I realized the other night that when I originally created this blog five years ago, the whole intention of the “ponderings” page was precisely what I’ve just now been doing — that is, small blurbs / ideas / thoughts that come to me throughout the day. I suppose that’s what Twitter is for, though I’ve never been very good at that. But somewhere along the line, I decided that no, these posts couldn’t be so short and simplistic; they had to have a cohesive topic. read more

As is usually the case when I post things, I thought of some other highly entertaining things to talk about right after I clicked “publish” yesterday. Let me grace you with those things.

The first, is that in addition to blabbing on about running marathons, I meant to talk about how my supervisor Skyped me the other day, asked me how I was doing, if I was running. After I answered her questions, she just went, “Some guy ran a marathon yesterday on his 23-foot deck!” I responded, naturally, “WHY?” And she just went, “It took him over six hours!” Well, I’ll be. read more

Back to back days, who knew I had it in me?

I realized last night that I had missed out on a couple talking points worth noting. The first: this article. To summarize, the author basically says how walking her dog is the only thing keeping her sane, because it’s the only activity that hasn’t lost its normalcy. You still see your fellow dog walkers; you’re already usually 6 feet apart from people anyway; your dog still needs exercise and to pee/poop. Why would anything change about that? And after reading it, I can wholeheartedly agree. With the Olympics postponed yesterday and my job with the Olympic Committee now up in the air, I felt pretty committed to just wallowing. But I took the corgi for a walk and met my friend Hannah and her poodles, Ollie and Tucker, and we had a lovely time laughing and catching up and processing the pandemic together. It lifted my mood enormously, and for that, I am very grateful to have a pooch to stroll with. read more

As R.E.M. would say, “it’s the end of the world as we know it,” but I don’t feel fine. I am fine; I’m healthy and safe and still employed and I should just be grateful because that’s more than a heck of a lot of people can say. But I’m allowed to be thrown off a bit, just like everyone else.

People keep asking each other what they’ve been up to in order to maintain their sanity and pass the time. I personally have been cold calling people, out of curiosity: how’s your apocalypse going? While I’m mostly doing it to catch up with loved ones, I’m also doing it to really make sure this is happening, that this isn’t all a weird dream or perhaps an acid trip. Unfortunately for me, these calls have been affirming that yes, our reality is quite truly f*cked up. But fortunately for me, I at least can commiserate over the phone with the unlucky individual who decided to actually pick up and talk to me. read more