As I was sealing up the envelope with my registration form inside I started asking myself how I got here. What changed? And what had I actually accomplished along the way. I’m not sure what exactly changed, other than enjoying it. It was fairly simple to alter the workout routine to substitute swimming for my typical cardio work. As I re-familiarized myself with the pool, I did it more and more, and the elliptical less and less. I started off swimming 1000 yards on my lunch hour, two or three times a week. Now I’m swimming five days a week, three days on my own and twice a week with a USMS team. I’m averaging 14000 yards a week– about five times what I started doing.

So there’s that. What’s more I started keeping track of things as the year progressed. I mean, it’s swimming. You go up the lane, you flip around and you come back down the lane. Up and back, up and back, up and back. It’s not the most exciting of exercises.

For several months I swam the same workout each time. I started with five 200 Free on whatever it took to do them. When I completed five of them, I congratulated myself, got out of the pool and walked around feeling virtuous the rest of the day. As I got stronger, my times dropped and I could complete the workout in less time. Eventually I added a sixth 200 Free, but by that time I was pretty bored.

So I watched the clock. I started playing games with myself. Can I do this 50 in less than a minute? Can I string a set of three 200 Free on the 4:00 together without completely gasping out? Can I catch that guy swimming a lane over? I think it was that last one that did it. Having those little imaginary races in my head with other people in the pool. They didn’t know they were racing me. Or maybe they did; I don’t know. Maybe they were doing the same thing to me. We never talked about it.

I started tinkering with my workout. I tried to remember the workouts from when I was a kid– that was fruitless. I turned to online to look for help, and initially that was only mildly helpful. Workouts are all over the place in terms of intensity, distance and goals. Triathlons have become popular forms of exercise and there are a number of suggestions for workouts as part of triathlon training. I looked at some of those and mixed things up a bit, but nothing really fit right. Eventually I discovered a website run by some Kiwis out of New Zealand that provided customized workouts. Swimplan asks you to enter some basic information about yourself, your swim ability and your facilities and then kicks out up to five workouts every day for you to choose from. By this point I was swimming regularly five days a week: three times during the workweek and twice on weekends. I signed up, punched in my basic numbers and waited to see what it would suggest. It kicked out at 2200 yard workout, nearly double what I had been swimming on a daily basis. But the workout was broken down into sections: warm up, build up, core and warm down. It had sets. It had intervals. It suggested appropriate rest and intensity levels. It was, essentially, a stand in coach.

And I ate it up. I took that first workout with me to the pool and was through it much faster than I had anticipated. And I felt great afterward. I thought I would be completely gassed after doubling my workout. I wasn’t. Over the next few months I refined my information, added time trial data. I bought some paddles and a pull bouy so I could drill with those. Swimplan supplies appropriate drills depending on what equipment you tell it you have.

Swimming was very much part of my daily routine. Whirl commented that if I went too many days without swimming, I would grow crabbier and irritable. Complete a workout and I would return to calm, cool and collected. Endorphins are amazing that way. I got to know a few of the regular swimmers at the pool, people I ran into every week. In more than a few conversations, it was suggested that I look into Masters swimming. In mid-October I followed up on those suggestions and I’ve been very happy about that decision ever since.

The end of the year has been plagued by some facilities problems with my regular lunchtime gym. The pool has been intermittently out of commission starting in November. So an added benefit of joining the team is that team practice has given me another outlet while the gym tries to fix their pool.

My highlight accomplishment has to have been the Hour of Power workout in late December. The workout was very simple: swim non-stop for an hour. They kept track of our distance and recorded our time at the end of every 50. I swam 3850 yards in an hour, approximately 2.2 miles. And what is more impressive is that I kept a much steadier pace than I could have hoped for.

Some accomplishments over the past year swimming:

• Weight Loss : 43 pounds
• Weight Loss : 6 inches off my waist
• One hour nonstop distance : 3850 yards
• 100 Free : 1:13
• 200 Free : 2:41
• 500 Free : 7:23
• 1000 Free : 15:26
• 100 Back : 1:35
• 100 Breast : 1:36

I plan to use those results to build some goals for the next year. But before that, it’s off to the races!

This hour-long music video serves as a nostalgic look back at a half-remembered, plastic childhood. Edited over the span of six months from conception, to mix, to cut, to final reassembly– the creator intercuts images he felt might be visually interesting, whether he enjoyed the source material or not, and sets it to propulsive modern music. All together Skinemax provides a fascinating look at the culture from the 80s and early 90s and all the imagery that defined a generation.

There was no real definite plan aside from certain segments where you see a theme for more than a few shots, such as electricity, fire, explosions, babes, guitars, flying, et cetera.

(Timothy Clary/AFP Photo)

Of course there was absolutely nothing vaguely competitive about any of this. Racing never crossed my mind– not even when I caught myself secretly trying to pass the guy in the lane next to me. I found Swimplan and punched in some of the statistics I’d gathered over those first few months to establish a profile. I have really appreciated Swimplan and have recommended it to several of the other regulars I’ve met at the pool. That first workout added fifty percent more to my regular workout, and it’s kept steadily increasing ever since. Up until last week, I was averaging a total of 10000 yards per week. I’ve fallen into a comfortable routine — five days on, two days off — swimming Friday through Tuesday. On the three weekdays I swim over my lunch break; The pool is just two blocks away. On the weekends, I try to swim first thing in the morning.

Then a couple of things happened in rapid succession that altered my thinking. In one week at the pool I had three people ask me if I swam competitively: two mentioning the US Masters Swimming program, and the third talking to me about triathlons. At the time, this seemed like coincidence, but now I can say with some confidence that it probably wasn’t entirely coincidence. The Chicago Triathlon, the Wisconsin Ironman and the Chicago Marathon were all scheduled to run within about a month of the comments, marking the culmination of the summer triathlon season.

A goal is not always meant to be reached. It often serves simply as something to aim for. — Bruce Lee

I had a new goal. I’d accomplished most of what I’d sought out to do. I was comfortable in the water again. I was getting stronger and continuing to lose weight. I was feeling better about myself. The objective data was there for anyone to analyse: times were quicker, distances longer. It was time to step it up again.

So last weekend I signed up for Masters swimming. I joined a team and last night I attended my first official workout. The Chicago Blue Dolphins practice out of the UIC facility about a mile and a half from home on the southeastern corner of the campus. It has two gorgeous pools in the building. The large pool is a huge pool: eight lane 50-meter by ten lane 25-yard pool and a large diving well offset on the deep end. The small pool is a more typical six lane 25-yard pool. The workouts are challenging, effectively doubling the longer workouts I’ve been doing on my own through Swimplan. New drills, new techniques and coaches there to help make adjustments and provide encouragement.

From what I can tell, the competitive swim meet season starts in January, so I’ve got a bit of time left to practice before then. Regardless, it’s a powerful motivation and one I’m really excited about undertaking.

I read Neuromancer for the first time my sophomore year in high school. That was 1986 for those of you keeping tabs on my arrested cognitive and emotional development. In the intervening twenty-five years I have watched, and even participated in realizing, a number of the technological and socio-cultural changes speculated upon in Gibson’s work. So perhaps we do not yet have corporate arcologies, or Squids. But we have decks, and cyberspace. And we call Ono-Sendai “Apple”. Or “Google”.

I’m rereading this book for the first time since high school first to see how well it holds up. And second to see how well I’ve held up in the face of such overwhelmingly disruptive change.

And yet, I’ve grown increasingly critical of the shuttle program since the Challenger explosion in 1986. I never quite understood why we were investing so much time, money and effort into a program that was I believed was essentially a pick-up truck to low-earth orbit. Of all the places we could possibly go in the solar system, low-earth orbit has got to be one of the most boring. I now count going back to the moon to be a close second place. — At least from LEO, you’re halfway to a huge number of very interesting places. I think of LEO as something like the St. Louis, Missouri of the high frontier. It may not be particularly interesting or exciting in its own right, but you do have to go through it if you’re headed out to the territories. And the territories are exciting.

So I tend to view the Space Shuttle program as a very expensive, somewhat unreliable ride to St. Louis in a pick-up truck. I can think of far more exciting trip to take.

Like Mars.

The Case for Mars: The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must is a detailed examination of manned space exploration of Mars by Robert Zubrin. It was first published in 1996. Now, fifteen years, three presidents, and a number of successful robotic exploratory missions later we have a wealth of additional information about the viability (both technical and political) of a manned mission to Mars and Zubrin has updated and republished his book with those additions. The book details Zubrin’s Mars Direct plan for manned exploration of Mars. The plan utilizes existing technology currently ready-at-hand for a budget a fraction of original NASA proposals for the first human landing on Mars. The plan focuses on keeping costs down by making use of proven automated systems, and chemical processes via in-situ resource utilization.

Like Buzz Aldrin, I am critical of NASA’s goal of sending astronauts back to the moon. Aldrin said it was “more like reaching for past glory than striving for new triumphs” and has advocated for his own Mars to Stay program of human space exploration.

So it is now, that the albatross of the Shuttle program is off our neck that I hope we may be able to refocus human space exploration onto a goal that is challenging, rewarding and ultimately possible. Let’s go to Mars!

Remember how you felt about poor Ned’s beheading way back around page 700 of A Game of Thrones? Yeah. The Red Wedding is better.

And now here I am, almost 3000 pages into this epic, and I’m not even halfway done! All kinds of people are dead. Characters that I thought were wearing black hats are actually wearing white hats. Characters I thought were undoubtedly wearing white hats have traded them in for black ones. The cast has swelled tremendously. Dickens would eat his heart out. But Dickens never had dragons running around his Great Oven.

I gotta go!

I truly think there is something in this series for everyone. Just don’t demand that any one character remain alive, intact or unmoved. George R.R. Martin made no such promises with the first book, and he reiterates the point with dramatic success in the second. And now, we move onto the third installment.

A Storm of Swords is the third of seven planned novels in the fantasy epic, A Song of Ice and Fire. The Seven Kingdoms are in the grip of civil war. Five Kings simultaneously fight for control of a continent: Robb Stark, Balon Greyjoy, Joffrey Baratheon, and Stannis Baratheon. But those are not the only armies in the field: winter is coming and ominous signs light the sky. Monsters walk the earth, or at least the earth beyond the Wall.

I was amused to read Martin’s comments after A Storm of Swords lost the 2001 Hugo Award for Best Novel to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. He said: “Eat your heart out, Rowling. Maybe you have billions of dollars and my Hugo, but you don’t have readers like these.” Is it a bad thing that I’m a huge fan of both authors? Must I choose?

Ned’s dead. He wasn’t alone. It happens. What now? — After all, that’s really the point. To learn what happens next. To turn the page and continue the story. Because like it or not these books are not about one character. Or even one family. They’re about hundreds — thousands — of major and minor characters caught up in intrigue and magic and mystery well beyond most of their understandings. And likely beyond even the capacity to fully comprehend for the best of players.

Publisher’s Weekly writes:

The novel is notable particularly for the lived-in quality of its world, created through abundant detail that dramatically increases narrative length even as it aids suspension of disbelief; for the comparatively modest role of magic. [...] Here, he provides a banquet for fantasy lovers with large appetites—and this is only the second course of a repast with no end in sight.

I am completely hooked by this series, Mooch’s warnings be damned.

And on at least one occasion they publish galgenhumor.

I have not read Asterix in twenty years or so. I remember them as being very funny. I first encountered the comic while living in Germany. I mostly read English and German translations. But there was a time when I tried my hand at reading the native French edition of the book as a way of supplementing my French coursework at the Tübinger Volkshochschule. That was funny, too.

(For different reasons. No, je ne veux pas besprechen.)

Now I want to get my hands on this paper. If it is anything like the abstract, I’m sure I’m going to find it hilarious.

Abstract
Background: The goal of the present study was to analyze the epidemiology and specific risk factors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the Asterix illustrated comic books. Among the illustrated literature, TBI is a predominating injury pattern.

Methods: A retrospective analysis of TBI in all 34 Asterix comic books was performed by examining the initial neurological status and signs of TBI. Clinical data were correlated to information regarding the trauma mechanism, the sociocultural background of victims and offenders, and the circumstances of the traumata, to identify specific risk factors.

Results: Seven hundred and four TBIs were identified. The majority of persons involved were adult and male. The major cause of trauma was assault (98.8%). Traumata were classified to be severe in over 50% (GCS 3–8). Different neurological deficits and signs of basal skull fractures were identified. Although over half of head-injury victims had a severe initial impairment of consciousness, no case of death or permanent neurological deficit was found. The largest group of head-injured characters was constituted by Romans (63.9%), while Gauls caused nearly 90% of the TBIs. A helmet had been worn by 70.5% of victims but had been lost in the vast majority of cases (87.7%). In 83% of cases, TBIs were caused under the influence of a doping agent called “the magic potion”.

Conclusions: Although over half of patients had an initially severe impairment of consciousness after TBI, no permanent deficit could be found. Roman nationality, hypoglossal paresis, lost helmet, and ingestion of the magic potion were significantly correlated with severe initial impairment of consciousness (p ≤ 0.05).

Links

• PubMed entry for the paper
• SpringerLink entry for the paper

In his 2005 review of A Feast of Crows for Time magazine, Lev Grossman declared Martin the American Tolkien and described Martin’s voice in this way with impressive praise:

What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil. Tolkien’s work has enormous imaginative force, but you have to go elsewhere for moral complexity. Martin’s wars are multifaceted and ambiguous, as are the men and women who wage them and the gods who watch them and chortle, and somehow that makes them mean more. A Feast for Crows isn’t pretty elves against gnarly orcs. It’s men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love.

So I’m looking forward to digging into this lengthy epic series. What I’ve read so far, combined with what has been adapted to the HBO television series has whet my appetite. I’m glad to hear there is plenty more out there: thousands and thousands of pages more.

I’m not going to even pretend to provide a summary of all of the social, political, and economic elements at play surrounding May Day other than to highlight that May Day has become an international celebration of the social and economic achievements of the labor movement and the date is inextricably linked to local, deadly actions taken in Chicago 125 years ago. I encourage anyone interested in learning about the history of socialism, capitalism, anarchism, and organized labor to read about the 1886 Haymarket affair.

To honor the 125th anniversary, a full-scale reenactment was staged on the original site — a site less than a mile and a half from my home. Groups from all across the city came together to remind people of past labor struggles here in Chicago, and the need to work together in the present. The contemporary battles over collective bargaining in Madison, Wisconsin, Toronto and Iran cast long shadows over yesterday’s reenactment of the deadly Chicago events. Whirl and I attended the reenactment. I took photographs. We listened to the various speeches and toured the site. It was a powerful reminder to me about the awesome position of privilege currently held by contemporary American society and the heavy prices paid by those who came before us, that we might enjoy them. And while I disagreed with some of the more scathing polemic deployed by and against the labor movement, I know that the lessons are there to be learned and not ignored.

I do not think in the course of human events 125 years is a particularly long time. Yet the changes seen in the day-to-day lives of people as a result of these sorts of actions are widespread, powerful and oftentimes silently assumed. We would be wiser were we to remember that.

The House on Mango Street, The Long Goodbye, Go Tell It On The Mountain, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich are four such unfamiliar books.

The Spring 2011 selection is quite familiar to me: Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. I first read Neverwhere in the Fall of 2002. It was my introduction to the author. Since then he has become one of my favorites. Gaiman originally conceived Neverwhere as a television series, and later completed a novelization of the story that avoided the more unfortunate business of writing for television.

I describe Neverwhere as a modern-day fairy tale. I’ve heard it categorized as fantasy, “a postmodernist punk Faerie Queene,” urban fantasy, and “Narnia on the Northern Line”. Most of the action is set in the magical realm of “London Below,” a parallel environment alongside the more mundane — some might say real world, normal London we’re familiar with — “London Above”. Characters include knights, noblemen, rat-worshipers and an angel. I’m loathe to title him a hero so I’ll settle for describing Richard Mayhew as simply the protagonist. Richard quickly learns that no good deed goes unpunished and finds himself propelled alongside a wonderfully imaginative allegory for a more modern age.

Besides re-reading the novel, I participated in two associated events as part of the “One Book, One Chicago” program. Friday night, Whirl, T and I went on a Neverwhere-themed tour of “Chicago Below” exploring the Chicago pedway. Last night, Steamboat and Hurricane joined Whirl, T and me to attend the conversation on imagination and creative with Gaiman and Audry Niffenegger at Harold Washington Library.

At the top of the agenda was establishing a connection between the book’s origins and Chicago. Gaiman summarized what he’d written earlier in a letter:

It was a quarter of a century ago, about 1986. I had recently read a book set in Chicago called Free, Live Free by Gene Wolfe (he’s local to you; the Washington Post has said Gene Wolfe may be the best living writer America has) and I had started thinking too much about cities.

What I had started to think about was that some cities were also characters. Chicago was, in Free, Live Free. It was drawn in such a way that it had become almost magical, and was as much of a character in the book as any of the more human people who walked around in it.

The two authors exchanged anecdotes before taking questions from the over-capacity audience. The estimated attendance was announced north of 700 people. The auditorium only seats 385. It was crowded. I took that as a good sign. Gaiman told a hilarious story about the creation of Coraline, including a reference to some advice from Larry Niven to “treasure your typos.” I found the insight he presented about his fascination with the House on the Rock refreshing. Gaiman featured the House prominently in my favorite of his novels, American Gods.

Neverwhere made me a fan of Gaiman’s work. Having the opportunity to see him speak was delightful. It’s exciting for me to see the book featured so prominently by the library — for so many people to be exposed to an incredible, wickedly creative author.

Yesterday Whirl and I attended C2E2, the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. We met up with our friends Farmboy and Princess. The three-day convention covers comic books, movies, television, toys, anime and video games. The show floor plays hosts to hundreds of exhibitors if you’re looking to score some interesting loot. There are panel discussions and autograph sessions that allow fans access to artists, actors and writers. And the ever-popular sneak-peek film and television show screenings. This was the second year for C2E2. Last year was fairly lightly attended, but well-received.

I wasn’t particularly interested in spending three days at the convention, but I thought it would be a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And besides, I’ve always wanted to pull out the camera and see what kinds of cosplay portraits I could make.

We attended two panel discussions. The first was “The Walking Dead Q&A” with Jon Bernthal (“Shane”) and Laurie Holden (“Andrea”). This was very funny, with Bernthal running away with the conversation on more than one occasion. Farmboy remarked a couple of times about Bernthal’s apparent southern California origins. While I have no idea whether that’s true or not, I can attest to the fact that his choices of slang and colloquial idioms stagnated somewhere around 1989. Everything was “rad” and he was “totally digging” working with Frank Darabont. The highlight of the panel came about two minutes after all the press photographers filed out and Bernthal found himself trapped in a nearly three-minute long string of unintentional double-entendres. Each more embarrassing than the last.

The second panel was the “True Blood Q&A” with Brit Morgan (“Debbie Pelt”), Kristin Bauer (“Pam”), and Sam Trammell (“Sam Merlotte”). While not quite as entertaining as the Walking Dead panel a few hours earlier, it did provide some moments of levity and one crucial insight into acting from Morgan. While answering a question about contending with the various supernatural stressors placed upon the characters they portrayed, Morgan talked about becoming a sort of legal advocate on the set, with their character as their client and the director as the judge. The two women also agreed that Alexander Skarsgård is even more beautiful in person than he is on-screen. Trammell was conspicuously — and humorously — mute with his opinion on that question.

We walked the floor between the panels and took in the environment. There was a lot to see and photography was not only permitted, but actively encouraged. Aside from the challenges of making a frame with a halfway acceptable background, it was an exceedingly target-rich environment. The skill and creativity that went into a number of the costumes impressed the hell out of me more than once. I’ve published the full set of photos, but a few of my favorites include:

• Na’vi
• Deadpool
• Kingpin
• Princess Zelda
• Scarecrow

The Chiditarod Urban Iditarod, a shopping cart race and mobile food drive, is an idea stolen from some folks in New York (who in turn stole it from some people in San Francisco).

Inspired in part by the Alaskan Iditarod dog sled race, an urban iditarod replaces dogs and sleds with shopping carts and costumed heroes.

2011 was the sixth annual running of the race in Chicago and this year the start of the race coincided with the start of the Alaskan Iditarod race. The weather in the morning was cool with some light snow flurries and continued to deteriorate over the next several hours. Winds kicked up. Snow turned heavier and icy. Whirl and I dressed for the weather, packed up the cameras and spent the afternoon running alongside the racers on the streets of East Village, Wicker Park and Ukranian Village shooting the race. Whirl reprised her standout role as photo shoot producer, providing operational support and keen insight into composition and dramatic moments worth capturing.

She also was our navigator, which was no easy task. There were a total of twelve checkpoints. Each team had to complete a circuit of five of these checkpoints. So two given teams would not necessarily follow the same route, in fact no specific route is prescribed. Teams must appear the the assigned checkpoints in the appropriate order. That made it somewhat challenging to capture the entire scope of the race with a single camera. We tried!

The race did not disappoint. There were over 170 teams and the mass start was truly something to behold as racers streamed down the street and out into the surrounding neighborhoods to their respective checkpoints. We ran into one of Whirl’s classmates who had worked on one of the most incredible entries of the race, the immense ten-man Titanic entry. Their entry actually comprised two teams of five racers each. One team was the bow of the doomed oceanliner, one team was the stern. Of course the ship was appropriatedly broken across the beam.

We saw two teams of Muppets, three teams of Black Swans, Angry Birds, Gnomes, an Oregon Trail team — complete with a boombox broadcasting the appropriate 8-bit MIDI soundtrack.

The Chiditarod is not just fun and games however. It is a food drive that collects thousands of pounds of food for the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation every year. Additionally, checkpoint hosts donate signification portions of their proceeds from the day’s events to charity. All of the teams, carts, costumes and creativity are donated — put together out of spare time, ingenuity and willingness to do something good for other people.

And while another approach might have been to yell, “Avast, ye scurvy dogs!” and open fire on these ninjas, instead I responded in song.

“Like a EMACS”
Music by: Far East Movement
Lyrics by: DJ Bingo

Poppin tildes on the files, like a blizzard
When we code, we do it right gettin LISPer
Slippin regexp in my style, like three splats
Now I’m feelin so fly like a EMACS
Like a EMACS, Like a EMACS
Now I’m feelin so fly like a EMACS

Poppin tildes on the files, like a blizzard
When we code, we do it right gettin LISPer
Slippin regexp in my style, like three splats
Now I’m feelin so fly like a EMACS
Like a EMACS, Like a EMACS
Now I’m feelin so fly like a EMACS

As we have for the past two years, we stayed at the Flamingo in the middle of the Las Vegas strip. This year I started collecting bits of observation about our stay there. We’ve noticed there is something a little peculiar about the music that constantly plays throughout the casinos. A particular songs will repeat with uncanny frequency. The song is often older — 15 or 20 years past its prime — once popular, but not one I would consider a particularly impressive classic. This ad-hoc themesong is recognizably dated. The first song to strike us in this way several years ago was Tom Cochrane‘s “Life Is a Highway“. This year we set about actively looking for the themesong. We came up with three candidate songs:

• Berlin, “No More Words”
• Naked Eyes, “Promises Promises”
• Roxette, “The Look”

I was partial to naming the Roxette song as our themesong. The other two had strong arguments supporting them. All three meet the requirements and I personally heard all three of these mostly forgettable melodies at least three times in three different places around the Strip.

The other element I began tracking began with less preparation. I was inspired by a spontaneous conversation that erupted in front of Steamboat and me as we made our way across the casino floor. We were following a group of four girls who were walking in two groups of two. Each of the four women was dressed in the requisite Las Vegas nightclub uniform: the little black dress or its variation the little black miniskirt paired with a shiny silk blouse. Requisite too-high heels and a tiny clutch finish the ensemble. The forward pair were making a path through the mingling crowd, and it was the latter two that we unintentionally overheard. I should correct that statement. One of the two was rather despondant. Her head was down. She did not make eye contact. Her companion, walking beside her and perhaps a halfstep behind, was ostensibly comforting the other woman. The speaking voice was cool, uninflected — almost mechanical — as it chanted.

You’re sexy. You’re beautiful. You’re totally rockin’ that outfit.

It struck me as the sort of ironic environmental commentary one might hear while running around Las Venturas while playing Grand Theft Auto. I bust out laughing. I couldn’t help it. The unsympathetic, detached tone contrasting so vibrantly with the constructed projection of a particular look and persona.

I began to collect a few more snippets of overheard conversation from around the Flamingo. Here they are, ripped of any context and stripped of intentional irony:

• “Dude, are those Flamingos?”
• “Rawhide cleavage.”
• “Well, I guess I can’t see your cleft lip from behind.”

Other random encounters included a long conversation at the craps table about the probabilties and strategies of betting against the shooter, witnessing someone win a $9000 jackpot on a slot machine, and discussing the probable meaning of a typo-laden text message on a woman’s phone. (I agreed, it did seem like her boyfriend was asking her if she wanted a burger and fries even if the text itself looked closer to “gurger nad frips.”)

Besides the typical gambling on poker, pai gow and craps, we took in a few new things this time around that we haven’t enjoyed on previous trips. Bitsy and I designed a team jersey for all of us. The jersey included a logo, nicknames and numbers. We all wore them boarding the plane, and from time to time throughout the weekend while in Las Vegas. It was goofy and frivolous, but fun. It also made it very simple to find each other on the casino floor. Hurricane‘s mother, Sibyl, celebrated her birthday with us on Friday. We combined that event with an idea AK and I had had after his trip to Dallas late last year. We went to Tom Colicchio‘s restaurant, craftsteak. Bitsy and I had agreed to try one of the tasting menus. And after a bit of discussion we recruited T. to our plan. With that phalanx in place, we quickly set about convincing the rest of our table to try the same. And as a result we had one of the best meals I have ever had. We enjoyed five different cuts of wagyu beef, delicious appetizers, sides and more than a dozen different deserts. The entire experience lasted almost four hours: from the scotch before dinner to the final cup of coffee at the end. It was an incredible way to spend an evening. Bitsy and I agreed that it would be a fine thing to incorporate into future Las Vegas trips.

niqui, Whirl and I enjoyed fantastic sushi one night. I went to have delicious Thai and Vietnamese food with Bitsy, T., AK and niqui. And I could not pass up the opportunity to return to Hash House A Go Go for breakfast. I failed to finish the crispy hand hammered pork tenderloin benedict even after our waiter challenged me to do so. He’d only served one person that day who had successfully joined the clean plate club with that dish. If I had succeeded, he would have bought my breakfast, and a t-shirt. I didn’t make it.

The Flamingo added a brewery to the property since last year: Sin City Brewing Company. Saturday night I proposed to Steamboat that we grab some of their fresh-brewed beer and enjoy them outside for a couple hours. That turned into a makeshift gathering around a firepit and extended far beyond what I had originally intended. Plastic cups, beer from kegs, a fire, outside. It reminded me of a party from twenty years ago. Except with much better beer. And I’m not twenty.

Earlier Saturday I joined Steamboat, AK and T. on their second trip to the Las Vegas Gun Range and Firearm Center. I haven’t been to a range in many years — perhaps I should consider this a special time machine side trip. We fired a number of weapons including a M-16, a Desert Eagle .50ae, a HK MP5, a HK USP Tactical .45 suppressed, a Carl Gustav M/45 SMG, and a 12 gauge semiautomatic tactical shotgun. I was the only one of my friends who had done any shooting of any real significance. They were very excited about the experience and I had as much fun firing rounds as I did shooting photographs of them.

Our last night in town we headed down to Fremont street. AK and niqui had never been there, so we showed them around the older casinos, gambled a bit. I hadn’t been downtown for a couple years. Some things had changed — most notably the addition of a zipline running the length of Fremont Street above the pedway. Smokes took the plunge and rode the line before we departed to pack up and come home the next morning.

But on our last night, after encountering more than my fair share, I got to thinking about a potential collective noun for a group of douchebags. Suggestions included: affliction, clot, flush, hemorrhage, purge and smear. We reached agreement on the term: hemorrhage. So there you have it: a hemmorrhage of douchebags. Coming to a casino near you.

Preposterous.

I skated regularly as a kid. My hometown has a nice, full-sized ice rink. As an added bonus, the rink was only lightly used. Everyone else wanted to play baseball, I think. The rink had a lot of good things going for it. It was close to my dad’s office. It was open year-round — which made it particularly appealing on those scorching days of summer in the desert. And it was across the street from the best comic book shop in town.

I skated there a lot growing up. I desperately wanted to play hockey there but lost on appeal in the court of parental oversight. We had a number of popular roller-rinks in town as well, but I always preferred the ice rink. It was great.

So here I am, twenty years older and not a day wiser, strapping on some new skates and heading out onto the ice once more. Of course I invited my friends to join me. Many were convinced this had to be one of the worst ideas I have ever come up with. Tempting horrible physical and psychological trauma this close to the anniversary of that Brain Mishap. That’s saying something, because I’ve had some really bad ideas over the years. T. was more supportive:

You win the prize for picking the cutest group activity chosen by a grown ass man.

At least I think she meant that supportively. You don’t think she was being cynical, do you?

So anyway, some scheduling complications meant that we scheduled two trips to the ice rink this past weekend. The brief one Friday night at Millennium Park. T., Hurricane, and niqui joined Whirl on the sidelines while Hurricane and I skated for a while. We did a longer skate Saturday afternoon. Whirl has never ice skated.

So Saturday when we regrouped. Farmboy, Princess, niqui, Whirl and I met over at the smaller outdoor rink at Daley Bicentennial Plaza on the north side of Grant Park and skated for a couple hours. Whirl and Princess both skated for the first time ever. Nobody got hurt. Both newcomers did really well and said they had a lot of fun and would like to do it again. It was a great time outside on the ice.

Farmboy put on a strong pitch to get my skills up and consider joining him in a pick-up amateur hockey league and I have to say the proposal has a lot of appeal.

All time travel stories have to contend with the issue of paradox. Farmboy’s proposal and its implementation inside my time machine raises that issue in a very personal way: What would happen if I were to travel back and time and defy the ruling of the court of parental oversight?

So with that mindset firmly fixed in place I stepped into the offices of the school — just a few blocks from where I live — and turned in the written portion of my exam. I underwent the subsequent oral examination. The speaking component was much less formal, much more conversational than the written. Despite that informality I felt self-conscious, almost embarrassed for myself. I knew that I knew how to do this, and yet I didn’t. I floundered. I stammered. I reached for words that at one time I knew were ready at hand only to have them slip traitorously from my grasp.

I’ll get them back.

They might have escaped me this once, but I will get them back. I’m determined. I’m excited. Walking home from the institute down Randolph and Wabash I felt a version of the same rush I remember when walking across the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin to get back to the small apartment I shared with my fellow students from Geneva. I’ve taken to thinking this is a sign that my time machine is working.

When I got home I collected my trusty Duden, and my Langenscheidts Kurzgrammatik. The next day I headed over to Beck’s Book Store to pick up my textbooks for the course. It’s been fifteen years since I’ve done anything like this.

Tomorrow: jetzt geht’s los!

I thought it was a great principle. I like the sense of initiative. I like how it serves to break routines and avoid getting stuck in ruts — bad habits.

And more recently I’ve noticed a number of things that my friends have been doing that I might also categorize as “personal enrichment”. They’re hobbies, really, but they’re hobbies followed up with passion and importance that provide a sense of well-being. T. told me this week that she is setting a goal for herself to read every Hugo Award winning novel. Hurricane, Steamboat, niqui, Farmboy and Princess are all going (or going back) to school to pursue a college degree. Bitsy is starting to aggressively train for RAGBRAI this summer. niqui is training for a triathlon this spring. Princess wants to learn how to knit.

So I decided to pursue my own little “personal enrichment” activities. And what I’ve chosen to do is to return to activities I used to enjoy twenty years ago or so. In the interim, for one reason or another I had abandoned them. My return to photography was the first of these activities. It’s a sentimental return to a version of myself from twenty years ago, but seen through the eyes of someone twice that age. Time travel in my head.

In November, 2007 I started working out regularly and dropped a significant amount of weight. Last month I returned to the swimming pool for regular exercise. I added swimming as part of my “eat less, move more” diet plan. I like this plan for its simplicity. I eat what I want; I just eat less. And I make sure and move a little bit each day. I walk to and from work. I was going to the gym three times a week– now five. Today marks six weeks of adding swimming to the mix of workouts. Swimming again feels very good but I have to say this was way easier when I was 18. Last week I hit the one mile milestone I’d been working towards. I’m feeling comfortable in the water again. Now I’m trying to see what I can do to start building up a bit of speed. I was surprised how quickly it came back to me. I’m not looking to be competitive. I’m not doing this to be part of a race. I’m just doing it to feel better about myself, to provide a bit of relaxation and tranquility. I mentioned to Whirl that I was particularly appreciating the sense of isolation that the pool provided. Since returning to the gym I’ve been doing most of my workouts during my lunch. It provides a good break from sitting at my desk, gets me out of the office and reinvigorates me for the afternoons. I use the time to listen to music or podcasts and just take myself out of whatever stressors are surrounding me in the workplace.

Swimming removes even those potential distractions. It’s just me and the water. I think about breathing. I count laps. The rest is empty.

The setup from the back cover reads:

On June 9, 1865, while traveling by train to London with his secret mistress, fifty-three-year-old Charles Dickens — at the height of his powers and popularity, the most famous and successful author in the world — hurtled into a disaster that changed his life forever.

Simmons has talked about writing this novel for almost a decade. He originally considered the title, The Great Oven. In the intervening years the structure has changed and the plot focused upon the last five years of Dickens’ life and Dickens’ own uncompleted work, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Those last five years shroud a sharp shift in behavior from the world’s most popular author. It makes a fantastic setting for a mystery. Dickens, Collins, Simmons investigate the worst slums of London. The Whitechapel of Oliver and Jack.

And a ghoulish figure named Drood.