Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Lake Woman River

Morning weigh-in: 180#, 10% BF

Coldwater, lake woman, loudwater, laughing water... I like the look of the water when it's very cold out like it is now, but my favorite is late winter, when the river is still cold but warmer than the air, and its color is like greenish-gray rocks, and milky, almost luminescent. I like driving along the river in the morning, and riding along it at night.

Hit the gym last night (excellent workout), did some chores & errands, then went down to Which Brew for dinner, got there around 9:45. Tuesdays for a while were the night for regulars (weekends it gets too crowded), but the past few weeks it's been almost deserted on Tuesdays -- except last night the bar section was full (Scott, Ed, T, Joseph of Nazareth, Rachel, etc etc), though the dinner area was pretty sparse, and K-Jo was in da house, working behind the bar. Dinner, good conversation, some attempts to decorate for Christmas... They're having a "Festivus, for the rest of us" party on the 23rd, so I must get one more gag gift.

Saw something interesting about Mohenjo-Daro the other day. I forget what the point of the article was, but what caught my eye was some new theory on why Harappan civilization might have collapsed. Nobody knows, but I've seen speculation that it might have been an invasion of Indo-Aryan nomads, or maybe agricultural collapse when irrigation caused the soil chemistry to change (hello, California!). This new theory said that the civilization was not centered only around the Indus, but also around a second life-giving river, which dried up when seismic activity diverted its headwaters into the Ganges. Like the other theories, this one fits pretty nicely with someone's political agenda: Indian nationalistic propaganda is now pushing the view that the Indus Valley civilization was actually the one mentioned in the Vedas, and this dried-up river has been identified with the mythical Sarasvati. (Judging by the wikipedia articles, it looks like I'm the last to find out.)

An interesting thing I heard the other day: the DJ on WNTI had a contest, played a song & asked "who wrote/sang the original?" The original singer was Pete Seeger, and the song was "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." Pretty cool, check it out, wish I caught the name of the singer on the radio because he was good too.

Riding tonight, South Mountain. Oh, and one more thing about the rivers: Rumpelstiltskin is my name...

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