The Other Don Kelly

I just re-read World War Z for the umpteenth time, and now I’m re-reading Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy, a small book (a monograph?) from a historical demographics elective I took in college. Not sure why these are my reading choices right now, must be something in the air… Both books are interesting, WWZ for its pass-the-popcorn tale of an apocalyptic pandemic (especially the early denial, and then panic, phases), and the plague book for its look at public health measures and policy, once the unthinkable becomes the new normal — by the 1650’s, plague had been endemic in northern Italy for two centuries. The comparisons, from each book, with our own situation are very insightful.

In other news, I was down visiting my parents for a few days, to help out while my mom got a procedure done. I went down Thursday night and came home Sunday, and I brought just about everything I could think of: some books, the laptop, a scanning printer, and the bike.

The procedure was a success, though it took longer and involved more waiting than I would have liked; it didn’t help that I disliked the book I brought (Rama II by Arthur C. Clark “with” someone else; I should have spotted this as a red flag). It was so annoying I couldn’t even hate-read it… I spent other time down there hanging with my parents, helping my mom with some IT issues, and scanning old photographs. (I was going to post some here, but I’m not really happy with the scan quality. I may have to re-do them.)

I tried riding Allaire Sunday morning, it’s not far from my parents’ house, but realized (once I got there) that I’d left my cycling shoes back at their place — D’OH! Oh well, I got in a decent towpath ride yesterday, down to Riegelsville for lunch, for a round-trip total of 40 miles.

I’m not entirely a creature of habit, but I do get in a rut sometimes. Last week was not one of those times as I did some things outside my habitual comfort zone…

One Thing

Last Thursday I went to the local WordPress group’s monthly meeting. I’d been seeing the meetings posted on the WordPress news feed for years now without any real interest, but the topic for this meeting (security) caught my eye, and since the meeting place is within walking distance — and they’d have free pizza — I decided to check it out.

There was some networking/social time before and after the presentation. I knew no one there, but they seemed like a pretty good bunch, split pretty evenly between young and old, male and female, and was a mix of hardcore techies and “I use WP in my web-design business” types. The presentation was likewise a mix of very technical information, and not-so-technical good practices that I found easy to implement here. It was a really pleasant and informative evening.

And Another

Saturday night we had a party, and later in the evening the discussion turned to old railroad rights-of-way. We all pulled out our phones and consulted our maps to look at the railroad in question — it was the line that crosses the Monocacy Trail just south of Burnside Plantation, something once called the Lehigh & New England. The evening ended not long afterward, but I guess we were still curious the next morning because Anne and I decided to do a little hike to check it out, and we got a text from Scott who wanted to do the same.

We met Scott at the trailhead near Union Boulevard, walked down the trail, and headed west when we reached the tracks. It was like being in another world: we walked through homeless encampments and past industrial sites both current and ancient, all in a little corner of town less than a mile from home. The tracks were in good shape for the most part, with rails still in place, but past Eighth Avenue it started to get overgrown with sticker bushes. We eventually cut through a truck yard to get back on regular roads, walked across an overpass, and suddenly we were back in the normal part of town, on a residential street only a few blocks from home.

Messing with a few things here…

Merry Christmas! We just ate the biggest breakfast… Now Anne and Ben are out biking to a rare book store, and Emmi & Kyle are on a walk through the neighborhood, and I have a few minutes downtime.

Little Women

We saw this last night. I didn’t want to see this, only decided to go (at the last moment) because everyone else was going, and really expected I’d have to “grin and bear it” through this movie, but I found it compelling, an awesome story well told, and with visually stunning cinematography — it didn’t hurt that lead actress Saiorse Ronan was pretty easy on the eyes, as was everyone else in the movie.

It was also fun to see Laura Dern in another movie so soon after Marriage Story, and in a role so different from her part there.

Photo Catch-Up: UPDATE

I had a bit of a failed experiment here: I’ve been “curating” my photos, meaning I’ve been adding tags etc in my home photo editor and then posting them to Flickr. I also have a plugin here on the blog which supposedly lets me publish Flickr albums here, but I just tried it and it didn’t work. Oh well, if you want to see my newly posted photos you’ll have to check out my Flickr account.

Anne and I had a bit of an “Easton day” yesterday.

There was a lecture at the Canal Museum in the afternoon: the Lafayette College Library’s director of digital studies gave a presentation on “Old Maps and New Technology,” basically about digitizing historic maps and using them with GIS, and it was right up my alley. (I was surprised that Anne wanted to go too, but she also enjoyed it, and we bumped into my friend Kirk there, which was a pleasant surprise too.) We also took a little tour of the current exhibit, which concerned changes to the Lehigh Valley landscape over the past centuries and was heavy on old maps and aerial photography, and had a pleasant conversation with the speaker.

After that we were meeting Kathryn and Beth for dinner at a new place downtown (Aman’s Artisan Indian Cuisine, and very good), but we had some time to kill first so we walked around Center Square — I scoped out some of the new downtown amenities for the maps — and stopped in at Pearly Bakers. We walked over and met them for dinner, then we all went across the street to a place I’d never even seen before, called Oak.

This was a sort of Washington, DC-style, upscale steak house: three stories and an enclosed rooftop bar, exposed brick and wood and architecture — we ended up on the roof, at a table with a small fire in the middle, and continued our dinner conversation for another few minutes. We only stopped in for a drink and a look-see, no idea how the food is (yet) but the place looked awesome.

We were actually home pretty early, like before 9:00, so I spent the evening updating OpenStreetMap.

(I’m also in the middle of working through some photo curating: The other day I moved my photo collection over to the new machine, which was much easier than I thought it would be, then finally finished catching up with adding metadata tags to my old photos. Once I was caught up with that I started importing photos — my backlog goes all the way back to 2015 — and posting them to Flickr. Check them out, yo! And stay tuned for plenty more.)

Tonight I’ll be playing with my cello ensemble. Time to go practice.

Morning weigh-in: 179.5, 12% BF

It’s been a while since I posted a weigh-in, and it’s also been a while since I’d weighed this little. But I’ve been under 180 for a few days now and I thought I’d celebrate. I was close earlier this year, hovering around the 180 lbs mark (down from 190+ lbs) before Colorado, but then Colorado happened, and so did Columbus, and also Thanksgiving…

I haven’t been radically diet-conscious lately, but I can say I’ve been a little more careful, and I think we both have been eating better (Anne especially) these last few months. I’m also back on the “100 push-up challenge” for the winter, where I do at least a hundred push-ups a day — not that that in itself will change anything, but that plus other weight routines I do with it, plus the rides (when they happen: it’s been pretty crappy out lately), and the not-really-a-diet have all been chipping away at the inner tube.

Today was a morning cello session with Donna H, getting ready for our Sunday concert at the local nursing home, and in a few minutes we’re going out to take Anne’s mom up to see friends in Jim Thorpe.