I seem to have found the key to my productivity: delay my gym trip from 7am to noon. Instead, I focus those first five hours of the morning on Get Rich Slowly. It’s amazing what a difference that makes.

Though I spend plenty of time on miscellaneous blog tasks (checking stats, design work, answering e-mail), I only have 4-5 hours of writing in me a day. During the first two months of my pro blogging career, I didn’t begin writing until ten or eleven.

I’d get up and go to the gym, come home, eat breakfast, shower, do some chores, catch up on web sites, etc. Before I knew it, ten or eleven had rolled around. After that, my four or five hours of writing put me into the late afternoon, and I’d begin to feel pressured. I didn’t like it.

This week, however, I’ve reversed things. I get up at the same time (between six and seven), but I go straight to writing. It should be no surprise that I’m most productive during these hours — it was between seven and noon that I used to do most of my writing at the box factory.

At about noon, I have a bite to eat, and then I head out for my exercise. Sure, it’d be better to get my exercise done earlier in the day, but I can’t be in two places at once. And my schedule the past two days has been very nice. It’s good to know that most of my work for the day is done by noon. It keeps me happier during the rest of the day — less stressed.

Today has been especially productive. I finally wrote my review for the new Robert Kiyosaki book (may go up tomorrow, but may delay til next Tuesday), then went to the gym for an awesome upper body workout. I powered through sets that had been dragging me down. I bought some Hot Tamales on the way home (yes, Nicole, I’m still shunning sugar, but I do let myself have a treat from time-to-time), sat outside with Toto and Max, then went upstairs to answer e-mail.

Later in the afternoon I conducted an interview with Tim Ferriss (of The 4-Hour Workweek), which gave me a chance to try out Skype. Not bad. I love the fact that I can record the conversation for later transcription. That means I don’t have to type notes while I’m talking to him. It also means I can try to shape it into a podcast sometime in the future.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me: lunch with Matt and PB on Thursday, dinner with The Tim on Thursday evening, family dinner on Friday night, marathon training on Saturday morning, bike ride with Paul and Susan on Saturday afternoon, brunch with Alan on Sunday. Something tells me one or more of these things is going to have to be set aside!

Kris is sick. I am tired.

It’s 5:38 on a Saturday afternoon, and we’re both in bed, ready to sleep. We may not get up until morning.

Kris started getting sick in the middle of the week. “I always get sick after our trip to Sunriver,” she said when she first began to wheeze. “And you always get sick before or during.” I had a severe allergy attack two weeks ago (about when the magnolias were blooming), which was when she first noted the pattern.

Kris stayed home sick on Wednesday, but went to work on Thursday. She also went to her Excel training on Friday. When I picked her up from that class, she was a sneezing whining mess. “I feel awful,” she said. “Take me straight home.” She went to bed early last night.

This morning, I ran ten miles. Our starting point was just a mile from Rosings Park, but it took me twenty minutes to drive there. Because the Willamette River divides Oak Grove from Lake Oswego, it took me far too long to reach my destination.

I bumped up a pace group today, moving from “no target time” to the four-and-half-hour goal group for the marathon. (Ugh. Lousy sentence, but I’m not editing it.) Our first mile was flat, but miles two, three, and four were all uphill. (And downhill on the return, of course.) As usual, I started poorly, but really felt good by mid-run. My last mile was ragged, but I think I’ll improve with time.

“I’m starving,” I told Kris when I got home. I showered and changed so that we could go to the Canby Garden Show.

“Hurry up,” she whined. She was still feeling sick.

“Can we stop at Burgerville?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

“What did you have for breakfast?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t eat before I run.”

“That’s stupid,” Kris said. “What would Pam say?” (Good question. What would Pam say?)

“It’s not big deal,” I said. “I just eat after.” But by mid-afternoon, it felt like a big deal. When we got back from the garden show, Kris and I both took a nap. Then, while Kris continued to sleep, I went downstairs and drew a hot bath. After eating a raspberry yogurt and some beef jerky, I climbed into the tub and soaked for twenty minutes. Half an hour. An hour. Two. Mostly, I slept, luxuriating as the heat of the water soothed my tired muscles.

Now I’m upstairs in bed, writing this entry, forcing myself to keep my eyes open. Kris hasn’t left the bed since two o’clock. She is sick. I am tired.

I’ve just returned home from my morning workout, and am sitting at the computer writing a piece for Get Fit Slowly. I can hear Maxwell thumping around, but I’m not really paying attention. Soon, however, the thumps turn into squawks, and then to growls.

Max and Nemo wrestle a lot, so I’m not too concerned. They take turns being the aggressor. Sometimes Max pummels Nemo. Sometimes Nemo pummels Max. They both love it.

As I’m typing, the growls and cries become more distressed, so I go to the bedroom to see what is the matter. Max is on top of Nemo, chomping him. Nemo is trying to thumper his way out, but is having no success. The fur is flying. Literally. Chomp chomp, thumper, growl.

Being a good father, I don’t break up the fight. Instead, I stand and watch as they roll around on the bed. Toto is sleeping on a chair in my office. Simon is sleeping on the kitchen table, in a box of my clothes. He’s been there for the past twelve hours. Or had been there. Here he comes now.

Simon comes clump clump clumping up the stairs in a fat cat run. He’s heard the squawking and yowling, and wants to see what’s the matter. He charges past me, hops onto the bed, and stares at his brothers. They stop wrestling. They look at him. He looks at one and then the other.

I can’t tell if they’re saying something in a secret cat language, but both Max and Nemo fall apart, moving away from each other. Simon continues looking from one to the other. Then he looks back to me as if to say, “Dad, it’s your job to keep them from fighting.”

Max hops down and goes to the guest room for a bite to eat. Nemo slinks downstairs. Simon curls up on the bed and falls back asleep.

Footnote: As I’m writing this, the cats take turns coming into the office. First Max comes charging in, flails around on the floor, then barrels downstairs. A couple minutes later, Nemo strolls in, sits down, gives himself a bath for five minutes, and then leaves. Toto is still asleep on the chair. Maybe she’s dead!

Nicole recently posted her responses to a book meme. I tend to shy away from memes, but in the spirit of self-congratulatory smugness, I’ll actually participate in this one. Because I happen to have read a lot of the books in the list, I can feel all proud that I’m more educated than you are! (Actually, for whatever reason, this list has a lot of overlap with our book group reading list, so I’ve read a lot of these books in the past decade, not just in my lifetime.)

In the list below, I’ve bolded books I’ve finished, italicized books I started but did not complete, made blue the books that I particularly love, and used red to indicate books I particularly dislike. The only problem with this list? No Proust.

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
Angels & Demons
Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
The Name of the Rose
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter (reading right now)
Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
Ulysses
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values

What about you? Has your book group managed to read a lot of these books in the past ten years, too? Or are you just an uneducated little waif?

On Saturday, I got up for a long run in the woods. Normally I would have joined the marathon training group in Portland, but we were on our annual vacation in Sunriver, so I decided to be disciplined and run on my own. While my compatriots were scheduled to do a seven-mile road run, I tried to map out an eight-mile run on forest trails along the Deschutes River.

After a lot of fuss (I can’t seem to get out the door for a run without a lot of fuss), I left the rental house at 6:15. Before I headed out, I posted the following on Twitter:

On a long weekend vacation. Off for a solo 8-mile run in the woods. My biggest fear? Being eaten by a bear. I’m bear-phobic.

I was only half joking. I’m always worried of bears.

It was cold out. There was frost on the windshields of our cars. My breath was puffy. But I was bundled up against the elements, and knew that once I started running, things would be okay. I made my way along the paved roads to the beginning of the hiking path to Benham Falls. I had scrawled a rudimentary version of this Forest Service map to help me navigate the network of trails:

At first the run was difficult. Runs always seem to be difficult for the first ten or twenty minutes. The ground was a curious mix of too hard and too soft. Because it was below freezing, the dirt was crunchy. But the soil was also “airy”, with a lot of compression when I stepped on it. It was confusing &mdahs; my body was forced to make all sorts of micro-adjustments.

I followed my hand-drawn map along FS655 to FS600 and into the old campground. Everything was fine. I found the hiking trail along the river. But then things got a little hairy. There was snow on the ground. I continued along what I believed was the correct path, but found myself completely surrounded by a sea of white. There was not way to tell where I was or where I should be going. Yikes. I backtracked to a known landmark, and tried to figure out what to do. Eventually I found another path that seemed to go in the right direction and resumed my run.

I ran up the hillside and through the woods, occasionally having to deal with patches of old, crusty snow. (This stuff was icy, so I walked over it, and gingerly.) The brush along the side of the trail chewed up my ankles. I couldn’t really tell where I was.

Eventually I came to a long, wide straight path dominated by power lines. “This doesn’t look right,” I told myself. “I don’t think I’ve come far enough.” I pulled out my map. I couldn’t tell if this was the right place to head south or not, but neither did I have any better options. I couldn’t see that my current trail continued further. I followed the power lines south.

About ten minutes later, I encountered FS600 coming in from the side. “That’s strange,” I thought. “Aren’t I already on FS600?” I decided to have faith. I continued south on FS600. When it turned northeast, I continued to follow it. “Aha!” I thought. “This looks familiar.” I had run this path half an hour before. I now began to suspect that I’d taken the mini loop option marked on the map. (I was wrong, but I had the right idea.) But then I took a wrong turn and followed FS600 southeast to paved road 9702.

I was confused.

Ultimately I decided that I should just head north along the paved road, which I knew led to the campground. And it did. I followed the path up the hillside again and then southwest to the powerlines. When I went to pull out my map again, it wasn’t there. It had fallen out of my pocket. “Argh,” I thought. “I’m lost in the woods without my map.”

I wasn’t too worried, though. I knew that if I followed the Deschutes River west and south, I’d eventually come to parts of Sunriver that I knew. I was more concerned with continuing my run. Because I knew the powerline road had been wrong, I searched until I found another trail heading southwest. This trail led me to another confusing junction, but I was able to puzzle out the correct path, and then find my way back to the start.

I had run (and walked when confused) for ninety minutes. “I don’t think I’ve gone eight miles,” I thought. “Maybe I’ve gone five.” So I turned around and ran back the road I’d just travelled until I reached the river again. Then I ran home. It turns out my guess-work was about right.

When I returned to the rental house, I used MapMyRun to determine the distance I’d travelled. I had actually traveled 6-1/2 miles after ninety minutes. With my extra run to the river and back, I had brought the distance to 8.47 miles in one hour and 51 minutes.

Best of all? I hadn’t encountered any bears.

As part of my fitness regimen, I’ve been swimming once each week. On Tuesday or Thursday — whichever day happens to follow my upper-body weight-lifting session — I drive an extra fifteen minutes to go the gym in Oregon City. It has a pool. (The gym in Milwaukie has a pool, too, but it’s worthless. It’s more like a backyard frolic pool than a lap pool.)

I had some trouble at first getting the hang of the swimming thing again. Breathing was a real issue. I felt like I was drowning. One of my readers at Get Fit Slowly recommended nose plugs, and much to my surprise, they did the trick. I still sometimes feel short of breath at the end of a lap, but mostly I do okay. (I stop for about ten or twenty seconds after a lap to catch my breath. The guy swimming next to me this morning was doing the same thing.)

So, I’m slowly but surely getting accustomed to the pool. Today I did 1000 meters of mixed freestyle and backstroke in 28:14. Well, it’s not really a backstroke. I don’t know what to call it. I put my arms out wide, like wings, and then pull them to my sides.

Anyhow, all is well and good except for the thugs in the shallow end of the pool. Most of the time when I swim (but not today), there’s a group of surly men and women hogging the shallow end. They’re splashing around, running back and forth across the width of the pool, interfering with my lane.

“Don’t they move when you come through?” Kris asked me when I told her about them.

“Yes,” I said. “But it still bugs me. They’re not very quick.” That’s because these thugs are old thugs. Their average age is probably 70. Usually when I come into the pool, they’re milling around the shallow end as if they own it. I feel like I get resentful stares when I take my lane.

Today the thugs weren’t in the shallow end. Today the thugs were in the jacuzzi nearby. They were complaining about health, about Barack Obama, about local politics. The thugs are a bitter bunch.

Still, I kind of like the thugs. It’s good that they’re at the gym early in the morning exercising. I only hope that when I’m 70, I’ll be down at the gym, in the pool, annoying some young punk by hogging the shallow end.

Here’s my foldedspace philosophy right now: yes, I know it would be great if I had time to write all sorts of fun little stories, but I don’t really, so I’m just going to post whatever I find that I like. Sound fair?

For example, here’s a hilarious video I found via Airbag:

That’s better than eagles and goats, isn’t it?

Poor Kris. How’s she going to handle this one. She loves both goats and birds, but when you combine the two, which will she root for?

To me, it looks like the eagle is just a little bit spiteful, a little gratuitous in her attacks. But man, how cool is that? She carries off the whole frickin’ goat! Mothers, don’t let your children outside! I’m sure they’re not bigger than the average goat…

As I have for each of the past three Saturdays, I rose early this morning to go running. I’m participating in group training runs, with the goal of finishing the Portland Marathon on October 5th.

During the first two weeks, I ran with the slowest pace group and for the shortest distance. On the first Saturday, we ran four miles in about an hour. Last week we ran five miles in about an hour and fifteen minutes. It was easy. It was too easy. I complained to Pam, who is acting as my coach.

“You should bump up to the next pace group,” she told me. (I had not doubt that would be her recommendation!) “This weekend’s run is a trail run, anyhow,” she said. “Those are generally slower, so you should be fine.”

I rolled out of bed this morning and headed out the door. I looked sporty in my running attire: my old soccer shorts, a long-sleeved exercise shirt worn over my long johns, a stocking cap, and a pair of warm gloves. I was also wearing my brand new water belt (with a pouch for my wallet, keys, and iPhone!) and my new thick woolen “no-show” socks. I almost looked like a runner.

The trail run was held in Portland’s Forest Park, where parking is scarce. In fact, I had to park about a quarter mile from our starting location. It took me five minutes to walk down to where the group was gathering. I was cold! While I waited for the faster pace groups to leave, I pulled out my iPhone and sent the following to Twitter:

So cold! In forest park for 6 mile run. Near freezing. In shorts! At least I brought iPhone. Ha!

As the run began, I was worried. I was really very cold. My legs felt heavy. My stride didn’t feel right. I didn’t like the muddy trail. And I was breathing hard. But as I warmed up, things felt fine. After two miles, I was in great shape. As we continued to run, I felt even better.

When we turned around at the four-mile point, I moved to the front of the single-file line, where I could follow directly behind our group leader, Frank. I asked him how he knew what pace he was going. “I don’t really,” he told me. “I just gauge the speed by you guys. If you’re chattering, I know we’re going at the right speed. If you’re quiet, we’re going to fast.” He explained how to do a similar “talk test” when I’m running on my own. “When you’re training, you always want to be able to talk without gasping.”

I told him I was really enjoying the run. “It’s not hurting my knee,” I said. “I feel like I could do this all day. I may even go for eight.”

“How many miles did you run last week?” he asked.

“Five,” I said.

“Was that the longest run you’ve ever done?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“You should only do six miles today,” Frank said. “Six miles on the trail is like eight miles on the road. You don’t want to overdo it.”

But when he stopped to say farewell to the six-milers, I did not leave. “Are all of you up for eight miles?” he asked the five of us who remained. He looked me in the eyes.

“Yes,” we said.

For the last two miles, Frank picked up the pace, but only a little. That seventh mile was awesome. I wanted to be running by myself. I wanted to be loping along the trail, not jogging. I wanted to speed off on my own. “I can do ten miles,” I thought. “And maybe I will.”

But the eighth mile was more difficult. By the time we’d climbed the hill to our starting point, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor. I can run ten miles some other time. Besides, I had just run eight miles on a dirt trail in bitter cold. That’s three more miles than I’ve ever run at any one time in my life.

While working a future post for Get Rich Slowly, I stumbled upon this photo by chuckp at Flickr. It’s entitled “Patti’s Wedding 1982″. I find it surreal:

The first thing my eye goes to are the power lines, which seem to be toppling in slow motion. Then I go to the children in the weeds. Then the array of cars by the side of the road. It all seems so…strange.

The photo is tagged: Wisconsin, countryside, wedding, guests, presents, highway, truck, station wagon, wedding guests, and landscape. I’d also tag it “alternate universe”.