I’ve copped “ride the wave” in my writing here a few times inspired by this interview with Fath No More’s Mike Patton:

To me, that’s kind of fundamental. Understanding that you don’t have to have a plan. For kids out there or whatever, you don’t have to have a plan. You can make it work … I mean, my point is we don’t ever really know, and we don’t ever really have a plan, and it’s okay. It’s okay to ride the waves here and there and then kind of figure it out. That’s what I did. That’s all.

Faith No More’s Mike Patton: ‘You Create Your Own Freedom’

A 10k is best for me after a break, and in this case, I had two days’ break. Best effort by a hair so far. Nice and steady; check out the pace.

Lady at the bar at Lupo in the Hotel Rehoboth, discerning whether to get the house vodka or Kettle One in her cocktail: “Is McCormmick a good vodka?”
Bartender: “It comes in a plastic bottle.”

She got the Kettle One.

Some things to try:

1. Connections word game on the New York Times: A newer game, where you choose groups of four words that share a semantic connection from a bank of sixteen. Fun like Wordle was fun.
2. Japanese beer: I have a post coming up about our weekend in Rehoboth Bech, DE, but I wanted to suggest this style. Like the Subarashi I shared earlier, this ramen spot has several on tap (or Orion in a can, as I tried). Japanese beer stands in stark contrast to American (and British) styles: light, clean, devoid of anything bold. Very refreshing and light.
3. Julio’s Birria Tacos: I have only had a few versions of this dish, but Julio’s are excellent, award-winning, and beefy.

Blew myself up today on this 30-minute piece. I did a 10-minute warmup with the missus using Apple Fitness+ (intervals with Josh) which set me up with almost 2500 meters before the 30. Ranked me in the middle of the pack.

Ride the wave.

Playing songs and singing isn’t necessarily hard, but the thing about it is, it’s easy to play bits of songs or just kind wander away when you get stuck or bored. But with posting your recordings somewhere, like TikTok (as I do), you have to figure out the song pretty well, at least the part you want to play, and then rehearse it enough that you don’t screw it up too badly.

There are two ways to come at this (I’ve done both): play the song live and record yourself, or record music via DAW and edit it. With the former, you have to get it right in a go while recording yourself with your phone or some other camera setup. With the latter, though, you can take your time and record different tracks, layer things a bit, add some effects and even auto-tune your vocals… and then do the MTV thing: play along to your own song, record it with video, and then edit the video so that it syncs up with the audio track you exported from your DAW. It’s embarassing on a number of fronts for the bashful.

And it’s way more work than you think it is.

It’s easy to see posting oneself doing something creative as trying to grab attention. And sure, it’s a little bit of that. But it’s really about making something. It’s about creating something, however deriviative, and putting it out into the world. Some people never do anything like that. Tiktok is probably the most face-forward, self-expressive thing I”ve ever done (and potentially the most embarrassing), but it’s just more of the same of what I’ve been doing since there was an internet to post things to. Uncorrected is just the latest incarnation of me writing on the internet, preceded by my Tumblr page https://nonjo.com and even LiveJournal back in the day.

I would always hear harmonies in my head and appreciated them in songs I liked. So I get to try that, singing high and low parts. It’s fun just to make the songs at home and hear the results, but I get a kick out of posting the final product. I also wince when I do it. But I do it.

I’m floating around sub-170s these days, hitting a cool 165 mid-last-week. I started this journey thinking hitting 210 would be a welcome, if ambitious, goal, inching back to my most ardent cycling days. But I haven’t gotten sick of rowing or moderation, so I’m riding the wave. Too long, maybe?
In any event, someone at work asked someone else at work how I did it, and the person wondered about aloud about Ozympic. (they don’t know how I feel about needles obviously.) So now when people ask me what I’m doing, I wonder myself if that’s the answer they expect. Or suspect.
I don’t have a problem with medical interventions for anything. If you think that’s the best solution for you, and you’ve weighed the risks, go for it. But I did it the old-fashioned way. That’s not the better way or anything like that. It’s just how I did it. I never even considered asking my doctor about it. In the back of my mind, my thought about semaglutide isn’t a novel one, and it’s the same observation people make about weight-loss surgeries: does the treatment lead to long-term change?
Anyone who’s lost weight fears the day they find themselves searching for their old pants. This is true if you inject semaglutide, get gastric bypass surgery, or live in a calorie deficit. I learned what it’s like to do it myself. I’m happy about it but humble, too. My life allows me to find the time in a way that’s convenient. That’s all.

Me, October 2022

Me, September 2023

A few things to try this week:

1. Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon: for your Manhattans or old fashioneds. Cooler weather = brown liquids. Nothing fancy; competes with the ubiquitous Makers Mark on Price.
   

   

2. Detroit-style pizza: I follow Kenji’s recipe and everyone enjoys it. I just buy pre-made dough at the store.
   

   

3. Queens of the Stone Age‘s Rated R: I am terribly guilty of knowing songs and not albums in this post-album digital subscription world. This is one of their best, I think. I covered “In the Fade” on TikTok, and it’s one of those songs that gets demystified a bit when you learn it, but still can’t not listen to it.
   

   

A few suggestions for this week:
1. Try a new OS: There are a few ways to try another operating system on your computer. I have my son’s old Alienware gaming PC running Windows 11 alongside my Mac, which is a fun counterpoint. I (over)loaded it with 32 GB of RAM, up from a measly 8 GB (it’s hard to believe how many computers of both stripes still come loaded with 8 GB of memory), and it runs just fine. Virtual optionshttps://www.virtualbox.org/ are fun too, just to scratch the itch, if you have it.
2. If you’re checking out Windows, you have to try PowerToys. It’s a collection of little utilities that have morphed over the years (I had a Vista machine at a former job and installed it right away). One of my favorites is FancyZones.
3. Martha Stewart’s French Toast: this recipe has you soak the bread in the egg mixture for a spell while you heat your griddle (or pan). The result is a more custard-y version than the standard dunk-n-fry. You need bread that can take a soak, though; wonder bread won’t hold up.

So long Sriracha…

I’m taking a test prep class and during tonight’s class, my breakout room shared our answer to a constructed response task. I had volunteered to do the typing, and I got a compliment from a group member about my outline. Later, when we shared, one of the advisors praised the structure and content as a good answer. So I felt good about that.

My particular fascination with outlining came well after I’d finished college, when I found myself in a professional development session and I decided to write with Omni Outliner. That particular program is amazing and weird and challenging to use, but I have always liked it. What came next was a succession of plaintext and markdown files that offered more or less outliner-friendly affordances. The last outliner I got into before I began my experiment as a Windows user was Bike: I remember the palpable sense of dread I experienced imagining how I was going to prevaricate about which outliner was right for the task. ¹

I actually don’t outline quite as much as I used to, because while outlines are incredibly helpful at structuring your thoughts and knowledge, they are inflexibly hierarchical when you want to connect ideas². I’m currently of the opinion that the best notes are handwritten, a collection of thoughts and facts that may be outlines in large part, but with jottings and arrows and other leaps of thought scattered across the canvas. I like OneNote right now, but there are plenty of contenders on Windows and the Mac.

Word doesn’t have an outline mode in the sense, but it does a fine job formatting them. No folding though.

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¹ There are technical considerations to make besides which outliner to make, depending upon the app you’re using. Drafts makes a dandy outliner, but unless you leave everything in Drafts, you have an export decision to make. Other applications, like WorkFlowy, are their own silo of data and represent another location to search when you realize you need something. iAWriter walks a weird line between the two, allowing you to specify additional file locations besides its default library.

²I don’t want to ignore backlinks in apps like Workflowy and iA Writer, though; this feature alone found me adopting Workflowy for a time. If I were glued to my desk all day, I might have found more use for Workflowy.

I’m spacing on this week’s Sunday Serial, but I did want to share that my youngest son, the culnarian, is making his own sriracha sauce. He took thai chilis from the garden and chopped them up. They are currently fermenting in a brine, needing a daily burp. Can’t wait to try the finished product.

I replaced the 256 GB Kingston stock SSD in my Asus Zenbook with one of the new Samsung 990 Pro SSDs. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to tell the difference doing basic office work, but the stats look nice. Reinstalling the OS makes a big difference, too. Not something I experience with macOS.

I blew up after a hard effort in the final 4k to hit my desired power and average split time (I was shooting for 184+ and 2:04). I did this after taking yesterday off (smart) and a 2500k Apple Fitness+ 10 minute “warmup” (not smart). Got 7 chinups too.