Thoughts on the Next Doctor

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I realize I am three days late in posting anything about the announcement that Jodie Whittaker will play the next Doctor, but I wanted to share something that’s on my work desk. I grew up watching the original incarnation of Doctor Who, and these two autograph cards are of “my” Doctor and his companion (who also happens to be my favorite companion, with River Song running an amazingly close second.) The fact that Whittaker playing him/her next doesn’t bother me — in fact, I’m looking forward to it.

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I will never understand just how so many men continue to get butt-hurt over the recasting of male roles with women. Battlestar Galactica, Ghostbusters, Doctor Who… Yet, it is still an overwhelmingly male-dominated entertainment universe out there. Putting that aside, in the case of the Doctor this is a character that gets recast every few years — there is nothing to say that the person after Whittaker won’t be a man again. Tradition be damned. In the words of my father-in-law, tradition is just a glorified habit. In fact, Doctor Who already broke with tradition when the producers cast David Tennant and then Matt Smith to play the role — historically, with one notable exception, the character had been played exclusively by middle-aged or older actors. The producers admitted that their casting was an effort to create a new generation of fans. Is the gender break really any different than that one?

I don’t believe so. Whittaker isn’t going to change or ruin anything I’ve loved about the show, because Doctor Who has always embraced change — it’s baked into the DNA of the show. The series literally recasts all it’s major characters every few years. The Daleks and Cybermen have actually evolved during the course of the show — which the last episode wonderfully acknowledged when it depicted “original” Cybermen. They came up with reason to grant the Doctor a new set of regenerations. Hell, continuity is, at best, problematic — something the writers and producers acknowledged when they introduced the concept of “a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff” during the Tennant era. Yes, there’s an awful lot of comfortable familiarity in the show as well, but at this stage, over 50 years after the show’s debut, no one can argue that there is anything sacrosanct or vital about any of the show’s traditions.

I sincerely hope that Whittaker’s run as the Doctor is one of the show’s most successful. It’s the best way to silence the misogynists and nay-sayers angered by the casting of a woman. Regardless, however, her time in the role won’t ruin a damn thing about what I love about the show. In fact, I may come to enjoy her portrayal as much as I enjoyed Christopher Eccleston’s or Peter Capaldi’s, Even if I don’t, for whatever reason, there was nothing about Eccleston, Tennant, Smith, John Hurt, Capaldi, or anything introduced or written by the producers and writers since 2005 has ruined my love for the Sylvester McCoy-Sophie Aldred era of original Who or the series in general. It’s all still there, right alongside all sorts of bad writing, questionable changes in direction and tenor. Yet, the love and joy for the show never diminishes. Whittaker will certainly bring something uniquely wonderful to the role, and I plan to embrace it.

2017 Stuff Read, #s 1-12

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I’ve been woefully neglectful regarding this, if you’ll excuse the pun, bookkeeping. Typically, I like to say a little something about each item I’ve read or listened to, but since this is literally my whole list for the year so far, there’s just too much — even though the pace itself is nearly as pathetic as my efforts to post regular updates on the subject. Instead, I’ll just take a moment to state that I feel like I need to come up with a new name for this series of posts, which I’ve maintained since 2011. When it first started, entries were titled “Books Read” and neglected to include audiobooks, lecture series, or shorter fiction read independently from a collection. Those items now all appear and the name changed to “Stuff Read,” but that doesn’t feel like an apt description either. I considered “Media Consumed,” but that implies a wider scope that includes movies and TV series. For now, “Stuff Read” will remain, but name change is certain as soon as a better one becomes apparent.

1. The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross (audiobook/eBook)
1(a). “Overtime,” Charles Stross (eBook)
2. A History of Hitler’s Empire, 2nd Edition, by Thomas Childers (audio lecture series)
3. The Farthest Shore, by Ursula K. Le Guin (audiobook)
4. Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson (audiobook)
5. Parable of the Talents, by Octavia E. Butler (eBook)
6. Sixty Days and Counting, by Kim Stanley Robinson (audiobook)
7. Feedback, by Mira Grant (dead tree)
8. Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature, by Pamela Bedore (audio lecture series)
9. Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut (audiobook)
10. Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman (audiobook)
11. American Gods: The 10th Anniversary Edition, by Neil Gaiman (eBook)
12. Apocalypse: Controversies and Meaning in Western History, by Craig R. Koester (audio lecture series)

Weekly Weigh-In, Week #22

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(Numbers are from yesterday, as Tuesday is my normal weigh-in day each week.)

Loss since last post (5/16): 1.0 lb
2017 Cumulative loss: 24.2 lb
Pounds from goal: -0.8 lb

Well, it took three weeks, but I finally made it — officially. Actually, a couple days after the last WWI post, I made my goal, and Sally made the argument that I shouldn’t have to wait for the next regular weigh-in before declaring victory. I certainly appreciated the merits to the argument, but given how much my weight can fluctuate over the course of just a few days, I decided that I wanted to be at my goal on my usual weigh-in day to make it official. Later that same day, I went on a three-day bender of eating whatever I wanted and avoiding anything that remotely resembled real exercise.

It took me over two weeks to recover from that lapse in sticking to my proper exercise and eating habits/routines.

The point is that I finally made it, and I can now move into maintenance mode. In an unintentional fashion, the past three weeks have served as a kind of preparation for it. In addition to the three-day bender, I also experienced two other off-diet days where my caloric intake was much higher than typical for the past five months. It does give me a sense of how much more I can eat, provided I continue with my exercise routine from since starting this particular round of weight loss. However, moving forward I intend to increase my calories in a more evenly distributed fashion.

These posts will continue under a new name, yet to be decided.

Fatherhood and Little League Baseball

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A little over a week ago, I received an email stating that Manchild made his Little League’s All-Star team. It was an exciting moment, and I couldn’t have been more proud of or excited for him. He loves playing baseball, and receiving this honor easily rates as one of his biggest childhood achievements. Amazingly, as great as the honor was in of itself, at the All-Star Game on Saturday he had one of the best days of his season: he went 3-for-3 with a double, two runs scored, & an RBI. Furthermore, he made a great play in the field that I will detail soon.

I too had a role in the game (aside from being a proud, supportive parent): I volunteered to keep score and count pitches for his team and thought little of it. It was an extension of a role I filled all season; ideally, I would’ve have volunteered to help coach his team, but the fact he played in Montgomery County, where his mom lives, meant I would miss at least half his practices. Luckily, my work schedule allowed me to attend all his games, where I frequently volunteered to assist in any way possible. When the All-Star coaches started looking for someone to maintain the team’s scorebook, I readily accepted the role. It meant I couldn’t simply enjoy watching the game and take pictures, but I truly wanted to help if possible.

I did get a few pictures, but IMG_1018I needed to rely on Manchild’s mom to perform the yeoman’s work of getting as many as possible. She didn’t disappoint (nor was there any concern that she would), and a large number of those photos, as well as videos of his at bats, ended up on Facebook. Next time I see her, I plan on providing her with a thumb drive that she can then place all the videos and pictures on it.

As much as I would have enjoyed taking my own pictures, my involvement in the game meant I was closer to the field than most of the other parents, and it allowed me to interact with Manchild at various times during the game. This most notably occurred while he was catching. He doesn’t particularly enjoy it, but he’s a consummate team player and will play any position the coaches tell him to field. During his first inning of work while behind the plate, there were a couple pop-ups that he couldn’t locate quickly enough to make a play on. On both of them, I very good-naturedly gave him guff, telling him, “Carlos Ruiz would have made that play.”

He persevered, and I received my comeuppance on his last play at that position. The bases were loaded with one out when the batter hit a routine grounder to second that resulted in an out at first. The runner on third scored, and then the runner originally on second attempted to score as well. Manchild took part in well-executed rundown and while running the runner back to the third, he noticed the runner who was originally on first scampering back to second from third. He made a perfect throw to second, and the fielder covering the base was able to apply the tag for the inning’s third out. As he returned from the field, Manchild emphatically pointed to second base and exclaimed to me, “And, Carlos Ruiz would’ve done that!” Once again, I swelled with pride, while simultaneously guffawing.

After the game, his mother and I took the time to speak with the coach of his regular team to thank him for all his hard work this season. Then, to my surprise, he thanked me for everything I did during the season, and pointedly stated that my volunteering to keep score during the All-Star Game was an example of the type of things most parents don’t do. Although not officially a coach for the team, my contributions were just as valuable, and he wished there were more parents like me. It always amazes me to hear things like that. Yes, I know that many parents are happy to simply show up and watch the game — those that actually do stay and watch, rather than just drop off and pick up — but I just cannot fathom how a parent wouldn’t volunteer if there was something they could do to help.

Anyway, Manchild has two more remaining games this spring before the season ends. No matter how he performs in them, I will view his All-Star game as the fitting end to his season. I’m looking forward to see how he’ll handle himself when he moves up to the next age division during the fall season, and I’ll continue to help his team in whatever capacity I can.

Red Country Joys and Blues

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Last night, Sally and I returned home from an overnight trip to Winchester, VA — one of our favorite sans children activities. It is reasonably close enough to make a 24-30 hour visit worthwhile, maintains an incredibly pedestrian-friendly downtown district with plenty of shops and restaurants we love to visit, boasts a great used book store, and possesses amazing, reasonably priced, historic hotel that we love staying at. If we had the money, it’s the type of trip we’d easily make more often.

This time, the highlight of our stay was our visit to Handworks Gallery in the downtown district. For reasons neither one of us can recall, in all our previous visits to Winchester we never entered this store. We approvingly noted some of the items on display in the windows or on the sidewalk outside the store, but we just never decided to properly look around. Our initial perusal left us wondering whether this was a good or bad thing, because we spent a lot of money there yesterday.

In our defense, a significant portion of that expense resulted from a few items that became, later in the day, our 50th anniversary wedding gift to Sally’s parents. They have a number of animal metal sculptures in their house, and Handworks happened to sell some that we thought would be great additions to their collection. However, we liked a couple “Gnome-Be-Gones” so much that we Gnome-Be-Gonesended up purchasing a couple of them for our own home. In addition, the store also stocked some rather amazing coasters made from cracked glass and pottery. It just felt like the right time to upgrade from the generic, cheap coasters that have sat on our coffee table since we moved in together.

Our experience in Handworks nicely concluded what was already a great visit to Winchester. However, as much as we love our trips there, the area never lets us forget that its deep in the heart of red country. The city may offer plenty of things for us to love, but it also harbors a large number of people whose viewpoints seem positively alien. In particular, something I wished I took a picture of: a pickup truck with a personalized VA “In God We Trust” specialty plate bearing the characters “357 MAGM”. Seriously, I couldn’t make that up if I tried. Hell, I saw it, and I still don’t believe it; the cognitive dissonance necessary to create such a license plate is astounding. However, it wasn’t out of place. I literally lost count of the number of Trump/Pence bumper stickers and signs still gracing cars and lawns littering the place.

As much as we love spending time and money in Winchester, as well as many other small cities and towns in the Mid-Atlantic region, these things serve as a continuous reminder that living in one of them might be problematic. As it is, we currently live in in the purple region on the western fringe of the Northern Virginia suburbian sprawl — a region represented by a number of politicians whose views are way to the right of ours. I find them infuriating at times, but at least they also support a a few key liberal programs. I just don’t know if I could live in an area where the local politicians feel no such need.

It won’t stop me from visiting Winchester and other locales like it. The hearts of such places just offer too many pleasures. It’s just a shame that fantasizing about retiring to one of these places can’t be as pleasurable.

Weekly Weigh-In, Week #19

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Loss since last week: 1.6 lb
2017 Cumulative loss: 23.2 lb
Pounds from goal: 0.2 lb

I could just go ahead and claim victory, but that’s the equivalent of starting a marathon and then giving up 400 yards from the finish line because you’re close enough. Sally suggested I could just weigh myself each morning the next couple days, stick to plan, and then claim victory the day my goal weight is met. However, there’s a reason I stick to weekly weigh-ins on a particular day and time, and even though I made the rules, I’m not going to break them.

So, barring a complete loss of sense of reason, I will make my goal next week. I could conceivably even begin slowly increasing the caloric intake by the end of this week, but for my own peace of mind I think I’ll stick to the plan until the next weigh-in. Besides, making the goal with a some extra room to spare will only be a plus as I move into the maintenance phase.

Facebook’s Memory Hole

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I have a few ongoing beefs with Facebook and they all revolve around the same basic issue: it’s a nightmare in terms of attempting to review and find older posts and status updates. There’s no easy-to-use archive feature, such as the calendar on this blog, and its search function frequently doesn’t return all the results match your request. On top of all that, for whatever malevolent ungodly reason, it’s On This Day feature has never become available to me. Because Facebook cares about my user experience roughly the same amount as Jeff Sessions supports the Black Lives Matter movement, there’s no real customer service that will help me with any of this.

Thanks to the myriad of issues caused by Facebook ‘s memory hole issue, I have to rely on my iPhone’s Timehop app to serve in place of the One This Day feature. Unfortunately, it too isn’t perfect — I know this from Sally showing me things on her One This Day Facebook page that some of the posts I’ve tagger her don’t appear in my daily Timehop feed. But, a an imperfect something is better than nothing, so I’ll keep using Timehop until Facebook addresses all the aforementioned issues, which in of itself likely qualifies as an Apocalypse-heralding event.

Anyway, while looking at Timehop earlier this afternoon, I got the notion to start archiving some of my favorite “On This Day” Facebook posts, statuses, and updates over here. Most of them are fairly short and easy to transcribe, and it might be fun to have my favorites in a place where I can find them again much more readily. So, with no guarantees that this will be a regular feature, here are my favorite “On This Day” Facebook posts for today.

2016

This September, for the first time ever, I’ll be seeing Springsteen in concert. Once I get over the sticker shock, I’ll be in a more celebratory mood.

2014

My bizarre moment of zen for the morning: would I rather be on a highway to hell, have someone take me to Funkytown, or rock on down to Electric Avenue?

I believe could have linked to the actual posts, but most of my stuff is locked-down as Friends-only, and given my level of animosity towards the platform, I just don’t want to waste any more time than necessary with archiving. Moving forward, I will attempt to cross-post Facebook posts I feel are worthy of migration, but in the past I made nearly identical declarations on my old LJ page. So, everyone should take that previous determination with the appropriate giant grains of salt.

Irresponsibility

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Let’s be honest with ourselves; being irresponsible on a work night when you’re 21 and being irresponsible on a work night when you’re 45 are two very different things. At 21, you typically don’t have a mortgage, career, and car payments, nor are you saving for retirement and/or college for your child(ren). Your body is in its prime, and you can stay up to the wee hours of the morning, having far too many drinks and eating copious amounts of tasty, salty, fried food. After a few hours sleep, a decent breakfast, and a nice, steamy shower, you’re usually good to go.

That just doesn’t play when you’re 45, and you’ve already learned it the hard way.

I bring this up as a prelude to the following thoughts, statements, and chain of events that began around 10:30 last night – when Sally and I were in the middle of a second drink in an hour, while rewatching the sixth season of Game of Thrones:

  • “I want to be irresponsible and have another drink. Damn it, I think I will! I’ll just skip the gym in the morning.”
  • Resignedly uttered the word, “fuck,” pulled myself back together, and then happily went to the kitchen, drank a tall glass of water, and then got a third alcoholic beverage for each of us.
  • Split a bag of chips (the lower fat variety, of course) while consuming drinks and finishing episode of Game of Thrones.
  • Grumble to myself, “I’m going to need to somehow make up for not going to the gym in the morning. Maybe I’ll just walk on the treadmill for 30 minutes during my lunch break tomorrow.”
  • Consumed another tall glass of water while considering a fourth drink — a process interrupted by a glance at the the candy jar containing various “Fun Size” candy bars. Said to myself, sotto voce, “That size is anything but fun, even when you aren’t fretting about eating too much.”
  • Caved and grabbed the fourth drink, with full knowledge there would be a mild hangover. The fact it would be a mild one, at worst, did nothing to stop me from thinking I was truly being irresponsible. Inner 21-year-old mocks me.
  • Rejoined Sally in the living room, and watched portions of a couple Golden Girls reruns. That’s when I had the uttered the sentence that started this post. Posted that thought to Facebook, and looked at the clock, which now read 11:45.
  • “I hope I don’t pay too much for this in the morning” went through my head as I had yet another full glass of water. We cleaned up our slight mess, went about our bedtime routines, and turned off the light at approximately 12:15.

And that is how my being irresponsible on a work night at the age of 45 usually plays out these days. As much as my 21-year-old self would’ve mocked “irresponsible” 45-year-old me, there’s one element he would’ve been jealous over: last night I spent the entire evening with an amazing woman whom I had a great time with and then shared a bed with her.

I’ll take 45-year-old irresponsible over 21-year-old irresponsible every single time.

Weekly Weigh-In, Week #18

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Loss since last weigh-in (4/25): 1.6 lb
2017 Cumulative loss: 21.6 lb
Pounds from goal: 1.8 lb

Plugging right along. Given my track record, I could conceivably make my goal by next week’s weigh-in, or it may take three weeks. Since I’m not trying to make reach 190 by a particular date, I don’t particularly care when it occurs, so long as I don’t take a month or longer. If that happens, then it’ll be because I temporarily abandoned all sense and reason in regards to both my exercise regimen and how I eat.

As stated in the past, taking weight off is easy but keeping it within ±5 lb of my target remains problematic. I don’t want to start looking ahead to much, but once I make my goal I will need to adjust my food intake for maintenance mode. Based on previous experience, attempting to make my exercise routine less strenuous just won’t work — best to keep the one I’ve consistently used for weight loss. So, it won’t hurt to start thinking now about alterations to what and how much I eat.

Finally, and this is also potentially thinking too far ahead, I feel like I should treat myself when I make goal. I’ll need to figure out what it should be and how to properly compensate for the increased caloric load that particular week. I have nothing in mind yet, but I’m sure something will occur to me.

Weekly Weigh-In, Week #16

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Loss since last week: 2.4 lb
2017 Cumulative loss: 20.0 lb
Pounds from goal: 3.4 lb

So, after merely losing 1.8 pounds over the four-week period on April 18, I lose more than that in the following seven days. Although I did spend the past seven days fully compensating for some of the dietary sins from my birthday and Easter weekends, I can’t help but feel today’s reading benefited partially from a random weird daily low fluctuation. In fact, even though I’ve adhered to my routines today, I expect to weigh more when I step on the scale tomorrow. In addition, a reading showing little-to-no loss next week won’t disappoint me at all.