Monthly Numbers

Deep down, I'm against the arbitrary importance that a base 10 numbering system imposes on certain values.  The only real reason that we think 30th birthdays and 10th anniversaries are important is because we have 10 fingers.  The base 10 system isn't the only arbitrary designation we follow, either.  Birthdays are the completion of another trip around the sun, but what practical meaning does that have in life?  And we even more arbitrarily divide that trip up into 12 months, because of the moon's orbit.

But, it's the end of January, so lets check in on a few goals.  If you missed when I introduced these goals at the beginning of the year, it's because I didn't.

[Here's my disclaimer.  Sometimes I worry about blathering on and on about stuff like this on my blog.  I don't want to come across as too "look how cool I am, I can read a million books."  But you know what, you came here on your own.  No one's making you read this.  This isn't facebook where I'm spamming your feed with pictures of my lunch and buzzfeed's 17 best pictures of beans, and this certainly isn't real life where I've trapped you in a corner at a social event and won't shut up about the wear patterns on the bottom of my running shoes and then I try to show you my blackened toe nails.  (I don't actually have blackened toe nails, and if I did, wouldn't show them off at parties . . . probably.)]

Running
It's been the coldest winter in a few decades here at my house.  Probably something similar at your house, too.  That's not so good for running.  With work, much of my running has to happen early in the morning, which is when it's the coldest.  20 of the 31 days this month had mornings where the temperature was below 10 °F.  So, yeah, I don't run when it's that cold.  I want to get to 750 miles this year and figured I needed about 42 miles this month.  I'm just short of 30.  (29.56 to be precise.)  So, that's disappointing, but at the same time, it's the most I've ever run in January.

Pushups
As I told Brett the other day "it's not exercise unless you've got a spreadsheet".  So I figured, I'd do 10,000 pushups this year.  (Yeah, I know, I've fallen into the base-10 trap.)  Never mind that I've only done 3,400 in the last 3 years combined.  I want Malcolm Gladwell to appoint me a pushup expert, so I guess I've got to do ten thousand.  I've got 1,408 in so far, which puts me on pace for over 16,000.  Maybe I can be a double expert!

Reading
In January I finished 5 books.  3 were by Brandon Sanderson: "The Well of Ascension" (Mistborn #2), "Hero of Ages" (Mistborn #3), and "Alloy of Law" (Mistborn #4, I guess).  The books were great, though I think "Alloy of Law" is a terrible title.  Sadly, now I'll be waiting years and years for him to write more Mistborn books.  I think 5 more are tentatively scheduled.  I also re-read "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara (spelled that right without looking it up!) and read "Dad is Fat" by Jim Gaffigan (I'm on a spelling roll!).  Gaffigan is very funny, but I felt like 274 pages all on being a parent was a bit much.  Generally though, I can recommend all those books as worth-while.

For the year, that brings me to 1752 pages.  Shannon has over 1100 pages entered into the log (spreadsheets or it doesn't count!), but combined, we're still getting creamed by Julia who is at 2986 pages.  I'm sure she read a book yesterday to put her over 3000 for the month.  It's pretty ridiculous.  Junie B Jones accounts for 11 of her 32 books, but less than a quarter of the pages.  The Boxcar Children and Cam Jansen make up pretty sizable chunks of her reading, too.