Transition

For those of you who check this site and have been asking yourself, "self, where are the updates on this blog?", I have an answer for you.

This thing became a burden. The original plan to do a new thing a day seemed attainable at the beginning of the year, but turns out it's pretty tough. More than that, new things on a weeknight when you have an actual life to attend to makes the whole enterprise a big drag. So. Instead of abandoning the project altogether, I'm switching to one new thing a week. This will allow me to post about more significant new things, I hope, and fewer posts about the new pizza I tried, etc.

This may seem inconsistent, or a letdown from my earlier plan. However, I now see as a matter of fact how impractical it is to come up with a new thing every evening. In the words of John Maynard Keynes, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

So that's that. I have done many new things since my last post on 15 March, including buying a painting made by an elephant at an auction, getting a temporary bicep band tattoo, learning how to tie a bowtie, and making orzo (which i now love).

In any case, watch this space for new experiences, and thank you for bearing with me as it transitions to a weekly enterprise.

Day 50

Today, Sunday, I had beer in a hard aluminum bottle. It was really weird, it looked like a bottle was made of thick metal. Went to meet friends at One Ocean hotel on Neptune beach, and had a beer as we enjoyed the warm weather. For some reason, they brought be Bud Light in a container that looks like it was designed for holding propane.

Day 49

Saturday, I ran the Gate River Run 15k road race in Jacksonville for the first time.
An annual tradition here, people come from all over the region to run it.
(http://www.gate-riverrun.com/)

Going through downtown Jacksonville, over bridges, and winding through the city's historic neighbhorhoods, the course finishes at the Jaguars' stadium. There were live bands playing along the course. At the start line, they had the Chariots of Fire theme playing in a loop which was kind of motivating early in the morning. Even better, the final mile includes a run across the Hart Bridge, which is a bridge that arches steeply enough to allow oceanliners to pass under it. It's a pretty steep incline, and the race organizers set up speakers going all the way up the bridge blasting Eye of the Tiger.

Some other members of my command ran the race as well, depicted in the photo below. Congrats to LT Russ Lannutti for having the fastest time among us, and good luck to LCDR Dave Gonzalez, on his way to an overseas deployment.

Day 48

On Friday, I went to my first training session in the courtroom at NAS Jax. It was a good training session, and a good excuse to play some golf at the course at NAS later in the day.

Day 47

On Thursday, March 13, I cooked a Tuna Steak for the first time. It doesn't taste like tuna. And it doesn't taste like steak. Sort of a misnomer, if you ask me.

Day 46

On Wednesday, March 11 I saw "W" for the first time.
It's a good movie, I recommend everyone see it. It's actually pretty sympathetic to the 44th president, and deals more with the family dynamics and his political rise than anything else. For an Oliver Stone movie, it's not what I expected.

Day 45

Today, Tuesday 10 March, I finished "A Voyage Long and Strange" by Tony Horwitz. A great book, and I'm counting it as a new experience. He's one of my favorite authors, he's got a talent for blending history, travel narrative, and good dialogue. This book is about him following the footsteps of early explorers in america. May sound dull, but it isn't. And he was as repulsed by the fountain of youth tourist trap as I was in his Ponce De Leon chapter.