Pinball Wizard

 Today has been very busy..... with a wide array of different tasks.... each rather disparate of each other.... so that I feel almost akin to being a veritable pinball bouncing to and fro all over the map.  Hopefully, my movements and actions prove fruitful and I will garner a lot of points as I crash into various bells and buzzers!

1.  Yesterday, because I knew a lot of snow was coming overnight, I decided to add some more outdoor miles to my run.  I ended up running a total of 13.2 miles yesterday just because I wanted to feel the pleasure of running outside..... and believe me, it is much more pleasurable even if it is below freezing temperatures and high winds.  Being outside running releases so much more stress hormones from my body than running on a treadmill.  

2.  This morning, I awoke and peered out the bedroom window.  In the hazily lit, moonlight "darkness" of  5:00am, I could see a fair amount of snow had fallen.  It was only about 5 inches (~12.5 cm).... which is a relatively normal amount to get in a sitting in my neck of the woods, but it was surprisingly the first "real" accumulating snowfall of this season, which is quite late for us.  The snow looked pretty from above, and helped to reflect more of the hazy moonlight so it was brighter outside than usual.  But.... the snow meant it was my destiny to run on the damn treadmill today.  

3.  Started running on the treadmill beast at about 5:15am.  The treadmill is so monotonous that I *KNOW* better than to look at the mileage guage or the time interval listing because it always is disheartening.  Instead, with the few times I have ran on a treadmill in the past, I have a routine that helps me....

a.  First, I cover the gauges with a piece of paper so I do not accidently glance down at the data they show, to prevent me from growing disheartened.  

b.  My routine is to begin my run and get limbered up by listening to 10 songs of my choosing (using my free Pandora account). 

c.  Because it usually takes me a while to get into a comfortable pattern on the treadmill (hence the songs) so that I will not meander off the belt and get injured, during the songs, I am usually concentrating heavily on making my pacing and strides very even.

d.  By the time the last song plays, I am typically feeling fairly well oiled up and consistent in my running so I do not have to concentrate on it as hard (outside running I barely have to concentrate at all, because a little bit of drifting and meandering is not a problem outside).  Now I can begin to pray the rosary.  

e.  With the normal pacing of my prayer through the 8 decades I typically pray each morning and a few other prayers as well that are part of my morning routine, I am usually finishing up my ninth mile of running on the treadmill at the same point I am concluding my prayers.  

With the above routine, I find it more comfortable to run on the treadmill and generate the miles I want to with less challenge.   Today, at the end of the music and the praying.... I then lifted the paper from atop of the gauges and found I had actually ran 9.3 miles.  So, that was good. 

A few of my Catholic friends my have scrunched their eyes quizzically when I said above that I prayed through 8 decades of the rosary.  More traditional rosary prayer involves an alternating set of 5 decades.  However, while I do follow this traditional 5 decade pattern ahead of Mass each week, my personal daily prayer of the rosary the other six days of the week has morphed and evolved over the years to be less traditional.  In my less traditional patterns, I pick and choose at least 5 decades that feel especially important to me on a given day, and have that be a set of five, and the final three that I also pray through vary even more widely.... sometimes these three are simply more of the 15 (actually, now 20 since Pope JohnPaul II added a new set) total traditional decades I have  choice of, but sometimes they are groups of other associated "add-on" theological concepts that I feel are especially valuable for me to focus on in a given day.  For example, for quite a while I had nearly every day a "decade" of prayer that was devoted to focus on the theology of forgiveness, and how I should be more forgiving of others who have hurt me, and how I should be more forgiving of myself and my failures.  There are probably another dozen or so of these "add-on" contemplative "decades of choice” that I will occasionally use as I work from decades 6-8 each morning.  

Running while praying the Rosary also means that (for me anyhow) a "traditional" string and bead style rosary (some people mistakenly suggest it is a necklace style) is not particularly successful for me to use while running as a tool to keep track of my prayer to help me.  I only use my traditional style rosary when praying ahead of Mass.  When I run outside, I will use a finger rosary instead, and is a very comfortable fit for me while running.  On the treadmill, however, I find even the finger rosary a bit daunting as well because sometimes I have to reach out to the side rails of the treadmill beast to steady or orient myself on the track.  So, when I run on the treadmill, I have found that I simply use my fingers to keep track of my position in the rosary.... one hand for decades, the other for prayers within the decade.  

4.  A lot of work on syllabi this morning.

5.  A lot of work on various other documents to get students up to snuff the first week of the semester.

6.  A few phone conversations with some folks in the Department.

7.  An online meeting with the set of lab instructors I coordinate for one class.

8.  Discussion with my wife about items for our grocery list and our impending menu for the week.

9.  Shoveling of the driveway and porch.

10.  In the small moments I had while I ate my foods for breakfast and lunch, I purposefully allowed myself some time to "daydream" or at least allow my "imagination" to drift away from tasks.  The two places my imagination meandered to during these brief respites were:

a.  I thought about and have now firmly committed to my "rejuvenation project" being my tearing down, re-padding, polishing, tuning, modulating and tweaking, and finally rebuilding a 1930's era full-metal, silver plated soprano clarinet I picked up a while ago.  It is indeed in ROUGH shape at the moment, but with some gentle coaxing, with meticulous care, and a whole helluva lot of elbow grease.... I think it is going to become a real beauty.  I also have plans to refurbish the case.  Because of the external material on the case being nearly destroyed and the interior being no better, I am thinking of thinking of first dismantling the guts of the interior of the case,  working on eliminating the "old book and musty basement smell" of the wooden guts of the interior, and then re-lining this interior skeleton with a durable, black "velveteen" style jet black fabric.  For the outside, I am feeling a bit more experimental.... I am going to try to find some sites on-line that discuss the potential to use a dense, smooth, black fabric and to "decoupage" the fabric onto the exterior of the shell of the case.  I seem to think this SHOULD be possible, and I suspect there are some very durable decoupage techniques and materials I could use.  I think this method will allow me to make the shoddy old shell look nice as I can fuss and form the fabric around all the various curved edges of the case. 

b.  I also though about *if* I am going to allow myself a pipe to try "for old times sake", that I have now picked the right pipe tobacco for this potential foray.  I am still debating in my mind if I can and/or should take this step/this potential risky foray or not.  But.... if I do decide to do so, I have determined that I will be indulging in a nice bowl of traditional, non-aromatic Sir Walter Raleigh, cube-cut pipe tobacco.  While I have a large array of different pipe tobaccos to choose from, I thought this very old-fashioned, delectable burley pipe tobacco would be the right one for me.... as it was the very first pipe tobacco I had ever sampled, so very long ago when I surreptitiously "borrowed" a little bit of Sir Walter Raleigh from my Dad's tub of it in the cupboard.  It was where the beauty of the briar was revealed to me.  

I think that shows I did a helluva lot of work already today.  I am going to go walk the dog now for a bit, so she can have some fun in the snow, and then I will get back on the infernal computer for a bit to try to tidy up a few more files for next semester.  

PipeTobacco