Finished reading: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin. Well worth reading. I appreciated the absence of giant, apocalyptic battles and the focus on the maturation of a single wizardπŸ“š

πŸŽ„Decorating

πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈ I expected the rain on today’s zone 2 trail run. The hail and wind gusts were a surprise. Hard to hold zone 2 while being pummelled by ice! πŸ’¨πŸŒ§οΈπŸ₯Ά

πŸ“Ί I’m looking forward to season 2 of Slow Horses. Season 1 was a surprise favourite for me

πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈAn easy, zone 2 run today. Almost dark by 5pm

Likely doing this a few times today 😴

Making coffee with an Aeropress

πŸ“Ί Outer Range on Amazon Prime is pretty good. Mysterious and creepy with great Wyoming scenery. As with many shows like this, I worry that the premise can’t sustain more than a season. We’ll see with this one, though the last episode seemed to unravel quickly

🎡 A moody soundtrack to my afternoon

An Apple Music choice of essential trip-hop albums

The legal test the government must pass: not was it right, but was it reasonable?

The Constitution, it is said, is not a suicide pact. I would say it another way: the law is not an ass. Written between the lines of any statute is an abiding expectation of reasonableness.

πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈ I’d planned for an easy zone 2 run this morning. Picked the wrong running group though. Time to update my zones anyway. I likely shouldn’t be able to hold zone 5 for so long

Time for a stout

Cornerstone stout beer

Getting tense

Catan board game

Saturday night

Glass of scotch

Rediscovered Maybe It’s Me by Treble Charger in my music library. Instantly transported back to undergrad at university. I’m always impressed with how music anchors certain time periods 🎡

The new Checklists search attribute in Apple Notes is really helpful for my weekly reviews. I’ve setup a smart search that shows all of my recent notes that still have incomplete checklists. Great for finding those forgotten tasks in meeting notes πŸ—’οΈ

Screenshot of the smart search interface in Apple Notes showing the checklist search criterion

Finished reading: The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. DjΓ¨lΓ­ Clark. A fun, short storyπŸ“š

How much does a Triathlon cost? πŸŠβ€β™‚οΈ πŸš΄β€β™‚οΈ πŸƒβ€β™‚οΈπŸ’°

Other than knowing if I was physically capable of finishing, the main source of uncertainty when I signed up for my first triathlon was how much it would cost. Starting out, I had one pair of running shoes and some goggles from my kids' swimming lessons. So, I knew I’d need to invest in a lot of gear.

Here’s the list of what I ended up buying along with some commentary. Of course it is important to note that these costs can vary widely, based on what you may already have and the budget you’re willing to spend. For several of these items, there’s a very wide range of costs from barely good enough to really fancy. I tended towards the medium-low end of the distribution: enough to get good, reliable equipment, but far away from top end. I figured I should at least finish one triathlon before investing too much money in equipment.

All amounts are in Canadian dollars and rounded to something reasonable.

Swimming

Total: $800

Biking

Total: $5,600 (yikes)

Running

Total: $400

Other

Some odds and ends:

Total: $3,400


In the end, about $10,000! Seems like a lot (and it is), though it was spread out over 8 months. Plus, this was essentially my only hobby and leisure activity for that time. Nonetheless, I’m grateful to my family for putting up with this.

Winter has arrived ❄️

Finished reading: Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge. A fun mix of murder mystery and sci-fi, in which groups of people emerge from thousands of years in stasis to find human civilization has vanishedπŸ“š

Finished reading: A Short History of Canada by Desmond Morton. Somewhat like vegetables, I know that reading about national history is good for me, just not that exciting. That said, this book was well written and interesting. Now, back to sci-fi πŸ“š