...aaaand This One Goes To Twenty Two

This has been my worst year for blogging: over the years my output has gradually dropped from a high of just over 250 posts a year (in the mid-aughts) to somewhere around a hundred a year, and this year's precipitous drop means I'll probably finish this year with less than sixty posts.

Why is that? I've been very busy this year at work, which left me no time -- I used to post by email during my lunch break -- or mental energy for posting, but the main reason is probably because I have someone to talk to, and do things with, and the need to spout off into the void has waned over the past few years...

Right now I'm home, done with work until the new year; I've been off this whole week, but I spent most of the time either decompressing or shopping (ie "re-compressing"). What's been going on:


Computer Play: The first thing I did when I got home from work (for the end of the year) was plunk myself down in front of the computer and fire up GRASS (huh huh, do they still call it "grass," man?) to build a map of Trexler Nature Preserve. Once more unto the breach etc, and I have to say that tasks that once seemed hard have become much easier, and I learned a lot more about other (new) things I wanted to do.

The few weeks before the end of the year saw me doing a lot of calculations at work, using a powerful but old and unwieldy in-house program that needed to be bamboozled (by tweaking the input data in a rather artificial manner) into doing what I needed. So, for my own edification and to scratch a certain itch, I spent a lot of time playing with Octave to re-do the calculations on my own at home.

Bike and Exercise: Riding, but not really all that much. We've been doing that P90X workout, and I have to say I've seen results, but not spectacular ones, but then again our (read: my) commitment to the program has been less than spectacular -- I never followed the diet, and the rigidity of the workout schedule made me basically rebel and skip days when I wanted to do other things (like bike), so there's that. I really can't wait for this to be over, about two weeks from now. (This really comes down to a question of timing: This would be a great off-season conditioning program, but we started too soon, while we were still in riding season, and we'll finish too soon, smack in the middle of when there's not much to do outside, even in terms of off-season cross training stuff like XC skiing.)

Meantime, I've been battling allergies and asthma, so I've been taking it easy on the bike anyway. Next season's base work is going to be a long tough slog...

More layer - maybe! Right now I'm going for a ride.