Tag: Donald Trump

week forty six

Books Read:
55. You Are Not So Smart — David McRaney

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 51.36
to date — 1,810.47

I read You Are Not So Smart when it first came out in 2011 and I was reminded of it when I came across an article by David Ignatius in the Washington Post back in August called “Why facts don’t matter to Trump supporters” so I thought that McRaney deserved a revisit. My mother cancelled Christmas. It came via email the other day. Seems that she got into a bit of a squabble with my sisters when she announced that she was/is a Trump supporter. Is “squabble” racist? I don’t think my sisters have read Ignatius or McRaney. I don’t think it would have mattered. A couple Christmases ago my mother gifted me a copy of Steven Galloway’s first novel Finnie Walsh, while lamenting that she wished that she could have gotten him to sign it for me, alas. I asked her if she read it and what she thought and she said it was fine but she really found the foul language off putting, as if she imagined Steven and I were still seven years old playing K9 cops with his two pure-bred german shepherds back in Kamloops in his yard that neighboured my grandparents’ pink house on Parkcrest Avenue. There’s nothing better than a conversation without room for any nuance. Like everything is black and white. Zero shades of grey. You’re either with us or the terrorists. Or the racists. Or the child pornographers. Or the apologists. That copy of Finnie Walsh is my signed copy that I lent my mother to read. Too bad Christmas is cancelled. I guess that war’s over.

I ran, and I’m tired.

week forty five

Books Stuff Read:
New Yorker, November 14, 2016

Kilometres Ran:
this week — 56.34
to date — 1,759.11

The nice thing about the New Yorker‘s app for iPad is that I get issues a bit before newsstands and mailboxes. So that’s nice. Donald Trump is president-elect of the United States of America. That’s not very nice at all. And for some reason in the wake of that reality, that Trump will soon have the nuclear codes and select the next one or two or three seats on the US Supreme Court and some other equally horrifying facts, the left decided to pick a fight with, well, itself, over a safety pin. And it can’t seem to figure out how Trump could possibly have won. It’s mind boggling. I liked Jeffrey Toobin’s op piece Another Round about the link between elections and drinking. I did a lot of drinking this week, and I’m not even American. But if I see one more gawddamn map redrawn with California, Oregon and Washington states as part of Canada I might throw a whisky tumbler. Empty or not.
week-forty-five
So clearly the calming affects of running have worn off though I suppose that just means that I need to run more and longer and farther and faster and I’m trying. Though, I didn’t quite match last week. Still I think I need to average 40 kilometres per week to reach my goal and with 110 ish over the past two weeks I think I’ve put myself in a good spot. Keeping in mind that I’m staring down five days in Victoria over Christmas, which is going to potentially wrench my plans. I wish that Strava was better with community stuff, like wouldn’t it be great to log into my account and search a city or neighbourhood and see people’s favourite routes, without having to go and “follow” them. I wish there was an app for that. There probably is, but I haven’t found one yet that is friendly and useful. Maybe it’s out there. Maybe Strava will read this and think it’s a good idea. It would be especially handy for traveling.