Sharmila and I went to Lake Allatoona this week. Had a couple of drinks art Sunset Grille. It was a little warm initially but cooled down as the sun dipped down. There was some great live country music (which I do not understand but sometimes find the tunes catchy) and a couple of great motorbikes come by!
Last evening, Sharmila and I headed out to have a drink by the lake. We thought we would try out Allatoona Lake for a change. Half way thru the drive, I was checking the GPS to make sure I was headed the right way when I realized that the restaurant by the lake was closed on Tuesdays.
We were within 10 minutes of Woodstock downtown and there is a bar there I have wanted to try out for quite some time. We were soon there. It is a bar (Rootstock and Vine) on the rooftop overlooking the main intersection of Woodstock downtown. It was great weather – cloudy, cool and breezy. There was enough social distancing and masks around. I would wear it only when I had to talk to Nicole and Abby who were serving us. It would have been disastrous if I tried drinking wine while having the mask on, needless to say.
The picture does not do a good job of capturing the beauty of sitting out in open air on a rooftop overlooking cars and passersby below while sipping some Pinot Noir.
Trying to get back to some running discipline. How I am trying to trick myself is by waking up early in the morning and then getting the physical exercise part done first thing before even my body can start complaining!
Completely overcast sky. The temperatures were low 70s. A constant breeze kept the ambience fairly enjoyable. The humidity of early mornings is, of course, the penalty you pay.
4 miles in my usual trail!!
It was three months back that I had floated the idea of not cross posting from my blog to Facebook. Was soundly denounced by all commenters not to do any such thing. Not exactly of sound mind or body, I went ahead and did it anyways. Actually took Parijat’s advice of “try out for some time”.
I thought I will try it out for a month. It has been three months now. That itself says something. Here are some learnings…
What I gained:
a. A lot of time and self control: It was preposterously difficult in the beginning – missing out on all the comments and counter comments and likes and a rewarding engagement model with the readers and commenters. But over time, I realized what a time waste it had become for me. Now I check Facebook for 15 minutes in the morning – usually there is nothing for me – so, I scroll thru updates of others, smile at the furious points and counterpoints on mask versus no mask, virus versus hoax, Democrats versus Republicans, BJP versus Congress and log out of my laptop screen.
b. Focus on the quality of my blog: With that extra time, I have started focusing on my blog. The writing is still as bad as before but I have started working on how the blog looks. That – and some great encouragement from Larry – led me to learn HTML and CSS (and now I am learning PHP) to make all sorts of tweaks to the blog. You remember how the first time a kid learns fonts and colors and soon the whole document is filled with all the colors of rainbow and all font styles and sizes possible? Yes, I am that dangerous now.
c. Learnt to tweak the model: Over time, I learnt how to mix and match for best results. I still post once in a while directly to Facebook (like this one). After requests from folks like Kenneth, I started a email subscription to my blog (initially I was against it). Instead of immediate email notifications, there are weekly digests that go out. And then somebody suggested – why not send the digest to Facebook with links. Which is what I do now. I am also getting good tips – from folks like Milind, as an example, how to make a lot of things in my blog still better.
I would have missed all this if I had not “tried” out this experiment, that I am afraid is here to stay with me.
What I lost:
d. What I miss most is all the random updates of friends. I had to ply thru a lot of political and other opinions to get those posts, but usually I would get one or two interesting updates every week. Spending 15 minutes on Facebook does not get to that.
Net net, I think Facebook had become an addiction. I think I have been able to get myself back to where I wanted – it is a tool and I will use it as I deem fit and not the other way around.
Reached 13 thousand miles in the 31st month of motorbike riding. Other than the cool inverse relationship of the numbers (13 and 31) themselves, here is another relationship – their squares also share a inverse relationship (169 and 961 respectively)!!!
This is what happens when I feel good on a motorbike. I think of math 🙂
Last year on this day Nikita and I had put in a 5K run in Fowler Park. Today we went a little longer and did 4 miles (6.5K). It was early in the morning – cool (72 degrees) but humid. We kept a steady 12 minute/mile pace and finished the full distance without any break.
And then did a few sprints after the run!
