marathon Long Run)

Screenshot of out-and-back run, starting at Shoreline Lake and turning around just south of Cooley Landing Park

Time: 8:55-12:48 p.m. (3 hours 53 minutes)
Resting heart rate (waking): 51 bpm
Weight (several hours later, after eating, etc.): 83.78 kg (184.70 lb)
Body Mass Index (BMI; note criticisms of BMI): 24.4 (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): 2,017 cal/day
Distance (running): 21.11 km (13.12 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 463.22 km (287.83 mi)
Calories burned: 1,521 cal
Average/Max heart rate: 103/146 bpm
Weather: overcast ☁️ 14° C (57.2° F), Humidity 95% Wind: 0km/h
Terrain: 174 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 15'26" /mile
Best pace: 14'21" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: Half-marathon long run of along the Bay Trail, starting at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View, California. Brought hydration vests (ice cubes in the reservoir) and two Clif bars. Ran north along the trail for 6.55 miles. This time we made 2 changes: 1) We ran around the far edge of the Duck Pond; and 2) We took a right at the bridge and ran north, turning around just before Cooley Landing Park. At Byxbee Park public restroom area, we stopped and refilled our reservoirs. Continued on the white sandy trail to the Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter and Duck Pond, then the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center. An aside: We made a separate trip on Saturday and visited the Lucy Evans Center. It was small, but we walked all the way to the end of the pier and watched the waves lapping against the shore. End aside. Continued on the San Francisquito Creek Trail, passing the Palo Alto Airport, we watched what looked like an orange search & rescue helicopter circle around, as well as a small black helicopter ascend and fly away. Followed San Francisquito Creek past the northern edge of Baylands Golf Links, where we watched a number of players navigating holes #13 & #12. Turned right at the bridge.  Continued north on an asphalt trail, then a gravel trail, to the 6.55-mile mark by a substation just south of Cooley Landing Park. Opened and ate about a quarter of a Clif bar. Dawn had soreness in her piriformis muscle so we walked after re-circling the Duck Pond (~3.5 miles). Used the bathroom at the Byxbee Park public restroom. Overall a beautiful day and glad we made it to the end without catastrophic pain. Afterward, we drove home and ordered-in from Yifang bubble tea.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Slightly sore
Foods eaten today: Kashi GO Protein & Fiber Cereal Mixed Berry Crunch with whole milk, Clif Bar (x0.5), Yifang Taiwan Tea - Pearl Black Tea Latte (medium), shredded-chicken burrito (x0.3)

Stern Grove - The San Francisco Symphony with Taimane concert on 6 July, 2025

Circular sticker received after donating to support Stern Grove Festival 2025

Attended Stern Grove - The San Francisco Symphony with Taimane concert on 6 July, 2025

Lucky to "win" free tickets in a subsequent lottery round (notified July 3). We arrived a bit late and found seats near the Wawona Street exit with limited sightlines and just barely able to hear 👀 😅 We had heard most of the Taimane set at the 4 July concert, so it was fine 🤙 

July 4th - San Francisco Symphony at Shoreline Amphitheatre

Attended the Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular at Shoreline Amphitheatre with The San Francisco Symphony (Edwin Outwater conducting) and Taimane (ukelele).

GETTING THERE

Parked along Old Middlefield Way, Mountain View (south of US 101). Walked along Permanente Creek Trail, up and over US 101, then took a right, walking past the Google Alta Garage project: "California artist Kim West with curation and R&D by SPMDesign, the kinetic art facade called Ode to Bohemia No. 5 (Inexhaustible Blooms) was inspired by the local, native plant landscape, and consists of 97,500 colorful metallic pieces that reflect different tones throughout the day. "

Ate an early meal at Zareen's, a woman-owned Pakastani restaurant: Naan wrap (veggie samosa & side Tikka sauce); Beef chapli burger with cheese & side of masala fries; and a mango lassi. They took in-person orders via a kiosk with a touchscreen. We received a text with our order number, but never received the follow-up text letting us know the order was ready for pickup. Instead, an employee exited and yelled our number--which seems like some fuzzy memory of what happened on our first visit in 2023. The food was excellent. Glad I skipped the dessert (Firnee - Homemade Rice Pudding).

We took our time walking to Shoreline, stopping along the way at the Dragonscale-canopy building--now owned by Google and housing the Google Visitor Experience--to spin the public art piece Rockspinner, by Zachary Coffin: "First patented in 1869 by a Parisian bicycle mechanic, ball bearings played a pivotal role in the industrial revolution, making the new machinery operate more efficiently by reducing friction. They also let you spin this multi-ton boulder with your fingertips!" I got it revolving at a decent speed, to which a person walking by said, "Faster! Faster!" 😅 I felt a bit anxious at it's mass and people darting around it while it spun 😰 

A few minutes later we heard voices amplified by bullhorn, which turned out to be event staff directing traffic into the parking area. We went down an escalator, staying to the right. A young disheveled couple passed us without incident on our left and apologized for their speed, saying they wanted to catch up to their friends just ahead. This year we got in line on the eastern entrance. The lines were quite long but moved moderately fast. Event staff encouraged families with members in wheelchairs or with small children to use the expedited ADA entrance. Bags were strictly limited this year--clear-plastic only and very small (see web site for details). Dawn's small purse was deemed an item to be checked until she went to retrieve her prescription meds, at which point they quickly and kindly volunteered to check her purse due to a medication exception. We'll look for an alternative purse for future visits. 

At the security gates we held up my phone to the QR-code scanner, though the attendant at our line was distracted by conversation with another guest and not even paying us attention. 

SF SYMPHONY 

We purchased a "classic margarita" (double) and a churro, enjoying them at a picnic table next to the balloon-animal station. After a few popped balloons, we moved along to our seats.

We sat in section 101, row E this year. Visibility was pretty good. A comedian in a nice blue-checkered suit did a set--mostly jokes about aging. To our left was an elderly couple, a veteran and his wife. They enjoyed the jokes and sat respectfully. He did occasionally let out an ear-shattering whistle which left my ears ringing 😵‍💫 So every time after that I clapped with one hand on my knee and kept my left hand covering my left ear. 

Edwin Outwater conducted this year. As the performers seated themselves, we observed minor details, like the cellist having a comfort bib on the back of their cello, the various colors of stain on the instruments, the various shades of white and off-white, the styles of sport coats and dresses. Happy to see a black man, Joshua Elmore, playing a bassoon: "The San Francisco Symphony is appointing its first Black principal player in more than 50 years, marking a significant step forward for the 113-year-old orchestra." They also had a woman in the percussion, though I do not see her listed on their principals page. (Dawn says it is not unusual for a woman to play percussion). As in previous years, Margo Kieser--music librarian and Nancy & Charles Geschke Chair--distributed music to each performer. I noted at least one pair of performers (e.g., cellists) where one person took responsibility for turning pages of the sheet music while the other continued playing. It looked to me like a classic Sith master/apprentice relationship, but Dawn just shook her head. 🙃

After a 35-40-minute first set, the symphony took a break and stagehands adjusted the seating for Taimane, a multi-instrument group centered around ukulele player Taimane Gardner. They wore colorful dresses and head-wreaths of tropical flowers and greenery. A male member of the group performed traditional dances in various costumes. I think Taimane played about 4-5 songs. She plays ukulele confidently, in bare feet, stretching dramatically into poses while staring intently. The male dancer briefly danced with an audience member. We observed his earlier dances a bit anxiously, as he jumped over large floor monitors, cables, and whirled quite close to the seated musicians. 😅 One member played a cajón, a "box-shaped percussion instrument originally from Peru". While she hails from Puerto Rico, it seems she now lives in San Francisco. The rhythm guitarist was also from Hawaii and seems to have a day job as an engineer. The violinist was born in Washington Heights, Manhattan. 

After Taimane's set, they exited, and the SF Symphony immediately pivoted into performing during the fireworks. An enormous flag was lowered behind them. Fireworks this year looked great. Our seats gave us a clear sightline, unlike when we sat on the middle or opposite side, where the overhanging canopy slightly blocks the view. 

Dawn correctly noted the final song of the night was inevitable: "Seventy-Six Trombones". 

GOING HOME 

As we exited en masse, Dawn noticed the Taimane merch table, so we purchased a sticker and the 4 CDs they had: 1) Ukulele Dance (2012); 2) We Are Made of Stars (2015); 3) Elemental (2018); and 4) Hawaiki (2022). They also sold black tee shirts, earrings, etc. Taimane was available for signing and photos. It was by chance we exited and saw the merch table--in previous years we exited the other side and would have missed it. 

The walk back to our car was uneventful. I turned on my phone flashlight and we ambled along with everyone else. Traffic was gridlocked. However, on Old Middlefield Way, we drove without any delay onto southbound US 101 🌟  On the drive home, we watched other fireworks displays, and took it easy in case others were driving while drunk. 

Running Journal - 2025-06-22 (Half-marathon Long Run)

Screenshot of out-and-back run, starting at Shoreline Lake and turning around at Baylands Golf Links

Time: 10:06-1:29 p.m. (3 hours 23 minues)
Resting heart rate (waking): 49 bpm
Weight (several hours later, after eating, etc.): 85.18 kg (187.80 lb)
Body Mass Index (BMI; note criticisms of BMI): 24.8 (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): 2,038 cal/day
Distance (running): 21.13 km (13.13 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 442.1 km (274.71 mi)
Calories burned: 1,562 cal
Average/Max heart rate: 108/160 bpm
Weather: sunny ☀️ 20° C (68° F), Humidity 49% Wind: 13km/h
Terrain: 174 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 15'26" /mile
Best pace: 14'21" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: Half-marathon long run of 13.11 miles along the Bay Trail, starting at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View, California. Brought hydration vests and 2 Clif bars. Ran north along the trail for 6.55 miles. Passed about five people lying down on their paddleboards on Shoreline Lake while a person in the middle sat on a paddleboard and played a singing bowl. Followed the Adobe Creek Loop Trail, rounding Charleston Slough, Soap Pond, and past a great congregation of white seagulls and pelicans. Passed Hooks Island on the right and the Pole Field installation, arriving at Byxbee Park public restroom area. We skipped stopping and continued on the white sands to the Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter and Duck Pond, then the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center. Someday we will stop and explore a bit. Continued on the San Francisquito Creek Trail, passing the Palo Alto Airport, where we watched what looked like a sleek blue gyrocopter land. Other traditional fixed-wing aircraft queued to take off. Followed San Francisquito Creek past the northern edge of Baylands Golf Links, where we watched a number of players navigating holes #13 & #12. Continued past the baseball fields of the Baylands Athletic Center and the Silicon Valley International School, turning south onto East Bayshore Road, running past the USPS office for a short distance to reach our turnaround point, at the 6.55-mile mark. Opened and ate about a quarter of a Clif bar. On the return trip past Baylands Athletic Center I noticed a baseball on the path, so after one unsuccessful attempt to get the attention of the kids practicing throwing to each other, I pitched it carefully onto the field (one player said thank you). Tore down a tacky guerilla-marketing sign on a street pole, for some moving company. Smelled perfume of fennel, pepperweed, coyote bush. So wonderful. Shadows of planes as they approached, landed, or took off around us. Used the bathroom at the Byxbee Park public restroom. Tried to give way to cyclists overtaking us, and most appreciated it with saying Thank you, which was great. Overall a beautiful run. Afterward, we drove to Mountain View and had boba tea, then later we ordered-in Burmese food to celebrate.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Slightly sore
Foods eaten today: Kashi GO Toasted Berry Crisp Cereal with nonfat milk, Kirkland Signature Colombian Cold Brew Coffee - 11 fl oz (x0.5), banana (x2), Kirkland Signature Sparkling Water - Lime (12 oz), Clif Bar (x0.5), take-out from Burma Bay - Samosa (Vegetarian) & Egg & Okra Curry & Jasmine Rice, Yifang Taiwan Fruit Tea - Brown sugar pearl black tea latte

Running Journal - 2025-06-08 (11-mile Long Run)

Screenshot of out-and-back run, starting at Shoreline Lake and turning around at Baylands Golf Links

Time: 10:34-1:18 p.m. (2 hours 44 minutes)
Resting heart rate: 53 bpm
Weight (several hours later, after eating, etc.): 86.36 kg (190.40 lb)
Body Mass Index (BMI; note criticisms of BMI): 25.1 (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): 2,056 cal/day
Distance (running): 17.86 km (11.10 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 420.97 km (261.58 mi)
Calories burned: 1,352 cal
Average/Max heart rate: 112/130 bpm
Weather: sunny ☀️ 19° C (66.2° F), Humidity 68% Wind: 7km/h
Terrain: 108 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 14'46" /mile
Best pace: 14'03" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: Long run of 11 miles along the Bay Trail, starting at Shoreline Lake in Mountain View, California. Brought hydration vests and 2 Clif bars. Ran north along the trail for 5.5 miles. Someone piloted a motorized inflatable boat between single-person sailboats on Shoreline Lake, possibly checking-in to make sure training was OK. Snowy Egrets waded in the clear shallows. Activity was muted from a few weeks ago, which made navigating the paths much easier. Followed the Adobe Creek Loop Trail, rounding Charleston Slough, Soap Pond, and past a great congregation of white seagulls and pelicans. Passed Hooks Island on the right and the Pole Field installation, arriving at Byxbee Park public restroom area, where we stopped to drink chilled water and relax. Continuing on the white sands we passed the Environmental Volunteers EcoCenter and Duck Pond, then the Lucy Evans Baylands Nature Interpretive Center. Someday we will stop and explore a bit. Continued on the San Francisquito Creek Trail, passing the Palo Alto Airport, then followed San Francisquito Creek past the northern edge of Baylands Golf Links, where we watched a number of players navigating holes #13 & #12. Turned around at the 5.5-mile mark. On the return trip one sleek-looking plane caught our eye, as it made a distinct whooshing noise and its rotor seemed to revolve faster than the lumbering other planes. It had an insect-sounding noise. From a cursory Google search, it sort of looked like a single-engine low-wing propeller plane, maybe like a Piper PA-28R Arrow. Didn't care enough to take a photo. Smelled perfume of fennel, pepperweed, coyote bush. So wonderful. Shadows of planes as they approached, landed, or took off around us. Used the bathroom at the Byxbee Park public restroom. Tried to give way to cyclists overtaking us, and most appreciated it with saying Thank you, which was great. Retrieved one plastic bottle from the side of the trail; it was wrapped in fishing line. Passed one man wearing a bucket hat with the Ukrainian Trident (Tryzub), and then our run interval ended. He walked around us, then we leapfrogged him when we ran again. He had earbuds in and hopefully we didn't aggro him too much. Overall a beautiful run. Afterward, we drove to Mountain View and had boba tea, then later we ordered-in Greek food to celebrate.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Slightly sore
Foods eaten today: Kashi GO Toasted Berry Crisp Cereal with nonfat milk, Kirkland Signature Colombian Cold Brew Coffee - 11 fl oz, banana (x2), Kirkland Signature Sparkling Water - Lime (12 oz), Clif Bar (x0.5), take-out from Miknons Grill (Greek): salmon plate (x0.5), spanakopita (x0.25), dolmathes (x2), Nuggets chocolates (x3), Yifang Taiwan Fruit Tea - Sesame Black Tea Latte with boba

Running Journal - 2025-05-18 (Bay to Breakers Race)

Time: 8:44-11:17 a.m. (2 hour 33 minutes) 
Resting heart rate: N/A
Weight (several hours later, after eating, etc.): 85.55 kg (188.60 lb)
Body Mass Index (BMI; note criticisms of BMI): 24.9 (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): 2,044 cal/day
Distance (running): ~15.00 km (~9.32 miles)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): ? km (? mi)
Calories burned: 1,095 cal
Average heart rate: 102 bpm
Max heart rate: 164 bpm
Weather: sunny ☀️ 15° C (59° F), Humidity 63% Wind: 0 km/h
Terrain: 476 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 16'10" /mile
Best pace: 13'58" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: 2025 Bay to Breakers race, celebrating its 114th year and its 112th in-person running (2020 & 2021 had virtual runs due to COVID-19). Remembered the 3 things I should always do: 1) Garmin HRM-Pro Plus Heart Rate Monitor; 2) Anti-chafing; and 3) Sunblock ✅ Woke at 4:15 a.m., got ready, had cereal & a banana, then headed to Emeryville Amtrak to catch our shuttle. An aside: we bought shuttle tickets the night before. We parked at the 5959 Horton public parking garage (on the same side of the tracks as the station--literally just to the north across a sidewalk). Keep the entrance ticket and validate it inside the Amtrak station using a little kiosk on the right. They also have bathrooms (ask the desk for the code). We arrived ~6:10 a.m. or so. The Amtrak buses had already arrived and a driver said the 1st bus would leave at 6:30 a.m. We walked around to the 1st one and got on. The driver checked our phone but they do NOT have QR code scanners. It is mostly just the honor system. The bus eventually filled. At 6:30 a.m. or so, we departed. The ride there was quick and we got there around 6:45 a.m. or so. We got coffee at Philz Coffee - 5 Embarcadero Ctr. Then walked to see the art installation of the 45-foot-tall wire-mesh woman, titled, "R-Evolution statue" by Marco Cochrane.  Walked to the corrals. We were in Corral E this year. Passed a coffee shop called Penelope's Coffee & Tea at 121 Spear St Suite; something maybe to try another time. We exited the corrals and walked a hundred feet to Rincon Plaza, which had Adirondack Chairs with cushions, protection from the amplified noise, and almost zero people. Drank our coffee in peace, and then wandered back. We should have stayed there...the tortillas were flying and Dawn got hit twice 😝 Very bad start to the race. I sheltered Dawn as best I could with hands over her head. Thinking back, raising our hoodies would have helped. If I could get rid of one tradition, I would eliminate the tortillas. 🤬 If not aware, we first observed, then experienced the tortilla-toss tradition: people toss soft-shell tortillas of various diameters through the air, striking participants, sometimes quite forcefully. There is no way to opt-out of it, and no way to predict getting hit. Most people are relatively gentle, thankfully, but some people suck and really whip them with force at people's faces. Finally, After a long wait, our wave started, around 8:44 a.m. I think. We also observed people bouncing inflatable beach balls. Lots of people-watching opportunities. Costumes were all over the place: Mario, Slinky Dog from Toy Story, tacos, animals, butterflies, ninja turtles, Frida Kahlo, 80's fashion, lifeguards, T-rex, crayons, Stitch, ballerina tutus, drag, nudity, sequined dresses, a MUNI bus, capes, inflatable pig, etc. When our corral finally was released, we basically shuffled along for a while due to people walking. There were  NO fundamentalist religious extremist provocateurs just past the starting line this year. We stuck to our run/walk schedule of 1:30/run & 1:00/minute walk. Along the way, we passed a lot of WindSurf soap bubble stations, homemade "car wash" with bubbles, gave a small child a gentle high five, saw the people cheered from the sidewalk. There were a "Pit Stop" where a crew sat people down and gave them what might have been a jello shot, a live drum corp, random people playing amplified music, the Muppets Statler and Waldorf (two disagreeable old men) puppet show, bubble blowers, the chain of people dressed as a salmon running upstream, DJ's, public art in Golden Gate Park, etc. Hayes Hill was OK--a bit tough and glad it was over. We saw lots of buffalo this year on the ground in Golden Gate Park. At miles 6-7, we slowed down as our Achilles felt a bit sore and did not want to injure ourselves. After a few starts and stops, we decided to walk the remainder of the course. This year we did the "Breaker Bonus", the 15K course (~9.3 miles). The race took us onto the Great Highway, a portion of which (in March 2025) was closed to vehicle traffic. Sand had spilled onto the road in places, making walking a bit more strenuous. The roar of the ocean was lovely. After finishing, most of the snacks were gone, but we got bananas and some 60-calorie chewy energy bar samples, then got medals. Like last year, the 1st shuttle back to Emeryville was slated to start boarding at 11:30 a.m., so we may have missed the first one, as we arrived around noon. Skipped the beer garden area, which was full of people dancing. It looked fun and the live music stage was high-energy. At the shuttle area, we showed our phone text message to the people controlling access and they just waved us through. The page for the tickets would not load. Last year we had soggy & torn paper tickets, so we elected for the digital QR code this year, but: 1) The page would not load due to cellular congestion; and 2) No one scans the QR codes, they just want to see it on the page. They said, "No screenshots" but just waved us through. This was a source of stress. Then we laughed because--just like last year--we walked through the winding security barriers, which separated people going downtown in one direction and those of us going elsewhere in another--and found ourselves right back out where we started, basically 😛 We walked to the queue of buses far, far down the road (maybe 1/3 to 1/2 mile?), just like last year. Once we got there, an attendant actually wanted to see the QR code 🌟The bus filled-up slowly (it was maybe 1/3 full when we boarded. Dawn accidentally hit her head on the mounted TV screen 😝 and I apparently bumped her phone at the same time into her. It was a tough moment. Eventually, we got on the road and slowly made our way to Emeryville. This took maybe an hour. Stopped at Brotzeit Lokal in Oakland for brunch. Had trouble parking due to the small lot size, but then we found several spots by the hotel lot for Shore Trail use, so used that. The hostess said in the future we can just ask the hostess for a temporary parking pass as the hotel has begun closely monitoring spaces, especially on Saturday & Sunday. Overall, Bay to Breakers 2025 was probably our last time. It was a roller coaster of ups and down, both physically and mentally. I think if we did do it again, we'd stay overnight (i.e., no 4:00 a.m. start), we'd avoid the tortillas at Rincon Plaza, we'd dress with understanding no gear check exists, etc.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Hungry a bit, slightly sore
Foods eaten today: Kashi GO Toasted Berry Crisp Cereal with nonfat milk, Kirkland Signature Colombian Cold Brew Coffee - 11 fl oz (x3), Philz Coffee - Ecstatic bold coffee (medium sized; Dawn got rose iced coffee), banana (x2), Kirkland Signature Sparkling Water - Lime (12 oz), Brotzeit Lokal Biergarten - Fresh Baked German Bretzel (x0.5) & Russian River Consecration 13oz & Omelette with asparagus + spinach + mushrooms + cheese + home fries + rye bread, scrambled eggs on toast with salsa, "That's It." Apples + Cherries mini fruit bar (x1.5)

Shokz - OpenRun Pro 2 Bone Conduction Sports Headphones

 

Shokz - OpenRun Pro 2 Bone Conduction Sports Headphones (in Black)

At REI in Sunnyvale, California today I purchased a lightly-used pair of Shokz OpenRun Pro 2 headphones (in black). 

Initially released at $180 and $150 during their current spring sale, REI sold these at $115 (~35% off retail & ~25% off sale price). We applied our member dividend.

A risk in buying a returned item: all sales final on returned gear. We tested pairing them to my phone and all was well. So taking a calculated risk they will work out.

They claim 12 hours of battery life 👀 This improves on the ~3-4 hours I got from my current Skullcandy Sesh Evo earbuds. My workaround for my long runs was to take the charging case with me and recharge on-the-go. The Sesh Evo earbuds also seemed to cut-out when I turned my head to my left (e.g., to look for traffic, or look at the scenery), which was not ideal.

UPDATE: 10 April 2025 - Love these. Working perfectly 😎 🎶 🎧 They seamlessly transition between my mobile and laptop Bluetooth connections 👍🏻

Running Journal - 2025-03-23 (Oakland 10K Race - Oakland Marathon)

Time: 8:30-9:47 a.m. (~1 hour, 17 minutes)
Resting heart rate: 67 bpm (several hours after exercise)
Weight (after run; clothed): -- kg (-- lb)
Body Mass Index (BMI; note criticisms of BMI): -- (Overweight = 25–29.9)
Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR): -- cal/day
Distance (running): 10.01 km (6.22 mi)
Cumulative distance (2024; ignores XT days): TBD
Calories burned: 781 kcal
Average heart rate: 124 bpm     
Max heart rate: 152 bpm
Weather: sunny ☀️14° C (57° F), Humidity 77% Wind: 11 km/h
Terrain: 108 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 12'22" /mile
Best pace: 11'49" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: Results of the Oakland 10K race (Oakland Marathon 2025): Chip Elapsed Time 1:16:44; Overall Pace 12:11/mile; Age Place 57th (M45 - 49); Gender Place 731st (of 872); Overall Place 1,435th (of 1,935). Weather was perfect. We awoke around 5:00 a.m., left home by 6:00 a.m., and arrived in downtown Oakland around 6:35 a.m. Parked for free along the street in the same place as last year, well away from the race start on surface streets. Overheard another racer complain (post-race) about the traffic jam to access the Alcopark Parking Garage on Jackson Street, between 13th & 14th Street, as suggested by the race web site. So glad we skipped this year! Instead of taking the I-880 41A exit, we took exit 41B, which led us to within a few blocks of our parking spot on 8th Street, across from Green Fish Seafood Market (E&F inc). Walked a few blocks to Cafe Uccello on 14th Street. Even though we left 30 minutes later than last year, we arrived before it opened at 7:00 a.m. We watched as first one employee opened the door, then 2 other employees arrived and were let in, then finally the shop opened. We were the first 2 customers. I asked for an espresso shot and got...maybe 8 ounces of espresso (Dawn suggested perhaps they diluted it?) 😅 Dawn got a lavender latte. I used the restroom. Cafe Uccello encourages visitors to use provided markers to decorate the walls with art & messages 💜 This year, I left a heart with text "K+D 2024+2025 Oakland Marathon". Left Cafe Uccello and walked with coffees down an empty 14th Street, past the Little Stars Pre-School & Oakland Public Library & Alameda County Superior Courthouse & Oakland Museum of California, arriving at Lake Merritt & the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. We checked our consolidated gear in a provided clear plastic bag, writing my bib number in black marker. Stood around and took a few selfies in front of the event social media walls. We walked around a bit to warm up, then eventually made our way back and stood in the chute by the 12-minute sign, across from the steps to the Oakland Museum of California at the intersection of 11th Street & Lake Merritt Boulevard. People-watched. A white fluffy dog was super cute and looked happy. Remembered the other 2 things I should always do: 1) Garmin HRM-Pro Plus Heart Rate Monitor; 2) Anti-chafing. Watched the confetti explosion when the overall half-marathon winner crossed the finish line. Our race seemed to start on time. First wheelchair athletes, then in waves. We ran with walk breaks this year: 2:30 running, 1:00 walking. Runners sorted themselves and eventually we had a relatively stable group around us at our pace. Lake Merritt was very pretty today. Volunteer tables were well staffed and we got electrolytes several times along the way. Live music: no Garfield the Cat costumed DJ or jazz band this year, but taiko drums, as well as amplified music at many points along the way and at the start/finish. We ran by gentrified areas and not-so-gentrified areas. Lots and lots of beautifully colorful graffiti artwork. The ending seemed a bit different: we ran down a street and through a tunnel, popping up into the sunlight right before the finish line. Finished without injury, and a bit winded, but feeling OK. After finishing, we somewhat confusingly walked around trying to figure out what the crowds had surrounded (i.e., snacks vs. medals). It was difficult to see. After grabbing a few snacks, we queued and waited patiently. Got a tote bag to hold snacks which was helpful. Got the medals. Snacks were standard fair: bananas, Pirate Booty popcorn, Kirkland chocolate chip bars, gummy snacks, Open Water aluminum bottles, and Plezi electrolyte drinks. It was very crowded as people collected medals. All medals seemed the same design. We then walked to the entrance of the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center and waited in line for the 10K gear check (maybe 15 minutes). Decided we didn't need the free beer from the Beer Garden area. We exited out onto 10th Street and walked back to our car. Drove to Almond & Flour, but the wait was 45 minutes, so went bakc to a German restaurant, Brotzeit Lokal Biergarten in Oakland. I had challah French toast & shared home fries, a black lager (1 pint), and shared Dawn's Grapefruit Radler (Pilsner & fresh grapefruit juice with a grapefruit wedge). Dawn also had a mango bellini and eggs benedict. The drive home afterward was uneventful and also very slow on I-880.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Bit tired (mostly from lack of sleep)
Foods eaten today: Kashi GO Toasted Berry Crisp Cereal with nonfat milk, Kirkland Cold Brew (half a can), electrolytes (x4), GU Strawberry Banana energy gel (1.1 oz), banana, espresso - 8 oz (Cafe Uccello), Brotzeit Lokal Biergarten - challah French toast & home fries & black lager (1 pint),

Running Journal - 2025-01-07

Time: 6:56-7:36 p.m. (40 minutes)
Resting heart rate (wake-up): 56 bpm
Weight: 84.19 kg (185.60 lb)
Distance: 4.26 km (2.65 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 12.79 km (7.95 mi)
Calories burned: 361 kcal
Average/Max heart rate: 105/127 bpm
Weather at start: 🌔 16° C (60.8° F), Humidity 31% Wind: 6km/h
Terrain: 0 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 15'00" /mile
Best pace: 15'00" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: Nighttime maintenance run with Dawn in the local community gym. Slept mediocre last night. Lower back a bit sore today. Run went well. Focused on C-H-P (Chest-Hips-Posture). One other person in the gym for about 15-20 minutes, then they left and we chatted for the rest of the time.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Slightly sore back

Running Journal - 2025-01-06

Time: 6:10-6:50 p.m. (40 minutes)
Resting heart rate (wake-up): 54 bpm
Weight: 84.32 kg (185.90 lb)
Distance: 4.26 km (2.65 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 8.53 km (5.30 mi)
Calories burned: 361 kcal
Average/Max heart rate: 118/134 bpm
Weather at start: 🌓 12° C (53.6° F), Humidity 94% Wind: 0km/h
Terrain: 0 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 15'00" /mile
Best pace: 15'00" /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 2/10 (somewhat stinky)
Comments: First maintenance run since last Thursday. Lower back feeling sore, so catching up on sleep & recovering. Feeling somewhat human again and lower back pain diminished, so ran 40 minutes on a treadmill in the local community gym. Felt slightly more sore afterward, but hopefully continuing to focus on recovery with lots of sleep in 2025 will let me continue running regularly. 
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Slightly sore back

Running Journal - 2025-01-02

Time: 7:43-8:23 p.m. (40 minutes)
Resting heart rate (wake-up): 54 bpm
Weight: 85.18 kg (187.80 lb)
Distance: 4.26 km (2.65 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 4.26 km (2.65 mi)
Calories burned: 522 kcal
Average/Max heart rate: 77/94 bpm
Weather at start: 🌤️ 13° C (55.4° F), Humidity 54% Wind: 7 km/h
Terrain: 200 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 21'12" /mile
Best pace: -- /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: First run of 2025. Treadmill. One other person in the gym when Dawn and I arrived, so listened to audiobook for about 10 minutes. They left, then chatted with Dawn for the rest of the time.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Slightly sore back

Books List - 2025

 

Ordered by most recently listened to, first.

Audiobooks 

1. Queued:
1. Conundrum (1974) - Jan Morris
2. Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974) - Angela Davis
3. Masha Gessen books
4. Svetlana Alexievich books
5. American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer  (2005) - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
6. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (2017) - Tom Nichols
7. 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai (1985) - Roger Zelazny
8. Samurai William : the Englishman who opened Japan (2003) - Giles Milton
9. The Pillars of the Earth (1989) - Ken Follett
10. Solar Express (2015) - L.E. Modesitt Jr. (suggested perhaps mistakenly as by David Weber)
11. The Creative Act: A Way of Being (2023) - Rick Rubin
12. Perfume books by Luca Turin
13. The Portable Feminist Reader (2025) - Roxane Gay
14. A Memory Called Empire (2019) - Arkady Martine
2. In Ascension (2023) - Martin MacInnes, narrated by Freya Miller
3. The Anthropologists (2024) - Ayşegül Savaş, narrated by Kathryn Aboya
4. I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki: A Memoir (2018) - Baek Se-hee, narrated by Jully Lee
5. Orbital (2024) - Samantha Harvey, narrated by Sarah Naudi
1.  🤷🏻 Ok, I guess
6. The Book Of Records (2025) - Madeleine Thien, narrated by the author, Jeff Yung, Scott Turner Schofield, Athena Karkanis, and Richard Lam
1. Blind listen--this was good but really...weighty? Literary? It was a lot
2. Lina's dad, a cyberspace systems engineer, seemed off to me
3. I am so glad the horse Big Red survives
7. Intermezzo (2024) - Sally Rooney, narrated by Éanna Hardwicke
1. Kept waiting for the story to turn dark, but it never did 👍🏻
2. The dog survives
3. Pleasant listen 
8. Rosarita (2024) - Anita Desai, narrated by Meera Simhan
1. Dreamlike quality (magical realism?)
2. 🤷🏻 Ok, I guess
9. King Of Ashes (2025) - S. A. Cosby, narrated by Adam Lazarre-White
1. Entertaining listen
2. Plot advanced in clunky fashion at a few points 
10. Audition (2025) - Katie Kitamura, narrated by Traci Kato-Kiriyama
1. I vaguely remember the plot, but didn't resonate 
11. Secrets of the Purple Pearl (2025) - Kate McKinnon, narrated by the author
1. Superb sound engineering, narration
2. Looking forward to #3 in the series (2026)
12. Finding My Way: A Memoir (2025) - Malala Yousafzai, narrated by the author
1. "Mals" - informal name used by friends
2. Climbing the Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) bell tower - she climbed it, and this led me down a rabbit hole of looking at Google Maps to figure out how she did it
3. Wish she'd name names re: slobby housemates
4. Pretty incredible narrative of someone interacting on a world stage while also dealing with same coming-of-age struggles
5. Insights into conservative Pakistani culture re: women & appearance of impropriety 
13. Sociopath: A Memoir (2024) - Patric Gagne, narrated by the author
1. Insightful 
14. The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness (2013) - Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga; Narrated by Noah Galvin, Graeme Malcolm, and January LaVoy
1. Parallels to Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
2. Narrative contrived, but this does represent a translation, I think, so perhaps more eloquent in Japanese source 
15. Class Clown: The Memoirs of a Professional Wiseass: How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up (2025) - Dave Barry, narrated by the author
1. Entertaining
2. Wonder if Barry still considers himself libertarian (?) 
16. Antifa - The Anti-Fascist Handbook (2017) - Mark Bray, narrated by Keith Szarabajka
17. Personal History (1997) - Katharine Graham, narrated by Carrington MacDuffie
1. Excellent, just an amazingly polished work 
18. But Seriously (2017) - John McEnroe, narrated by the author
19. D-Day Girls: The Spies Who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis, and Helped Win World War II (2019) - Sarah Rose
1. Good read on fragility of underground networks, and how Germans rolled-up networks
2. Eye-popping descriptions of covert actions during wartime 
20. The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War (2013) - Stephen Kinzer
1. This was good 
21. The Secret Time Machine and the Gherkin Switcheroo (2019) - Simone Lia, Narrated by Edward Mitchell
22. Heartbeats: A Memoir (2025) - Björn Borg
1. Hard to feel a lot of sympathy for his partying lifestyle
23. The Sirens' Call (2025) - Chris Hayes
1. We want recognition, but we get attention
24. Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future (2025) - Dan Wang
1. Examines an engineer state
2.  Scientists should be on tap--not on top
3. One-child policy, and the horrors arising from engineer-driven policies
4. Shrinking Chinese population and implications for its future 
25. Connie: A Memoir (2024) - Connie Chung
1. Connie Chung's theory of "F**k You or F**k You Over Syndrome."
2. Enjoyed this book: written and produced carefully and entertainingly, as one might expect from such an accomplished journalist 
26. Patriot: A Memoir (2024) - Alexei Navalny
1. Rick and Morty
2. Prison life
3. Grew up inside a military family, so moves effortlessly in and out of that world
4. Show trials
5. Aspirations of a Russian future free from tyrrany 
27. Growth (2024) - Daniel Susskind
1. "The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means."- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven 
28. Ghosts Of The Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan's Disaster Zone (2017) - Richard Lloyd Parry
1. Documents how administrative officials covered-up and avoided accountability for the tsunami
2. Mother who continued searching with heavy equipment for her child 
29. Not Dead Yet: The Memoir (2016) - Phil Collins
1. Repeats relationship mistakes with Jill Tavelman and Orianne Cevey (the latter he self-describes as "stalkery" 😬)
2. Lifelong friends with problematic Eric Clapton, and no disavowal of his extremist views 😬
3. Audiobook sound design only has his spoken voice--no music, no singing, nothing; real missed opportunity
4. Collins wealthy enough to tell his story; we do not hear the other sides
5. Self-absorbed, addictive personality, always prioritizing "the work" over connections to family--even at the end of the book, he still half-jokingly entertains the temptation of new projects, rather than prioritizing his family as #1 in his remaining years 
30. Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (2022) - Peter Attia
1. Normal vs optimal
2. Protein important as age
3. Hippocratic Oath: Originally in 2 parts, more like "either help or do not harm the patient", rather than just the "do no harm" which was, according to Wikipedia, "...traced back to an attribution to Thomas Sydenham (1624–1689) in a book by Thomas Inman (1860), Foundation for a New Theory and Practice of Medicine"
4. apoB ", or Apolipoprotein B, is a protein that plays a crucial role in carrying cholesterol and other fats in the bloodstream. It is a component of lipoproteins, including LDL ("bad cholesterol")"
5. Lp(a) "lp little-a" is a lipoprotein particle that carries cholesterol
6. "Studies of Scandinavian twins have found that genes may be responsible for only about 20 to 30 percent of the overall variation in human lifespan. The catch is that the older you get, the more genes start to matter."
7. Rapamycin
8. Calorie count over diet, sleep
9. Activities of daily living (ADLs)
10. Rucking
11. Portable lactate meter 
31. Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company (2025) - Patrick McGee, narrated by Fred Sanders
1. "This might be it! The Apple Messiah disguised as the head of the paint department at Orchard Supply Hardware" (attributed I believe to Michael Malone)
2. Tim Cook gym rat 
32. All the White Spaces: A Novel (2022) - Ally Wilkes
1. First selection of The Sword and the Sandwich book club
2. Vivid imagery of the aurora australis, or the southern lights, reflecting and casting colors
33. The Covid Safety Handbook: Staying Safe In An Unsafe World (2024) - Violet Blue 
34. Sonny Boy: A Memoir (2024) - Al Pacino
1. Voice occasionally reminds me of..."Sam the Snowman" I think 🤔
2. Audiobook almost required to fully capture the experience of his memoir...what a voice
3. Ends the book mourning and grieving the loss of his childhood friends, and celebrating how normal and alive his adventures felt 
35. Ready Player Two (2020) - Ernest Cline
1. Just like the first book, the cultural references remind me of a shared history I was at once a part of and also disconnected from, both in time and space, due to limited resources
2. Wil Wheaton narrates adroitly 
36. The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen: A Novel (2025) - Yuta Takahashi
1. This was a sweet book 
37. Burn Book: A Tech Love Story (2024) - Kara Swisher
1. She reminds me of cartoon character Slappy Squirrel
2. Enjoyed this book
38. Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Autonomous Region (2016) - Masha Gessen
39. The Acid Queen: The Psychedelic Life and Counterculture Rebellion of Rosemary Woodruff Leary (2025) - Susannah Cahalan
1. "Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face" - Attributed to John Updike
2. Timothy Leary comes across as a quite unsympathetic character
3. This book mentioned in passing the number 108 and its significance in Dharmic religions
40. Battle of the Linguist Mages (2022) - Scotto Moore
1. 108 power morphemes may relate to the significance of this number in Dharmic religions (e.g., Buddhism, Hinduism)The Ministry of Time (2024) - Kaliane Bradley 
41. The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science (2024) - Kate McKinnon
1. Audio engineering on this book - off the charts 💯
2. Kate McKinnon is an excellent narrator in this production 
42. Who Is Government?: The Untold Story of Public Service (2025) - Michael Lewis
43. Martyr! (2024) - Kaveh Akbar 
1. Liked this -- flashes of insight, flawed people
2. Twist seems a stretch, but why not
3. Good books let us experiences the lives of others 
44. The Art of Power: My Story as America's First Woman Speaker of the House (2024) - Nancy Pelosi
1. Anecdotes of names from the past 25 years: Harry Reid, Barney Frank
2. Perfidy of the 2nd Bush administration re: Iraq war
3. Kind words for McCain in contrast to empty promises of House Republicans to vote for the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
4. Pelosi overhearing others talk in the cloak room about how she got them to vote for the ACA (e.g., religious arm twisting)
5. Getting vote commitments on paper before bringing legislation to the floor
6. Congressional staff know how to get things through (e.g., drafting the same bills in separate committees so all on the same page) 
45. Help Wanted (2024) - Adelle Waldman
1. Characters all treated mostly sympathetically, showing good & bad
2. Shows pros and cons of retail businesses in the wake of Amazon eating the world
46. Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America (2024) - Talia Lavin
1. Charis'ntma 
2. Talia's voice reading Christian rap
3. Imagine: keeping a list of abusers and moving them around instead of firing 😓
   
47. Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost ldealism - A Memoir (2025) - Sarah Wynn-Williams
1. The Myanmar story of her traveling there by herself is a real WTF moment 👀
2. Sheryl Sandberg's sexual harassment & predation on staff members
   
48. The Message (2024) - Ta-Nehisi Coates
1. Darryl Stingley - became a quadriplegic after a tackle in a game
49. The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead―The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter (2024) - by Robert Hunter (Author), Dennis McNally (Introduction), Brigid Meier (Afterword), John Mayer (Foreword)
1. Jerry
1. Here and now story
2. On meeting women: Sing, nod, smile
2. Jerry (or was it Alan?), talking about the deadly car accident: Changed his outlook; why work for a tomorrow that might not come
3. Surreal, sleep-deprived (or...?) dreams: egg-beaters and trees
4. The imagery and imagination this book documents was a real treat to listen to 🌟
5. First public concert with Jerry & Robert, the subsequent breakup of their band
6. Detailed first-person description of what it was like to live in poverty before everything took off (give-and-take between Robert & Jerry and others, etc.)...just hanging out, killing time in coffee shops with Jerry & his omnipresent guitar
50. Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (2023) - Mike Rothschild
1. Great book
2. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R-GA) 2018 conspiracy comment about the Rothschild family starting the fire represents the meaning behind the title
3. Amazing how much foundation this book documents to reach the MTG 2018 comment 👀
51. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents (2015) - Lindsay C. Gibson, narrated by Marguerite Gavin
1. Focus on the outcome not the relationship
2. Externalizers vs internalizers
3. Sometimes I listen to a book and the narrator just does not resonate...oh well
52. How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future (2022) - Maria Ressa
1. Probably best book of the year
53. Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life (2018) - Beth Kempton
1. Kakeibo: The Japanese art of budgeting and saving money
2. "It was, therefore, a real pleasure to spend an afternoon with Mineyo Kanie, the ninety-four-year-old daughter of the late Gin-san, at her home in Nagoya. Gin-san and her twin sister Kin-san were known for being the world’s oldest identical twins, living to 108 and 107, respectively. Full of fun and vitality, they were frequently featured on television and became national celebrities in Japan. I wanted to know what Kanie-san had learned from her mother and aunt about living a good long life. I was also interested to hear the perspective of someone who, statistically, is very likely to live to a ripe old age herself. Kneeling on a flat cushion in her tatami-matted lounge, Kanie-san exudes a gentle calm. You get the sense that she has seen it all. When she was born, in this very house, there was nothing but rice fields as far as the eye could see. Now it is a residential neighbourhood in the bustling city of Nagoya. Over green tea and blueberry sweets, we chat about parenting and politics, society and friendship. We laugh a lot. Her cheeky giggle is infectious. At one point, Kanie-san looks wistfully off into the distance and says, ‘You know, getting old is fine, but it’s sad when hardly any of your friends are left.’"
54. Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church (2024) -  Gareth Gore
1. Leonard Leo - Lost dad to cancer at early age
55. Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics (2024) - Elle Reeve
1. Charles Martel Society
2. "The American criminal justice system, which came under so much intense and deserved scrutiny in the summer of 2020, is now what many are counting on to stop a slide into fascism. In professional wrestling, this is what's called a face turn."
3. "If you decide before you walk into a room that whoever's in there will like you, they will--and they'll be thrilled you have relieved them of the burden of having to decide whether to like you. It's like a little gift."
4. "[The] reality of political violence should not be secret. It's not like the movies. There is no dramatic lighting. You can die in sunshine." (referencing Heather Heyer)
5. "In the late 2000s, Pepe was lifted from a stoner comic strip and made into an icon on 4chan, an anonymous online forum that was the dark heart of the internet, until it got so dark it wasn't funny anymore. Pepe had an innocent smiling face, but 4chan users redrew him with sad, downcast eyes to represent their loserdom. Because the forum was anonymous, they were free to talk about being losers, and any joke was permitted. Some made ironic Nazi jokes, and making Nazi jokes was a itself a joke, a way to keep away outsiders. Over time, new people came to the site and interpreted those jokes as sincere, and eventually the group became the thing they'd once satirized, a herd of brainwashed swastika-posting sheep."
6. QAnon: "Two teams of forensic linguistics, one Swiss and one French, found that [South African 4chan moderator Paul] Furber was likely the first Q, and Ron Watkins was the second. Their analyses suggested Ron took over in early 2018. (Both Furber and Watkins deny they were Q.)"
   
56. The Witch of Maracoor (2023) - Gregory Maguire
1. To me, this trilogy underwhelmed
2. I wonder how much the narration played a part in my reaction (?) 
   
3. Not convinced a 70-year-old Maguire convincingly gives voice to a young woman
4. Word choices seemed pretentious at times
   
5. Decisions seem arbitrarily taken to advance the plot; e.g., Rain leaving the broom & Grimmerie, or Iskinaary staying to raise children
6. It positively depict same-sex relationships, and has a trans (is that the right characterization?) character portrayed positively (Ozma/Tip/Tippa)
7. Anyway, it advances the plot and sets up the next books, so there is that
57. The Stupidest Angel (2004) - Christopher Moore
1. Had its moments, but mostly I am not the target audience
58. When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) - John Ganz
1. Two enemies of demagogues: 1) Context; and 2) Memory
2. Louisiana: "Laissez les bons temps rouler" (Let the good times roll)
3. Ross Perot: "'We're not interested in detailed positions. Nobody implements them.' Instead Perot called for movement... 'Taking action in Washington is apparently an unnatural event but that's what people want. If they put me there that's what we'll do.'"
   
59. The Oracle of Maracoor (2022) - Gregory Maguire
1. I thought to myself Maguire was writing the character of The Oracle in a somewhat autobiographical vein, at least as far as the character's pronouncements about getting old
2. Moey and Asparine the harpies
   
60. Hell Yeah or No (2020) - Derek Sivers
1. This was ... forgettable? 
2. Perhaps best viewed as a stimulant for reflection 
   
61. The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (2024) - Hampton Sides 
1. Cook Inlet - Cook hated the perceived failure in exploring this, yet it was later named in his honor
2. Captain James Cook seems like the inspiration for "James Tiberius Kirk, often known as Captain Kirk, a fictional character in the Star Trek media franchise"
3. Star Trek catchphras, "Where No Man Has Gone Before", possibly inspired by Cook's journal entry "ambition leads me ... farther than any other man has been before me"
4. Iceblink: "Iceblink is a white light seen near the horizon, especially on the underside of low clouds, resulting from reflection of light off an ice field immediately beyond"
5. 10 minutes: the entire incident of Cook's death took only this amount of time
   
62. The Brides of Maracoor (2021) - Gregory Maguire
1. Plot moving characters into position
2. Anti-climactic finale...feels like build-up to something to come in next 2 books (?)
   
63. James: A Novel (2024) - Percival Everett
1. End turns Jim/James into a badass in a whirlwind of plot
   
64. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988) - Douglas Adams
    
    

Using the Libby app (via Overdrive).

E-Books

1.  

Print

1. Queued:
1. Schismatrix (1985) - Bruce Sterling
2. True Names (1981) - Verner Vinge
3. Rainbows End (2006) - Verner Vinge 
4. The Shockwave Rider (1975) - John Brunner 
5. Software (1982) - Rudy Rucker
6. Wetware (1988) - Rudy Rucker
7. Eclipse Trilogy (also referred to as A Song Called Youth trilogy) - John Shirley
1. Eclipse (1985)
2. Eclipse Penumbra (1988)
3. Eclipse Corona (1990) 
8. Neuromancer (1984) - William Gibson
9. Snow Crash (1992) - Neal Stephenson 
2. In progress: Twenty Five Mystery Science Theater 3000 Films That Changed My Life in No Way Whatsoever (2016) - Frank Conniff
3. Dark Apnea (2024) - Frank Conniff
4. Billy Gillis: 7-Year Old Screenwriter (2022) - Frank Conniff
5. How to Write Cheesy Movies: The Only Screenwriting Guide You’ll Never Need! (2017) - Frank Conniff
6. Detective Beans: Adventures in Cat Town (2025) - Li Chen

Suggestions

• Barack Obama's reading list
• Favorite Books of 2025:
• Paper Girl (2025) - Beth Macy
• Flashlight (2025) - Susan Choi
• We The People (2025) - Jill Lepore
• The Wilderness (2025) - Angela Flournoy
• There Is No Place For Us (2025) - Brian Goldstone
• North Sun (2025) - Ethan Rutherford
• 1929 Andrew (2025) - Ross Sorkin
• The Loneliness Of Sonia And Sunny (2025) - Kiran Desai
• Dead And Alive (2025) - Zadie Smith
• What We Can Know (2025) - Ian Mcewan
• The Look (2025) - Michelle Obama 
• Summer 2025 reading list:
• Mark Twain (2025) - Ron Chernow
• King Of Ashes (2025) - S. A. Cosby
• A Marriage At Sea (2025) - Sophie Elmhirst
• Abundance (2025) - Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter (2025) - Stephen Graham Jones
• Who Is Government? (2025) - Michael Lewis
• The Book Of Records (2025) - Madeleine Thien
• Rosarita (2024) - Anita Desai
• Audition (2025) - Katie Kitamura
• The Sirens' Call (2025) - Chris Hayes
• Favorite Books of 2024:
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024) - Jonathan Haidt
• Intermezzo (2024) - Sally Rooney
• Patriot (2024) - Alexei Navalny
• Orbital (2024) - Samantha Harvey
• The Anthropologists (2024) - Ayşegül Savaş
• Stolen Pride (2024) - Arlie Russell Hochschild
• In Ascension (2023) - Martin MacInnes
• Growth (2024) - Daniel Susskind
• Someone Like Us (2024) - Dinaw Mengestu
• The Work of Art: How Something Comes From Nothing (2024) - Adam Moss
• Summer 2024 reading list:
• James: A Novel (2024) - Percival Everett
• There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (2024) - Hanif Abdurraqib
• Everyone Who Is Gone Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis (2024) - Jonathan Blitzer
• Reading Genesis (2024) - Marilynne Robinson
• Headshot (2024) - Rita Bullwinkel
• The God of the Woods (2024) - Liz Moore
• Beautiful Days: Stories (2024) - Zach Williams
• Martyr! (2024) - Kaveh Akbar
• Memory Piece (2024) - Lisa Ko
• The Ministry of Time (2024) - Kaliane Bradley
• When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s (2024) - John Ganz
• Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It (2022) - Richard Reeves
• The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook (2024) - Hampton Sides
• Help Wanted (2024) - Adelle Waldman
  
• 2023 Favorites, end-of-year:
• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store - James McBride
• The Maniac - Benjamin Labatut
• Poverty, By America - Matthew Desmond
• How To Say Babylon - Safiya Sinclair
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder - David Grann
• Chip War - Chris Miller
• The Vaster Wilds - Lauren Groff
• Humanly Possible - Sarah Bakewell
• King: A Life - Jonathan Eig
• The Covenant Of Water - Abraham Verghese
• The Best Minds - Jonathan Rosen
• All The Sinners Bleed: A Novel - S.A. Cosby
• The Kingdom, The Power, And The Glory - Tim Alberta
• Some People Need Killing - Patricia Evangelista
• This Other Eden - Paul Harding
• Summer 2023 reading list:
• Small Mercies: A Detective Mystery - Dennis Lehane
• Hello Beautiful: A Novel - Ann Napolitano
• Birnam Wood: A Novel - Eleanor Cotton
• What Napoleon Could Not Do: A Novel - DK Nnuro
• Blue Hour: A Novel - Tiffany Clarke Harrison
• Dec 2019 (via):
• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power () - Shoshana Zuboff
• The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company () - William Dalrymple (note: ebook only)
• Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee () - Casey Cep
• Girl, Woman, Other () - Bernardine Evaristo
• The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present () - David Treuer
• How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy () - Jenny Odell
• Lost Children Archive () - Valeria Luiselli
• Lot: Stories () - Bryan Washington
• Normal People () - Sally Rooney
• The Orphan Master's Son () - Adam Johnson
• The Yellow House () - Sarah M. Broom (note: ebook only)
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland () - Patrick Radden Keefe b;
  
• Solitary () - Albert Woodfox (note: ebook only)
• The Topeka School () - Ben Lerner
• Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion () - Jia Tolentino
• Trust Exercise () - Susan Choi
• We Live in Water: Stories () - Jess Walter
• A Different Way to Win: Dan Rooney's Story from the Super Bowl to the Rooney Rule () - Jim Rooney (note: not on Overdrive yet; published Nov 2019)
• The Sixth Man () - Andre Iguodala
• Aug 2019 (via):
• Toni Morrison: Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
• Exhalation by Ted Chiang
• Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel­
• Haruki Murakami’s Men Without Women
• American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson
• The Shallows by Nicholas Carr
• Lab Girl by Hope Jahren
• Inland by Téa Obreht
• How to Read the Air, by Dinaw Mengestu
• Maid by Stephanie Land
• Dec 2018:
• Becoming by Michelle Obama (Overdrive)
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones (Overdrive)
• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Overdrive)
• The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die by Keith Payne (Overdrive)
• Educated by Tara Westover (Overdrive)
• Factfulness by Hans Rosling
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Futureface: A Family Mystery, an Epic Quest, and the Secret to Belonging by Alex Wagner (Overdrive)
• A Grain of Wheat by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (Overdrive: Recommended 01/01/2019)
• How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (Overdrive)
• In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu (Overdrive)
• Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela (Overdrive)
• The New Geography of Jobs by Enrico Moretti
• Note: recommended 01/01/2019 (Northern California Public Library)
• The Return by Hisham Matar
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (read)
• Warlight by Michael Ondaatje (Overdrive)
• Why Liberalism Failed by Patrick Deneen
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• The World As It Is by Ben Rhodes (Overdrive)
• American Prison by Shane Bauer  (Overdrive)
• Arthur Ashe: A Life by Raymond Arsenault (Overdrive)
• Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday  (Overdrive)
• Feel Free by Zadie Smith  (Overdrive)
• Florida by Lauren Groff  (Overdrive)
• Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight (Overdrive)
• Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar (Overdrive)
• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson (Overdrive)
• Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark  (Overdrive)
• There There by Tommy Orange  (Overdrive)
• Washington Black by Esi Edugyan (Overdrive)

• Josh Marshall 2018 Holiday recommendations:
• Eric H. Cline: Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World. Nicholas Ostler
• 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Turning Points in Ancient History)
• Only History of Ancient Greece available
• Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Barry Cunliffe: By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia
• Nothing as of 01/01/2019
• Felipe Fernandez-Armesto: Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• David Anthony: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
• Recommended 12/31/2018
• Roger Crowley: Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World
• City of Fortune and Conquerers recommendable as audiobooks
• David Abulafia: The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
• Nothing as of 07/18/2018
• James Romm: Ghost on the Throne: The Death of Alexander the Great and the Bloody Fight for His Empire
• ebook only (Overdrive) as of 07/18/2018
• Peter Heather: 
• The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians
• Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
• The Restoration of Rome: Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders
• Note: ebook only; audiobook not recommendable (Overdrive) as of 07/18/2018
• Hugh Thomas: Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico
• Nothing available as of 07/18/2018
• Lionel Casson: Libraries in the Ancient World
• Unavailable in any format (Overdrive)
• Life in Ancient Rome recommendable as Audiobook (Overdrive)
• Josh Marshall 1066 Norman Conquest Discussion:
• Short History of the Normans (2016) - Leonie V. Hicks
• The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England (2013) - Marc Morris
• The Norman Conquest: England after William the Conqueror (Critical Issues in World and International History) (2007) - Hugh M. Thomas
• Britain After Rome: The Fall and Rise, 400 to 1070 (2011) - Robin Fleming
• William, King and Conqueror (2013) - Mark Hagger
• Conquest and Colonisation: The Normans in Britain, 1066-1100 (1994) - Brian Golding
• The Normans in Europe (2000) - Elisabeth van Houts
• William the Conqueror (The English Monarchs Series) (2016) - David Bates
• 2018-01-08: David Finkel's The Good Soldiers (via)
• Note: ebook only (Overdrive)
• Mike Liebhold (via):
• Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah 
• Granada: A Pomegranate in the Hand of God 
• Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
• UCSC LIT 61U - Introduction to SF (online class):
• The Left Hand of Darkness, Book I of the Lilith's Brood Trilogy (1969) - Ursula K. Le Guin
• Dawn (1987) - Octavia E. Butler (note: not on Overdrive)
• Childhood's End (1953) - Arthur C. Clarke (note: not on Overdrive)
• "The Cold Equations" (1954) - Tom Godwin (note: not on Overdrive)
• Sail On! Sail On! (1952) - Philip José Farmer (note: not on Overdrive)
•  John Cole (via):
• The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic (2013) - Emily Croy Barker
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (2015) - Sam Quinones
• Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018) - Anand Giridharadas
• Bookshop Santa Cruz - Winter 2023 reading list:
• North Woods: A Novel - Daniel Mason 
• Signal Fires: A Novel - Dani Shapiro
• Swimming Back to Trout River: A Novel - Linda Rui Feng
• Elder Race - Adrian Tchaikovsky
• More Than You'll Ever Know - Katie Gutierrez
• The Sun Is a Compass: My 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds - Caroline Van Hemert 
• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession - Michael Finkel 
• Poet Warrior: A Memoir - Joy Harjo
• Ask A Manager 2023 recommendations (she bolded her favorites of the favorites):
• How Lucky - Will Leitch
• Ms. Demeanor - Elinor Lipman
• Mouth to Mouth - Antoine Wilson
• L.A. Weather - María Amparo Escandón
• Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
• Silver Sparrow - Tayari Jones
• A Quiet Life - Ethan Joella
• None of This Would Have Happened If Prince Were Alive - Carolyn Prusa
• Happy All the Time - Laurie Colwin
• All Together Now - Matthew Norman
• Vintage Contemporaries - Dan Kois
• The Sweet Spot - Amy Poeppel
• Sam - Allegra Goodman
• Small Admissions - Amy Poeppel
• The Helpline - Katherine Collette
• Pineapple Street - Jenny Jackson
• Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld
• Limelight - Amy Poeppel
• Liars and Saints - Maile Meloy
• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers - Jesse Q. Sutanto
• Yellowface - R.F. Kuang
• Bad Summer People - Emma Rosenblum
• Games and Rituals - Katherine Heiny
• Every Heart a Doorway - Seanan McGuire
• By the Book - Jasmine Guillory
• Barbara Isn’t Dying - Alina Bronsky
• My Last Innocent Year - Daisy Alpert Florin
• The Guest - Emma Cline
• The Truth and Other Hidden Things - Lea Geller
• The Innocents - Francesca Segal
• The Appeal - Janice Hallett
• Sunshine Nails - Mai Nguyen
• Heartburn - Nora Ephron
• Maame - Jessica George
• The Connellys of County Down - Tracey Lange
• Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
• You Can’t Stay Here Forever - Katherine Lin
• Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl - Renee Rosen
• The Whispers - Ashley Audrain
• An Available Man - Hilma Wolitzer
• Daughters-in-Law - Joanna Trollope
• Flight - Lynn Steger Strong
• High Maintenance - Jennifer Belle
• Mrs. Caliban - Rachel Ingalls
• Hello Beautiful - Ann Napolitano
• A Family Daughter - Maile Meloy
• Family Happiness - Laurie Colwin
• The Man I Never Met - Elle Cook
• Bill Gates 2023 reading list:
• The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human - Siddhartha Mukherjee
• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet - Hannah Ritchie
• Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure - Vaclav Smil
  

Previously

Previously (2024), Previously (2023), Previously (2022), Note: No books list 2021, Previously (2020), Previously (2019), Previously (2018), Previously (2017)

Running Journal - 2025-01-01 (XT - Walking)

Time: 3:16-5:00 p.m. (1 hour 44 minutes)
Resting heart rate (wake-up): 60 bpm
Weight: 85.87 kg (189.30 lb)
Distance: 7.90 km (4.91 mi)
Cumulative distance (2025; ignores XT days): 0.00 km (0.00 mi)
Calories burned: 522 kcal
Average/Max heart rate: 77/94 bpm
Weather at start: 🌤️ 13° C (55.4° F), Humidity 54% Wind: 7 km/h
Terrain: 200 ft elevation gain
Avg Pace: 21'12" /mile
Best pace: -- /mile
Stinkiness air level (0=No smell; 10=☣️): 0/10 (not stinky)
Comments: Walked around our neighborhood parks with Dawn. One man wished us a happy new year. Starting with this first post of 2025 I am simplifying my posts, removing some items which I have found unhelpful to track publicly. Foods eaten: it has not impacted what I eat. BMI and RMR: it fluctuates too little to bother.
Any irregular feelings, aches, pains, heart rate, and so forth?: Sore back, slightly sore left hamstring