Goals 2019 -- September Recap

K and I both struggled this month.  I don't really have a good reason for why I did, except a lack of attention.  K has a better excuse, which will follow.  Here's my status:

1. Drink more water.  This one I had some success with, actually (I think).  I say "I think" because, while certainly on some days I drank more than I had been previously, and often I made that additional 25% mark that I set for myself.  However, I was also less diligent about tracking it when I was not at work.  Weekends and the week we were on vacation escaped the tracking, so I can't say for sure that I was successful on those days.

2. Get up when the alarm goes off.  This one was a much bigger struggle for me.  There were a handful of days when I succeeded, but overall it was not a success.  I did not, though, try any of my previous tricks, such as downloading a different clock app or using an old-fashioned alarm clock.  I'm not quite ready to give up on this one yet; I may keep it alive next month with some different tactics.

3. Keep on a regular schedule.  I have to admit that I didn't think particularly actively about this goal as the month progressed.  Perhaps surprisingly, I think I did pretty well at it anyway.  Looking back at my calendar and recalling my weekends, I did a decent job of getting up early on the weekends to try to keep myself on a regular schedule.  What I was intermittently successful (or massively unsuccessful) at was getting to bed at a reasonable hour.  That's still a struggle.

Better luck next month!

What I Read -- Killers of the Flower Moon

I heard an interview with David Grann on NPR near the time that Killers of the Flower Moon was released, and wanted to read it immediately.  As so often happens, though, time got away from me.

Then E read it and suggested it as a possibility for our postal book club.  There was a catch: we have, historically, enforced a 250-page limit for postal book club books.  This rule was initially put in place to keep the pressure of the whole project low; no one would be getting a 1200-page doorstop that they needed to plow through.  We had previously considered making some exceptions for longer-than-250-page books if they were something that all three of us have on our to-read list, and Killers of the Flower Moon fit the bill.

I took it with me when S and I went to the Pacific Northwest for vacation.  It was both a great and terrible pick for that trip -- great, because it's fun to read a book on vacation that you just can't put down; terrible, because I got through it so quickly!

As the subtitle indicates, this is a look at a tiny piece of history which had far-reaching implications.  When the Osage Indians were being displaced from their land, they were resettled on property in Oklahoma that was rich with oil reserves.  Then, in the 1920s, Osage Indians with "head rights" (an ownership interest in the oil) started mysteriously dying.  Things came to a head when the then-newly-installed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover brought in a former Texas Ranger to investigate.

This book was fast-paced, readable, and fascinating.  It is everything I think of when people refer to "narrative non-fiction," which has always struck me as an odd description.  It's not a genre, exactly, but it does convey a certain propulsive plot, which this book has in spades.

My only complaint comes at the end, when the author delves into his personal efforts to locate additional victims; it seemed unnecessary and a little bit self-congratulatory in a way that I did not particularly appreciate.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Double Bind

I have heard good things about Chris Bohjalian for years.  For some reason, I never read any of his stuff.

I have read a lot of non-fiction lately, so in an effort to change things up and to right this wring about Mr. Bohjalian, I grabbed The Double Bind off my bookshelf.

I'm only a few dozen pages in, but so far it is proving to be a great pick!

Happy Birthday, S!

One year and three days ago, this happened:

He said that if I married him, that was the last birthday present I would ever have to give him.  The marrying was the best decision ever -- done and done!

What I Read -- H is for Hawk

I had heard so many wonderful things about H is for Hawk when it came out.  It was one of those books that made its way onto my list, but that I never got to.   Then one day, my friend C mentioned an interest in falconry, so I suggested this book to him.

He picked up a copy of it, but didn't make it too far before he decided he wasn't a fan; he passed it on to me to see if I liked it better.

It turns out that I did.  Which is not to say that I was a huge fan right away.  The author has an unusual cadence to her writing; it took me a third of the book to adjust to it, but once I did, I was on board.

My favorite parts of the book were her descriptions of the English countryside; it took me right back to being in Britain in the early spring -- cold, damp, miserable, but also beautiful.  In a damp way.  I also very much enjoyed learning a little bit about falconry, which is something I have exactly zero experience with.

What I found unexpected was the near-total lack of reference to the death of the author's father.  At the time of the book's release, all I heard about it was how deep it was as a recovery book -- her father died, she got a goshawk, and (poof!) problems were solved.  That was simply not the case.  Sure, her father's death starts and ends the book (with the assistance of medication), but most of it doesn't address that at all.

Even aside from that, though, I very much enjoyed the falconry and the Englishness of the whole endeavor!

What I Watched -- Mindhunter

S and I often don't have the patience to binge the same things.  We did, however, manage to plow through the first two seasons of Mindhunter on Netflix.

It's the based-on-a-true-story fictionalized tale of the beginning of the FBI's behavioral science division.  The agents used psychological research and profiling to study and understand what drove the 1970s serial killers, in an attempt to get a leg up on the next round of murderers.

It's a bit gruesome, but also fascinating.  And well acted, by a ensemble cast.

What I Watched -- Space Cowboys

Space Cowboys was one that was on both S's and my lists. It's not a new movie, and just knowing the cast makes it pretty predictable. 

That does not, however, mean that it wasn't quite amusing.  We both got a few good chuckles out of it.

The basic plot is that there's some stuff floating around in space that needs to be repaired.  The only person who has the  know-how is the guy who designed it, who now is a crotchety old man.  He agrees to go back to space to fix it, but only if he can take his whole team from back in the day with him.  Shenanigans ensue.

Bottom line: not deep, but enjoyable.

Goals 2019 -- September Edition

This month's goal is in three parts.  They are only loosely related.  Here's what we've got:

1. Drink more water.
     I have an app on my phone that reminds me to drink water.  I'm going to increase my daily goal by 25% over what it was previously.  And, just to be clear, I'm going to include all liquid intake.  Coffee or tea isn't water, but it's made from water, so that's good enough for me.

2. Get up when the alarm goes off.
     I've done this one before.  I used to obsessively hit the snooze button for 15 or 20 minutes.  I broke that habit last go-around.  I've been very tired lately and dying for a snooze button, but I have a different phone, and the shortest "snooze" option in the clock app is 10 minutes.  That's unacceptable.  But you know what else is unacceptable?  Just turning off the alarm and lying back down in bed!  That's what I've started doing lately.  So...no more of that.  Alarm = get out of bed.

3. Keep on a regular schedule.
     This is something inspired by K (whose goal is more ambitious than mine) and last month's journaling adventure.  I realized that, especially since I have not been getting up to ride my bike much lately, I have a totally different schedule on the weekends than I do on the weekdays.  And what's more, my weekend schedules are completely inconsistent even with each other!  Some days I'm up at 7:00, other days I sleep until 10:00.  (Which is a new development in the last year or two; not sure what's going on there, but apparently I'm reverting to teenage sleeping habits.)
     I want to make sure I still get enough sleep, but that means I just have to make sure to go to bed at a reasonable hour in order to keep some consistency for myself.  I'm not going to have as severe of a goal as K, whom I believe is going to try to keep her weekend wake-up time the same as her weekday; that's not going to work for me.  But I will try to keep them closer together, and at least keep the weekends consistent with each other.

Here's to us, improving!