Weekend round-up
Twinkle received her first bath yesterday. Judging by our track record with Cats No.s 1 and 2, this is also likely to be her yearly bath.
I managed to make it for yoga class on Saturday (this being the class which my dear wife signed me up for, and paid, and which I've missed multiple lessons of so far). The good: receiving compliments from the instructor on how flexible I was. The bad: aches and pains in the neck and shoulder the next day. The ugly? - realising that a paunch, a loose T-shirt, and a shoulder stand do not go together. Most of my shoulder stand was spent trying to concentrate on keeping my wobbling legs straight, while realising that (a) an upside down position dramatically inceases the size of your paunch and (b) the only thing keeping the entire class from seeing what I was seeing was the likelihood that they were too busy focusing on their own respective legs and paunches, if any. Note to self: tuck in shirt next time.
Reading: Collapse, from the same person who brought us Guns, Germs and Steel. Jared Diamond's follow-up examines why some societies fail: his first book examined why some succeeded, so this is a logical complement, though different in approach. I enjoyed the first one tremendously, probably because it adopts an anecdoctal approach to providing evidence - many little stories here and there to illustrate points and ideas. I seem to like books like that - The Tipping Point, Blink, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (to name a few) all take this approach. Collapse looks to be slightly more tedious: the first section is a detailed case study of Montana, which I'm enjoying for the sole reason that I've always wanted to live in Montana.
I managed to make it for yoga class on Saturday (this being the class which my dear wife signed me up for, and paid, and which I've missed multiple lessons of so far). The good: receiving compliments from the instructor on how flexible I was. The bad: aches and pains in the neck and shoulder the next day. The ugly? - realising that a paunch, a loose T-shirt, and a shoulder stand do not go together. Most of my shoulder stand was spent trying to concentrate on keeping my wobbling legs straight, while realising that (a) an upside down position dramatically inceases the size of your paunch and (b) the only thing keeping the entire class from seeing what I was seeing was the likelihood that they were too busy focusing on their own respective legs and paunches, if any. Note to self: tuck in shirt next time.
Reading: Collapse, from the same person who brought us Guns, Germs and Steel. Jared Diamond's follow-up examines why some societies fail: his first book examined why some succeeded, so this is a logical complement, though different in approach. I enjoyed the first one tremendously, probably because it adopts an anecdoctal approach to providing evidence - many little stories here and there to illustrate points and ideas. I seem to like books like that - The Tipping Point, Blink, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (to name a few) all take this approach. Collapse looks to be slightly more tedious: the first section is a detailed case study of Montana, which I'm enjoying for the sole reason that I've always wanted to live in Montana.
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