Lately: I took up running because I've never really done any long-term training for my cardio-respiratory system. In the past, I've done brief abortive efforts that ended pretty soon because the weather changed and my asthma kicked in. So I did Couch-to-5K, finished right before August, and have been going 30-45 minutes 3-4 times per week since then. This has been in conjunction with a decision to drop some weight while trying to maintain strength - I'm not at my peak strength at the moment so I shouldn't weigh like I'm there or trying to increase it, you know? So I'm squatting in the mid-300s and deadlifting in the low 400s and that's okay for now. Today I weighed in under 100kg for the first time in a while. At my very strongest I was around 110kg, when I was very actively trying to put on muscle (which necessitated putting on some fluff as well), I got up to 117kg, but that was when I was doing weigh-ins with all my gear on between sets at the gym (it's standard that way). Before starting to cut down I'd been hovering between 105 and 110, depending on how active I was and what had been going on and time of day. I'm thinking maybe to get to where I'm hovering between 95 and 100, which should be possible without losing noticeable strength. The addition of running to the mix is very helpful, because there's a very narrow band between "eating enough to live and lift weights" and "eating too much to lose weight". This adds more margin for error.

Things haven't been completely rosy, though: I stumbled on a cord last Wednesday and tweaked a muscle in my hip (I didn't even fall down, I did a stutter step). It didn't feel so bad, but it was tender, so I was going to skip running and put off going to the gym. Then, the next day, I completely blew it out in my first at-bat of softball. This was bad. It's been recovering but I still feel it when I lift my knee to my chest, climb stairs, do the clamshell movement, etc. Today was the first day I tried any strenuous activity, I went for a run and felt good about it. I might see how it feels at the gym, lift some light weights.

Firefox has been oddly sluggish for me on both my home (ancient and shitty) and work (not great but has tons of RAM and sufficient processor power to not by shitty) lately. Input lagging and all that. This has been compounded by the fact that I think my mouse at home has one of its buttons dying.

American politics are being mind-numbingly horrible. The only thing more horrifying is that liberals and the media are being about as bad in their response to this as they were to Bush, Iraq, etc in the 2001-2005 time frame. "We must find both sides to condemn here. The real problem isn't the neo-Nazis, it's antifa. Now let's just keep talking about them." And then the black bloc folks oblige by making themselves look bad, or at least doing something that the radical right can make look bad, and everybody essentially stumbles all over themselves to focus on that. Vidal Sassoon would disapprove.

Work: I just can't get anything done. I hate everything.

Environment: the weather is nice here, though it's quite dry. The creek I walk by to go home has slowly turned from a trickle to a string of puddles to a string of damp patches with very occasional puddles. We've briefly touched the puddle phase before but this is new. The rivers it feeds into are also getting pretty low. Basically, we had record or near-record flow in the river system through June and then essentially no new rain and flow gradually decreasing as everything drains. This has happened a couple other years in recent history.

I've had the Opera House Theme (and variations) from Battlestar Galactica running through my head since yesterday. I hope it's not a kind of apocalyptic sign.