Running a Marathon

I've never run a marathon, and the odds are that I never will. I had never even run the distance of a marathon in a week. Until yesterday, that is. I guess you could say that I completed a marathon in about 164:30:00, with lots of rest, sleep, and work breaks in between. If I run that distance next year in 6 days, and do it the following year in 5, maybe I'll be ready to do it in one day around 2013.

Is it the Mormons? The JWs? Worse, it's the Phone Company!

As I was running last night, I saw a few pairs of people walking around the neighbourhood with information, going door-to-door. They were all dressed in white shirts and dark pants. I wondered if they were the Mormons or the Jehovah Witnesses going around. Instead, it turned out to be the Phone Company. Or more precisely, independent contractors trying to get me to sign up for Phone Company services. In my case, their catch was to try to get me to sign up for high-speed Internet service. I thanked the lady for stopping by and asked if she could leave me some literature about the service for me to go over and contact them if I'm interested. Of course, this couldn't be done -- I had to sign up immediately or not at all. This effectively ended our the need for discussion, though we did chat for a while until the nice lady realised that I meant it when I said that I wouldn't sign up on the spot.

Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich

Someone I know is a fan of Evanovich and will read anything she puts out. So, when I saw one of her works available in the audiobook section of the library, I thought I'd give it a try.

I was not particularly impressed, though it got better as it went along.

The story involves everyone's favourite bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. It's nearing Valentine's Day, and her old pal Diesel shows up. A "relationship expert" has been arrested and skipped bail. Diesel makes a deal with Plum: if she fills in for the relationship expert, playing Cupid for her clients so that they'll find true love in time for Valentine's Day, Diesel will let Plum bring her in and get the bounty. So, the possibilities for slightly risqué humour abound as Stephanie travels between lovelorn characters. There's a small bit of a mystery or crime/suspense aspect to the story as well, but not much.

The book is short so I don't see the need for a long review. I hear that Evanovich's "Numbers" books are better and some of her fans weren't thrilled with this one. I'll give it two stars out of five, but I was considering a lower rating.

Have the Stock Markets Been Depressed Since 2001?

I've heard from more than one person lately that the stock markets have not done well since 11 September 2001, that they're afraid of investing in stocks because of the risk of another terrorist attack on the United States, and so on. I certainly wouldn't want to advise anyone to invest in an instrument that they're not comfortable with. However, when I hear such blanket assertions made about the stock market or baseball statistics, I wonder what the numbers really say, and decide to look it up.

I'm going with the most-recognized US market index, the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

10 September 2001 Close: 9605.85
18 September 2007 Close: 13739.39
Cumulative Annual Growth Rate Over this Period: 6.12%

I used the handy Excel XIRR function to compute this value. I don't think I've been able to compute this kind of math on my own since I was 18.

But what do the numbers show? What should the reader think of a 6.12% annual growth rate? Well, it is lower that the supposed long-term historic average. But on the other hand, I don't think it should be considered dismal. It seems within the expected historic range for a 6-year period, though I am not checking it against 6-year rolling returns. Maybe when my kids are a little older, I can give them assignments like this.

If you want to guarantee a better return than 6%, well, let me know how that can be done.

Cheerleading Pic

On Losing Weight

For better or worse, my weight has been fairly stable. If I make a moderate effort to watch what I eat, I don't easily gain weight. The down side of this is that, like many of us, it wouldn't hurt me to lose 5 kg or 10 lbs (OK, or more...). Unfortunately, losing weight isn't easy for me and I like food too much to make it happen.

I say this because, when seeing relatives like my parents or some siblings that I don't see daily or even weekly, I'll be told that I look like I'm losing weight. Or maybe I'll be asked if I lost some weight. They could have some "large" impressions of me, and seeing me brings them back down to size; I don't know.

Anyway, I had thought that this was just some kind of honest question. However, it's happened so much without corresponding weight loss that I am starting to wonder about it. Is it just some kind of polite greeting? Am I just being told, "You're not as fat as I thought you'd be"? Am I being rude (in my family at least) if I don't ask people if they'd lost weight in return?

Anton's Chekhov's Short Stories

I enjoyed my collection of Chekhov's short stories. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, as he was, after all, my favourite Star Trek character. To me, they seemed to have some of the feel of "real life" to them, which stands in contrast to other 19^th century works I've read. Chekhov isn't trying to answer questions about life. If anything, he's trying to raise them.

This lead to an interesting discussion with a Dickens fan, who seemed to like the structure of a Dickens novel, with its good guys and bad guys, beginning, middle, and end, morality, etc. Chekhov isn't like that at all. And, according to my friend, his style of writing was quite an innovation.

From my brief readings on the topic, there are two types of Chekhov stories: those in which nothing really happens in the end and those on which something does. One story that I liked was The Beggar, which can be read here. I won't say which of those two types The Beggar is. Actually, it isn't clear to me.

I may be forgetting someone, but at this point, I'll say that I think I liked Chekhov's stories better than anything I remember which was written in the 1800s. I recommend his works fairly highly, but I can see how some folks might not enjoy it as much as I did.