4 Things

I'm just going to leave this here:

4 Things...

Resync

So, I did manage to eventually drag myself out of bed at 7:30 this morning and go for my run. It actually felt pretty good, all things considered. I felt... fast-ish. (running fartleks today) And I wasn't falling asleep at the office, although I must admit that I wasn't particularly productive -- a lot of trouble staying on message. I feel like I'm going to crash at any moment and my hope is that today was enough to get me back on track after the weekend debacle.

In today's low productivity zone, I did stumble across a good read: Seth Roberts blog, the Berkeley professor known for doing research through self-experimentation and who came up with the Shangri-La diet.

An interesting serendipity is that one of the examples in his paper describes the relationship between eating breakfast (breakfast being defined as eating before 10am) and early waking and the quality of sleep. The paper also cites relationships with exposure to morning light and standing.

So maybe it's not the cardiovascular activity that was syncing me up after all. (In case it wasn't clear from that comment, I generally eat after I run, which means that on morning when I run, I typically eat several hours after I get up. In today's case, around 10:30am.)

We'll need to do more research, but I'll leave that to others for now...

'cause I'm going to bed.

linky dinks

The Story of Stuff
Interesting, informative and imminently depressing, even when you know the score. But still worth watching. We try to do our part. We try, we try. But in the end, even as lower than average consumers, we are consumers all the same and are contributing to the problem. (We put out a not-quite-full trashcan maybe once every other week -- and usually a bin of recycleables. On the other hand, I'm regularly amazed at how much stuff I see out on the curb on trash day -- veritable mountains of garbage bags, furniture, bicycles, and of course, the TVs, which sit on the curb for weeks yearning for someone to call the hazardous waste pickup people.)

8 Careers to Help Lower Your Stress Meter
From the Yahoo! featured article headlines. (we'll see whether the link sticks around or not; historically, Yahoo has been pretty bad about that.) Also known as, 8 careers, most of which are not really low-stress jobs at all except by comparison if you happen to be stationed in Iraq. Or Afghanistan. Or work in a prison. Also known as, a link-fest to Yahoo's advertising affiliates. (I guess they're really trying to drum up revenues what with that whole Microsoft hostile takeover business...)

I Need a Virtual Break. No, Really.
The secular Sabbath: take some time off, it's good for you.
UPDATE: here's a link to the same article on The Ledger, so you don't have to fight with the NYTimes stupid login page.

Hedging positive

I stumbled on this fairly depressing article* that was basically about energy policy and food costs, but rather than dwelling on that (posting, writing, commenting), here's something funny I stumbled on (poking around at surfing videos, of all things):

Gnooze.com ("the G is silent")

Comments on the days news. Humorous, but informed. And she does funny voices! (It's a schtick, but I still find it funny; she kinda reminds me of a couple of peeps I know.)

I guess I'm feeling a little better today. (I did go into work, but that managed to not mess it up.)

* If you're really curious, the article is: "Why Ethanol Production Will Drive World Food Prices Even Higher in 2008"