I’m done with my Christmas shopping, it’s all in the house and I feel good about it. I usually get all angsty about it because of my complicated relationship with money, my passive-aggressive behavior regarding doing it all early vs procrastinating at the very last minute, my feelings about turning a religious holiday to celebrate a guy who was really nice to everyone into a free-for-all materialistic buying spree and, finally, buying gifts for people who have everything they need. You got food, clothes, shelter? You got an education? You got love from family and friends? Lucky. we are all so lucky. I asked Vince if I could just shove the Amazon packages under the tree and randomly open them and give the resulting gift to whoever it was suppose to go to (you know, to avoid wrapping anything). He said he was down with that. I think I’ve gone this far, I might as well do the wrapping too.
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This is exhausted Vince. He was up a lot this weekend having fun. He’s still wearing the same shirt he wore on Friday to see Star Wars. I hope he takes a shower tonight.
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I went to an orienteering class today. I didn’t run any of the courses, but I wanted to learn a few things and meet a few people. I learned today that I need to be counting the number of steps I take so I can estimate distance in the woods and that you kind of have to learn to count so second-naturedly that you can kind of shove it into the back of your mind while you are running and navigating with the map. The person teaching the course said that at both extremes of ability, pace counting is unnecessary. If you are a beginner, you don’t pace count because you are too busy figuring out the map itself, and if you are an elite you don’t pace count either because it’s just so familiar to your body how long 275m is. But for everyone in the middle, it’s a helpful tool.