Links for funny

I understand that posting these links is a waste of time when you are spending entire work days at the office on CollegeHumor.com and Hyperbole and a Half.

But it's Christmas Eve. My family and I have just had snack time which means that we don't have to interact again for a few hours until dinnertime.

So I will share with you:

If Old People Ran the Internet

And two from Hyperbole and a Half

The one about Kenny Loggins and Xmas.

And the one about Moving with Dogs.

Via someecards.com: this bit on santa which is probably only funny to mean people like me.

And this one from Savage Chickens for the New Year.

Be Who You Are

Tonight's drinks will be had in the honor of Republican Senators: Scott Brown [MA], Richard Burr [NC], Susan Collins [ME], John Ensign [NV], Mark Kirk [IL], Lisa Murkowski [AK], Olympia Snowe [ME] and George Voinovich [OH] for voting to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.

One Fish, Two Fish, Eat Fish, Go Fish

I have been reading Paul Greenberg's book "Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food."

It's an easy and interesting read even if you have read Mark Kurlansky's very excellent book "Cod," which is also an easy and interesting read.

Mark Kurlansky focuses on the impact of one fish, the Cod, on human history and then on our impact on its viability as a species. The publishing industry apparently refers to this kind of book as a microhistory.

"Four Fish" takes a look at Salmon, Sea Bass, Cod, and Tuna. These fish that we know and love are presented as case studies to suggest that there is something wrong with the health of our oceans, something wrong with how we relate to the ocean.

These fish that we love to eat are not doing so well. The news is not good for delicious fish.

I fear that we as a species do not scale well. The more of us there are - doing the things that we humans like to do - the tougher it gets for everything else that lives to do the things that they like to do. It's hard to say whether any species actually scales well. In any given situation perhaps a living thing takes advantage of its opportunities up to the point where there is push back to keep it in check. And for now, fish are not pushing back, they are disappearing. We are eating them out of the ocean.

How do we know that we are the cause? Because when we stop catching and eating them for long periods of time, at least some types of fish increase their numbers again.

What can we do. We are hungry. Even when we are stomachs are full and we are not physically hungry, our appetites are insatiable. We crave in our heads, our hearts, our souls. We not only demonstrate this in our personal actions and decisions but also collectively in our social groups, social structures, jobs, markets, companies, kingdoms, social, political and legal entities, the technologies that we invent to help us feed that appetite faster and more efficiently for more of us.

We are so hungry.

When I finished reading "Cod," I wanted nothing so desperately as a Filet 'o Fish sandwich from McDonalds. I waited two whole week after finishing the book before I broke down and got one. I am craving one now as I type this.

Reading "Four Fish" I want nothing more than to try bluefin tuna carapaccio. Maybe get sushi.

Just this once. I am one person. How bad could it be? Just this once.

I went to dinner with AM and some friends to this delightful sushi place, one of whom was a gorgeous, tall, very dour girl who asked the waitress if they served sustainable fish. The waitress was doubtful. GTVD Girl had a card with her that she handed to the waitress listing endangered fish. Unsure of the eco-quotient of the fish at the establishment, she ordered a piece of land animal while the rest of us heartily tucked into platters of sushi delights.

I mock her but I also admire her fortitude.

We were just three people, that one time. How bad could it be? Just this once.

And I love a fish taco. I had a delicious one today at Cabrito. Amazing.

Dan Barber (who is amazing) has given this questions some thought as well. His conclusion has been that is it bad, that the answer is to accept no less than sustainable sources for fish as food. Unlike the GTVD girl, he does so with passion and love for flavor and food and joy. He is the Epicurean to her Puritan but the end point is shared.

I wish he had named the fish he fell in love with.

Near as I can tell, Paul Greenberg seems to think that Tilapia, Barramundi, and the Pangasius fishes are the way to go - from a farmed fish point of view.

I suspect that Dan Barber is talking about another fish altogether. Perhaps I will have to save my pennies and visit his restaurant and find out for myself.

In the meantime, back to the book about four fish.

Perhaps I will get lessons on being very dour about the fate of our oceans. Practice my culinary Puritanism. Or find a sustainable fish and fall in love.

Sound off, one, two

I was discussing the question of gays in the military with my father. I thought that it was odd that there were people who had been discharged from the military who would re-enlist if they eliminated the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. The whole, how could you forgive a club that wouldn't have you as a member.

My father didn't think it was so strange.

As the discussion went on, my father said, "Well, the most famous gay in the military was Julius Caesar."

!!!


I do not know if this is true but if it is certainly worthy of a t-shirt:



Can I be sued by someone who died in 44 BC?

Complaints

I meet so many people in New York who are passionately pursuing their dreams and love what they do. They kind of have to. They are here living with five roommates in the outskirts of the boroughs and making peanuts or working for free while holding down crazy odd jobs or painful day jobs.

I always feel strange in comparison. Because I am here but I am merely making a living. It is a gaping chasm between these people and me. We are different species.

There is nothing wrong with making a living. Pretty much everything that is alive is in the business of making a living. When you talk to microbiologists that takes up and lot of their attention, how these tiny critters are making a living. Ecologically, metabolically, microenvironmentally, in combination with a host.

That being said, when you spend enough time doing what you do not like and do not want, it can loom very large in your field of vision and make it difficult to remember what it is that you do like and want. If you have a very short term memory, as I do.

Which is merely to say that the first day back at the office after a week off is unfun.

But sometimes someone will provide you with a nice distraction and introduce you to a new song or two.

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/New+In+Town/2rKNBN

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/s/Logos/1IYQ0F

notes from home

1.
After a visit to the Mall it would appear that sequins and animal print are big for this season. I am beside myself.

2.
We made a sweet potato casserole with pineapple this year. It was yum. It's a variant of recipe called Yankee Sweet Potato Casserole found on www.cooks.com


Cook a mess of sweet potatoes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degs.
Peel and mash them.
Add honey, pineapple juice, brown sugar, butter, salt, amaretto, pecans.
Grease a baking dish.
Layer canned pineapple rings on the bottom 5 rings for an 8x8 dish.
Pour in the sweet potato mixture.
Layer canned pineapple rings on the top (5 rings on top as well).
Bake for 20-30 minutes.

The tart of the pineapple and the sweet of the sweet potato make surprising and lovely pair.

3.
Last week I finally came to the conclusion that my pants are too baggy. Probably because I've been listening to Katy Perry sing about her skin tight jeans in the track "Teenage Dream." That lyric has seeped into my subconscious as: girls in skin tight jeans find true love. Rationally, I understand that this is bull. But I have always irrationally believed that clothes hold the answers to many of life's problems.

At the Limited, I tried on a size 8, 6 and 4. The size 6 and 4 felt exactly the same except that I think the size 4 makes my muffin top look more pronounced. Naturally, I bought a size 4. I have not worn a size 4 in years. The prospect was irresistible, even if caused by size exaggeration and stretchy fabric.

They are not skin tight. But they are much narrower than all of my other pants. Bring on the love!

4.
I only read the New Yorker when I come home to visit my parents in C-ville. Excellent quote:

When Mary Jo talks about the experience[of rebuilding her restaurant], she says she tried to keep in mind something Provino Mosca used to say:"Without trouble, there is no life."

-Calvin Trillin

The article made me want to eat my way through New Orleans, or at least make a pilgrimage to Mosca's for Oysters Mosca, Chicken a la Grande, Mosca's Sausage, Shrimp Mosca, Spaghetti Bordelaise, Crab Salad and the Chicken Cacciatore. Because that's what Calvin gets when he goes there. Despite or perhaps because of the Thanksgiving holiday, I have a new dream vacation to plan.

5.
My mother put an electric blanket on my bed. We turned it on and noticed that there are two controllers - one for each half of the blanket. Couples can share an electric blanket and a bed while independently regulating the heat. Ingenious.

life littlest victories

I have been obsessively playing Minesweeper for almost a week now. It is a fixation that I fall in and out of. I played at the beginner and intermediate levels and recently been banging my head against the expert level. It's a 16x30 grid with 99 bombs.

This is not a pastime I would necessarily recommend. I have been spending a lot of time getting blown up which is discouraging.

When I play, sometimes I tell myself that it is an analogy for life or at the very least, my job. I hope that none of you has a situation in your life, the experience of which could be modeled or mirrored by Minesweeper.

The pace of the game allows a mind too much time to fret about things that are not game related which is distracting and makes one more likely to make a mistake.

Mistakes often made:

I click without thinking.

I don't pay attention to the whole board and I overlook available information.

I don't think out possible scenarios or become enamored of one possible solution and neglect to sketch out all the others.

I make false assumptions.

I make decisions based on previous games instead of focusing on the game in play.

I accidentally click on a spot that I intend to flag.

Sometimes I lack motor control. My fingers revolt and disregard the instructions sent by my brain.

Sometimes there are two configurations that will work, based on the information available and I pick wrong.

I generally tell myself that if I get down to 30 or fewer bombs on the grid, I am doing well. A few times I have gotten down to 4-10 of them.

But today, I won.



Yup. It was a pretty straightforward board. Not so ambiguous. Maybe I got lucky. Maybe I have finally learned something.

I am tempted to quit playing forever. But if I do where is the reinforcement for possible lessons learned? I might just take a break and play again later.

declining marginal utility, more is not necessarily better

Just finished reading, "Stumbling on Happiness," by Daniel Gilbert. This is not a book that will help you be happier. But it is a book that will explain how the brain deludes us thinking that we are both happier and unhappier than we really are.

The section that hit me between the eyes was towards the end, on money.

"False beliefs that happen to promote stable societies tend to propagate because people who hold these beliefs tend to live in stable societies, which provide the means by which false beliefs propagate."
-Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

"Economists and psychologists have spent decades studying the relation between wealth and happiness, and they have generally concluded that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter. Americans who earn 50,000 per year are much happier than those who earn $10,000 per year, but Americans who earn $5 million per year are not much happier than those who earn $100,000 per year. People who live in poor nations are much less happy than people who live in moderately wealthy nations. Economists explain that wealth has "declining marginal utility," which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired and scared, but once you've bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"People in wealthy countries generally work long and hard to earn more money than they can ever derive pleasure from."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, wrote in 1776:

"The desire for food is limited in every man by the narrow capacity of the human stomach; but the desire of the conveniences and ornaments of building, dress, equipage, and household furniture, seems to have no limit or certain boundary."

"
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"If no one wants to be rich, then we haver a significant economic problem, because flourishing economies require that people continually procure and consume one another's goods and services. Market economies require that we all have an insatiable hunger for stuff and if everyone were content with the stuff they had, then the economy would grind to a halt. But if this is a significant economic problem, it is not a significant personal problem."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"...the fundamental needs of a vibrant economy and the fundamental needs of a happy individual are not necessarily the same. So what motivates people to work hard every day to do things that will satisfy the economy's needs but not their own? Like so many thinkers, Smith believed that people want just one thing - happiness - hence economies can blossom and grow only if people are deluded into believing that the production of wealth will make them happy. If and only if people hold this false belief will they do enough producing, procuring, and consuming to sustain their economies."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

"In short, the production of wealth does not necessarily make individuals happy, but it does serve the needs of an economy, which serves as a network for the propagation of delusional beliefs about happiness and wealth. Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being ... this particular false belief is a super-replicator because holding it causes us to engage in the very activities that perpetuate it."
-Daniel Gilbert, Ibid.

Can you imagine if everyone just stopped? What would happen if governments decided that the happiness of people before the state of the economy? What would happen if corporations, institutions and organizations did as well?

I am so tied up in the idea that a little more money would = a little more happiness I can't imagine it myself. If the relationship between money and happiness is not linear, or infinitely exponential upwards, it is silly of me to pursue more of the same for less of my aim.

Perhaps my Dad's right, I have been looking at this all wrong. I should check if I am "hungry, cold, sick, tired and scared." When I am none of these things, I need to remind myself to stop chasing the cash and just bask in the sunshine munching on grapes. I really should. It's just so hard to imagine.

To the question of happiness, I should first ask: "Am I bleeding? no. Am I dying? no. Am I starving? no. Am I terrified? usually, but mostly it's all in my head. Am I tired? often, but it's because I love on the internet until late at night."

Okay, then it's not about the money and what I don't have that can be bought. It must be about something else. Like the internet.

telephone game

I left my phone at home today.

It felt like leaving home with no pants on, breezy and exposed.

As I walked, I thought to myself, "It's fine. I can go one day without it. I lived for years and years without knowing that I needed it. I have a watch on. I will know the time."

Except of course, that today I would go up to my US Senator's office only to discover that I needed to call the office, only to discover that I needed a phone and the guy at the security desk was not going to let me use any of the five on his desk, the payphone "around the corner" was non-existent, and I didn't have any change for the call anyway.

There was an answer to this problem. I borrowed the landline of a restaurant using the old,"Hi, I need to call my US senator's office and I forgot my cell, can I borrow your phone for one local call, I swear it won't last more than 5 minutes."

If you are ever in a pinch this might work for you too. And then you got back to standing in the lobby of the building haranging the security guy to call the office for you a few more times until someone friendly and well dressed comes down to shake your hand, give you a card, take your documents and smiles politely, listening to your rant.

And then I would make spontaneous plans with CK and have to try to figure out how to coordinate the old fashioned way but setting a specific time and a specific place and sticking to it no matter what.

It wasn't soooo bad. I kept reaching for the pocket of my purse where the cell phone lives.

But it was all fine, I got to tell Sen Gillibrand's aide that I and 11 of my neighbors are NOT in favor or extending the Bush tax cuts.

I met up with CK and we had burgers and wine.

And when I got home, I didn't have any calls or texts anyway. I saved myself at least 40 minutes of the day that I would have wasted checking my phone for calls or messages. The only thing I didn't get to do was further torment my parents with a call.

Maybe I don't need a smartphone. Maybe I don't need any phone at all.

I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough

Top 40, Sweet Cheeks.

Yes, I love the show Glee. It is rare that I am so transparently emotionally manipulated by a TV show. And what's worse, I love it and cry out for more.

But it does lead me to the uncomfortable decision to no longer diss on Pat Boone. I do love Glee and I love this cover by Gwyneth Paltrow, but I can't help but feel that it's the contemporary equivalent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_B9FCZJMA

vs:

Cee Lo Green (cussing intact - not work/radio friendly)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU

In place of what I started to want to say

I want to complain.

I am not supposed. Apparently I am supposed to either suffer in silence, retrain my thoughts and perspectives to turn that frown upside down, or I am supposed to take action to improve my situation. Complaining is not allowed by friends, colleagues, family. I am allowed to complain silently to myself in my head but not on my blog. I am not even supposed to sigh. Sighing is apparently complaining. And there is no complaining.

Other people complain. But either they have good legitimate reasons to or no one likes them because of it. And because I want to be liked. I am not supposed to complain.

But I really want to.

So instead I have decided to do that thought redirection thing. I have decided to give myself a medal 4 breathing.



You can have it too. Let's share it.

I am awarding us this medal 4 breathing. According to today's wikipedia, the average human breathes 12-20 times a minute. 720-1200 times an hour. 17,280-28,800 and hour. That is a lot of air. Good job. High five to meritorious breathing. Keep up the good work.

Reality or Perception?

"Experiments ... suggest that we do not outgrow realism so much as we learn to outfox it, and that even as adults our perceptions are characterized by an initial moment of realism."
- Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

no good deed

A man in a wheelchair dropped his bag of groceries. He was right by the curb in the street kind of stretching back and forth reaching to pick up the bag. The woman standing next to me asked him if he needed some help.

He told her to go F herself and started cursing at her.

She said, "Oh," broke eye contact and started walking away.

I laughed and crossed the street.

note to self

I can see the floor in one of my rooms. I am charging my cell phone and the dirt devil. I am going to have pasta with ratatouille and a chicken leg. And the sun is shining.

BBFK and Lever got married this weekend and I got to hang out with RL and meet the Wee Hoosier. And spent time with NL, the Family B and many many little girls.

Today I feel like shouting to the world, "Yay! My life is cool!"
I cannot recall feeling this way ever. Or at least for a very long time.
It will pass, no doubt.

But there it is, at this moment on this day at this point in my life.

I might get up the guts to go out on my bike today. (at which point I will start to hate pedestrians, cars and riders and this little moment of euphoria will pass)

But for now, Hooray.

Hug yourselves people. It is a great day to be alive.

'tis the Season

Since the air has started to chill, I have wanted nothing more than to eat and eat and sleep. Over the course of this season, it is very likely that I will gain a megaton.

I shared this information with some co-workers in the elevator and the comment was that I sound like a bear preparing to hibernate.

Imagine how my out of office notification would read:

"Thank you for your email. I am hibernating in a cave, burning brown fat until Spring. I estimate that by late March or early April I will return and be ready to address your concern. Enjoy the Snow, Suckers. Respectfully, Ergo"

Water

Today is Blog Action Day.

The topic is Water. I am ashamed to say that I do not know much about the water issue. Only that it is an issue and that people are dying from a lack of it or rather a lack of clean, safe water. I'll spend sometime this evening reading what other people are saying to see what I can learn.

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Raise a glass to the Poet cuz there better be a goddamn door

"At the end of my suffering there was a door" - Louise Gluck

There are no words
There is no sound
No blood, no beat
no heat

only release
and passage

to where we do not follow

yet


The imprint of a life, felt in waves that echo endlessly
in ways that not one of us can grasp in whole.

A hole where once there was a soul.

Love and memory flows like a fountain
from the hearts of those who remain and those who came before.
And yes, also from the mind.

It is an end
It is a beginning



I don't know shit about life or love or death or loss. Only that sometimes it is unbearable in bad ways and sometimes in good. I'm breaking a rule today for the Poet.

Oh, and by the way ...

One of the challenges of life is that you go through it with incomplete information. That's just how it goes.

In some cases, I can't figure out why that is tho. Like, there are ads on TV about Gardasil, how it lowers your risks of getting HPV which can cause cervical cancer. Yay! What they don't tell you is that HPV is an std.

Incomplete information.

I encountered some incomplete information today on the flight from London to NYC. I watched the movie "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo." A title I have seen everywhere. I've heard some people rave about it and have friends who've read it. But I guess I just haven't been paying enough attention. This is a spoiler. I didn't know until I watched it that there would be violence against women. Had I known this, I might not have watched it.

*shudder*

35 miles of a Century Ride

This is my bike:



I got her in July. BE called her my sweet ride. So I started out calling her MSR. But more recently in the tradition of PJS I call her "Baby Bike."

I started looking in May. It took a while. Finding a frame in my size in this area, was a challenge. She is a Terry Despatch. Georgiana Terry decided that she wanted to start a company that made bikes built for women. I got a chick bike - note the pink seat and handwraps.

She's old. She was made in the 80's. She's odd. Note that the front wheel is smaller than the rear. And there is no consistency to the sizing of her constituent parts. I guess it's fitting that we are together now.

As a kid my bike was my magical means of transport until it was supplanted by the car. Nothing was better than riding down a hill fast as possible, hair flying every which way in the wind.

This changed when I got older and was supposed to wear a helmet and the bikes suddenly had speeds and no pedal brake. Too confusing. No wind in the hair. Not as much fun.

But in recent times, the idea of bikes has come back to me. The whole commuter biker fantasy sounds thrilling, especially in the New York area. Weaving in and out of traffic. Dodging cab drivers and Jersey drivers. I got this notion in my second year here that the most terrifying things that I could consider doing are: ride a bike in New York or do stand up comedy. There are more terrifying things to do, but those are two that were almost within reach.

I figured if I am ever to be so numbed or jaded as to consider doing hard drugs, first, I should try bikes and stand up.

I am not considering doing hard drugs right now but was looking to do something ... else. Being more afraid of stand up, even though it will only kill you figuratively, I got a bike.

Plus bike people seem to be badasses. I would so love to be a badass too.

Plus I met someone I like and he rides a bike. In fact, in recent times I seem to have a particular type of person that I am drawn to and part of that type is a guy who rides a bike. To the point where when people say, "I met the perfect guy for you," I ask,"Oh. Does he ride a bike?"

After I got it, there was the buying of all the stuff that you get to go with your hobby. Helmet, lock (this is a whole story on its own), lights, bell, new yellow backpack, sunblock, new leggings, new shirts. Hobbies are a great form of economic stimulus. I think the next one should be targeted towards hobbies.

Now I've got it. I don't ride as much as I should, or I want to.

Baby Bike and I -
We've gone up to the park.
I rode with someone I like through Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. I had no idea how close or how small these neighborhoods are.
I rode down the street to the cemetery.
I rode down some bike paths to the Manhattan Bridge, across to Chinatown and then back.

I still have not ridden to work. Traffic. Terrifying.

Baby Bike talks to me. She rattles and rickets like a woman with creaky joints. But she's a sassy bitch.

She says, "This is fun, let's go faster."

She says, "Why are we stopping?"

She says, "Look at that bitch, we could totally take her."

She says, "THAT was a big pothole."

She says, "If we can't blow this light, can we stop with a skid?"

She gives a big wobble and says, "HEY! Are you listening to a word that I am saying?"

Yesterday, I did 35 miles of the NYC Century ride. Friends had advised me to train for it. I did not. By some miracle, I got up this morning and rode to the start site. And away I went. 8am - 12:35pm.

It seems that in New York, many many many bike riders take stoplights in what we used to call, the St. Louis rolling stop. You roll up to a stoplight and if the way is clear, you go. Everyone was doing it. They tell me, you'll never get anywhere if you don't. I am so not comfortable with this. But that is the culture. So Baby Bike and I would zoom up, than hang behind at busy intersections. Over and over.

The first part of the ride, from Prospect Park through to Williamsburg was beautiful and at times idyllic. The buildings, the people, the warehouses, the all of it. And then we got to Queens. That's when it got kind of industrial. We were riding by the water which was nice. My arms got chilly and I started to hear a squeak from my bike, like a squirrely thing as I pedaled and I started to feel my legs and my back. For some silly reason I had decided to pack my lock.

At the first stop, I felt pretty good. Until I found out that we had only gone 8 miles out of the 35. We continued over the RFK bridge, which was amazing. You have to carry you bike up and down stairs. And there are parts so narrow that some can ride it, and others will walk their bikes through. But at the stretch where you ride, you are elevated above the rest of the traffic with its sounds and smells and rush. You can see, everything. It feels as if you are riding in the clouds, as if slightest turn will launch you off the bridge into the air.

We landed on Randall's Island, rode around and into Manhattan to the Northern end of Central Park. This was the midpoint of the ride. I lost my bearings here and most of the people who I had been following along the route. The cue sheet for the ride had a million little directions typed out. If you didn't know the roads or have your bearings it was really helpful to follow a packleader or a marshall. At the very least it was really helpful to be wearing clothing with pockets so that you could keep the cue sheet on your person.

Some people rode through Central Park. Others were following the cue sheet. So I and EL (who I met at the start who became my ride buddy) went out with two other people and worked our thing out.

This part of the ride was terrifying. It started to rain. There was traffic. There were leisurely and clueless pedestrians. There were anxious owner with eager dogs. There were cabs, SUV's, luxury cars, New Jersey drivers, delivery guys riding in the opposite direction on your bike lane.

EL almost got hit by an SUV from NJ. They apparently didn't see her when making a right turn.

I started feeling my hip.

I almost caused an accident on Broadway. All sorts of honking. I can't tell what honking was angry and what honking was merely informative. It was pretty harrowing. And it all happened so fast. No matter how scary a moment was, you have to leave it behind and keep riding. There was no time for panic.

We got on the Brooklyn Bridge and were back. I started to feel my knees. I was still feeling my hip, my back, my ass, my hands, and then - my toes. My feet were getting wet and the right big toe crammed in a shoe crammed against a toe clip, started to feel raw.

At this point happy to be in more open traffic, I kept missing turns on the route and at one point a mother/daughter team saved me from ending up in Brownesville shouting to me that I had gone the wrong way.

I got a burger with EL and went home.

So tired I fell dead asleep and woke up feeling like I was still sitting on a bike. I am sore and my skin feels hot, like I have a fever. And I discover new and unusual discomforts by the minute.

I briefly thought to myself at the end, "Wow. I did it. I can do anything." Before collapsing intp a whimper.

After all, it was only 35 miles. Someone I like does 35 miles routinely for fun. EL and I discussed whether we wanted to try to do another ride before winter. The Tour de Bronx is coming up. Someone I like says it's not as fun and more than a little scary. Bronx has much more of a car culture as a borough, apparently.

Alternatively, there is an MS ride.

My accomplishments in this arena are not significant to anyone besides me. So I sit in sollopsistic triumph.

I say this from observation not personal experience

Sometimes your success overtakes your capacity to perform. And you are overwhelmed, unable to meet the demand. I am not sure that this is what is meant by the expression, "A victim of your own success."

It sounds like a good problem to have. But having never been there, I do sometimes wonder.