Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Saturday, December 25, 2004

Salt Lake...and all that surrounds it

So since I'm here in Salt Lake City I thought I'd share a few impressions of the environment on this Christmas Day to help you unwind from whatever life might have brought your way.

Seagulls
The weirdest thing you notice when getting to Salt Lake is not the multitude of blonde-haired, blue-eyed, freshly-scrubbed kids that are surprisingly well behaved and free of piercings or tatoos but rather the seagulls. Here you are, something close to a thousand miles from any ocean, and what do you see wheeling through the skies waiting for some poor, unsuspecting target? Seagulls. Lots of seagulls. At first you kind of look at them like any other bird until the part of your brain that's charged with the responsibility of telling you that something's wrong starts to send you that "Danger Will Robinson, Danger, Danger!" signal. At some point you begin to realize that sea birds this far inland is just "wrong." I understand how they got here geologically and all and I understand that with the Great Salt Lake nearby and loads of human trash from the city why they stick around and survive. It's still really, really weird.

Ale
As with many western cities, Salt Lake has a thriving microbrewery culture (though the Mormons aren't too keen about it...kind of like Baptists and Hooters but that's another story). As I type this I'm enjoying a Squatters Polygamy Porter and I'll probably have another because, as one might wonder historically, why have just one? If you don't get the joke, you'll have to ask me later. Other ales are Orphan Abbey belgian style ale, Golden Tail ale and Prove Girl (formaerly know as St. Provo Girl until a well known foreign brewery threatened lawsuits and the like). All in all a very nice addition to the Christmas palate.

Kids
The big thing over the last couple of days has been spending time with our nieces and nephews. As you might surmise they are, at least in our eyes, about the cutest kids on the planet. We've really enjoyed our time with them. the hard thing is there are times when the lovely wife and I question our lot in life. Usually we are content with our lives, childless though they may be. We feel a great sense of fulfillment with what we do but it is during these times that we miss having kids, sometimes very much.

Anyways, I'll sign off now. have a Meryy Christmas and remember that we celebrate the Light of the World. Hold that close for nothing can ever overcome it.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

A White Christmas

As vacation continues, the lovely wife and I find ourselves in Salt Lake for a portion of the holiday season. For the most part we've finished the local shopping and have just a bit more to wrap and place under the tree. As if to reward us for the completion of our tasks, Mother Nature has decided to lay down a layer of snow to cover the landscape beautiful. The weatherman has called for about two inches, let's hope he's right.

The snow is a reminder to me that it takes so little to render what seems dead and lifeless, clean and pure. It also serves to remind me to be greatful that I am herre spending the season with family. While everything certainly isn't perfect and storybook, it is filled with enough love and laughter to cover over the bad spots for a time and to draw all of us into a sense of gratitude and belonging.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Vacation Time

Finals are over and I now have a few weeks of well deserved free time to pursue some things besides those of teaching and evaluating my students. Probably the biggest thing on my agenda is to catch up on some of my reading. I have a huge backlog of books to look over covering everything from Tycho Brahe to small groups in the Emerging Church movement. I love having the diversity of reading as it keeps my mind going along several different tracks and allows me to continue to make lots of different connections.

Another big aspect of vaction time will be training. One of the things I love about my schedule for cycling is that I get lots of time to train right at a time when I need lots of time to train. Between the long, steady distance rides and the weight room time I can chew up abobut three hours a day right now. Having the free time to schedule that in is very nice. I feel like my body is making some pretty big strides right now, especially in terms of my strength training. I have up and down days on the bike but I guess that's to be expected. The important thing is not to push too hard and get myself in a fatigue situation.

The third thing is getting some rest. By the end of the semester I'm pretty behind on my sleep. This week I've been trying to get rid of the bags underneath my eyes with an extra nap each day along with a good night's sleep. Monday night my body mugged me and made me get even more than that but it was good. I'm guessing it was a case of biological give an inch, take a mile.

Anyways, I'll update more later on but as always,

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Thursday, December 09, 2004

New Car

We bought a new car yesterday and thus ended the Outback saga. We had finally received word that the engine had completely failed, at least that's what the mechanic told us. We tried to deal with the dealership but they weren't interested in doing anything but gouging us so I wonder a bit about the diagnosis. Anyways, we decided that we really wanted a less expensive car. We loved our Outback but to replace it would have cost us $35,000 and we didn't want to spend that kind of money so we began to consider our second option; a hybrid.

The lovely wife did some research and decided she liked the Honda Civic Hybrid and called a dealership up in Huntsville. She then found that the Honda dealer in Macon had one we could test drive. On the way down I had a realization. Why not just be straight with the salesman and tell him what the dealership in Huntsville was willing to do and see if he would match or beat it. IF he could, we'd buy from him; if not then we'd go to Huntsville. He made us a deal and we now own the hybrid.

To me, the interesting thing is how different being totally straight made our relationship with the three dealerships involved. Had the Subaru dealership in Huntsville looked at us as something beside poor, stranded motorists to take advantage of then we would likely have bought an Outback Sport from them. They looked at the situation short term since they didn't see any advantage in looking at it long term and thus lost the whole deal. They'll get some income from their maintanence department but they've lost the several thousand dollars from the sale of a car. The other two dealerships looked at us as potential long-term Honda customers and did what they could to get us into a car. They worked hard to make things happen for us and we decided to go with their product. In fact, we're thinking of investing in a Honda Element when a hybrid version of that comes out we're so pleased with our experience.

The moral of the story is that the dealerships had different views of the goose and the golden egg and that made all the difference.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Not too fat but a little too fat

Well, I did my first fitness test of the new season yesterday. It's something our local health sciences faculty can do. The numbers weren't too bad for the beginning of the season but there's a lot of room for improvement. My VO2Max was about 50 but I'm sure that'll improve once I get a better handle on my real max heart rate. The more interesting number for right now is my body fat percentage which was 15%. That's great for a regularly active person but a bit too high for a competitive athlete. The number I'm looking for is something down below 10%, so that means I've got to lose about 10 lbs prior to March. That's not a really big deal since 153 seems to be my normal spring/summer weight. The big relief is that I've been feeling like I weigh too much at that weight for some time now and to find out that almost all of the 10-12 lbs I've added over the last few years has been muscle is a good thing.

I'll take the test once a month over the next season and see if I can get a good sense of how my body changes and adapts to the work load I place on it. THe data won't give as clear a picture as something like a blood test but it will help me keep track. The big question is do I want to try and get a PowerTap to begin to do training based on how much power I produce rather than just heart rate which is only telling me how hard my cardiovascular system is working during a workout. The power data is a lot more insightful but the equipment will set me back about $500 which is a pretty penny (or is that "Penny Pretty" for all the Buckaroo Banzai fans out there).

So about a pound a week or a 600 calorie a day deficit should get the job done. The only problem is that I have to try to do this durign the Xmas season which isn't the best time to try to restrain oneself from an overindulgenece of food.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Long Overdue Update

Sorry about being gone for so long. The recent perfect storm of activites, chores, teaching responsiblities, committee meetings and training have sucked most of the free time out of my life. This will be a brief update of the things that have been going on over the last week or so.

Training
Off season is over and I'm back on the bike again. Everything is slow base miles so the rides aren't really exciting and I have to keep telling myself that the fact that I'm riding fives miles per hour slower than I'm used to is actually a good thing. Over the break I did some upgrading of the road bike to give stiffer, more efficient cranks and better brakes; go faster, stop faster I guess. The most difficult thing is that when folks see that you have some time in your schedule they decide they have the right to fill it and then not givethe time back. I fight this some every year but this year seems to be a bit worse, probably in part because I decided to doa little more with my off time. I'm also in the weight room three days a week right now doing some power lifting (well, at least power lifting for a cyclist). Trying to do a long, relaxed base miles ride after a weight session is really an interesting thing.

Car
Well, the car's timing wasn't actually bad but the engine is. So it's still in Huntsville at the Subaru dealership. The dealership has been most unhelpful in getting us some options in terms of cost of repair or replacement or trading in for a new car. They have us over a barrel to an extent and I think they know it. I want to think that this isn't a Subaru thing but a dealership issue. Like a lot of Subaru dealerships this is really a Chysler/Jeep dealership that sells Subaru on the side. I get the imression that these guys are more on the stick-it-to-folks wavelength than the first Subaru dealership we visited. So we're slogging through trying to sort that out from 300 miles away in a borrowed Jeep Grand Cherokee. I really appreciate Kathy's brother helping us out and I'll never look a gift horse in the mouth but I don't think I'll ever be real interested in buying a Grand Cherokee. the thing drives like a barge and feels like it's going to rollover anytime we try to do anyhting the least bit radical. I miss my Outback.

School
Finals week is here which is always interesting. Watching 18 year olds handle stress is always an interesting endeavor. I don't mean to poke fun at them but many are still in the mode that every little thing is a crisis and they don't realize that very often it is mostly their attitude that creates these little "explosions" of stress. The sophomores aren't as bad but they still carry around some bad habits. I think the worst is the idea that finals week is just like any old other week. They still schedule long meetings with friends, extra hours at work and extended leisure hours. I guess I did some of the same things a few quarters at Southern Oregon State ( I went to the beach for one whole day in the middle of finals week once...) but usually the idea that the final was between 25-35% of my grade seemed to motivate me to pare back my other commitments. I still try to do the same now.

Anyways, enough for now. I'll try to update a few more times this week.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |