Issue #1: What would you do tomorrow if you knew you could not fail?

So as usual I’m running behind on things.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- timeliness is not my strong suit.  I’m practically bipolar when it comes to scheduling; at work everything has its appointed hour and I’m on time.  Outside of work… well let’s just say it will get done eventually.

So here we are, at Issue #1.   I didn’t get everything in that was mentioned in the preview post. In fact, in retrospect, I didn’t get any of it.  Instead, I got important stuff:  Content!  So there we go.  Twitter is gone, the moblog section still lives until I can find something else to go there, no new recipes made it into In the Kitchen, and the library section’s CSS still needs massive work.

Instead, enjoy the content.  You get new music, prelim new fitness stuffs, and two new hiking trails + photos.  The rest will come in due time (Issue 1.5?!)

Fitness for Dummy (me).

I think it’s safe to say that in this day and age, everyone wants to be fit.  Fitness is everywhere: people jogging, gyms on every corner, self help CDs, DVDs, books, magazines, personal trainers, you name it.  It’s not much of a stretch to say that our fitness crazy is driven by Hollywood either.  You see beautiful people on the screen, and you want to have the life they have.

On a deeper level however, fitness is more than just simple beauty jealousy.  It starts that way for most, but I think in many cases it ends up being more about being generally healthy overall.  Once you start, you can’t stop.  You get addicted to the endorphins and then.. there ya go.  Fitness is the new drug of America.

So here’s my testimony to my own fitness.  I was poking around on a random runner’s blog site the other day and he mentioned how much it helped him.  It gave him documented goals and an enormous support network of people who came by and encouraged him.  While I have my own support network in real life, I did want to be able to encourage others in their goals too.  I was already tracking my exercise, food, and weight routines via spreadsheet, but I decided to put it all together here.

Going forward, on the first of each month, I’ll be posting stats here.  While I try to exercise in some form or another (swimming, hiking, lifting, etc) at least 5 times a week, there’s no way I have time to update this site that often.   Once a month I’ll post the latest figures from my spreadsheets and we’ll see how we go from there.   Even though there won’t necessarily be a new issue every month, you can always click the fitness tab on the front page to see the latest post.

Katy Perry

I seem to have a fixation with female singers who play instruments.  It started with Meredith Brooks, romped right on past Avril Lavigne, paused briefly at Regina Spektor, and now we’re at Katy Perry.

I’ve listened through a bunch of her songs on Youtube, but to be honest the only two that impressed me were “I Kissed a Girl” and “Ur So So Gay”.  I think both of these are awesome: the music itself is catchy with a good beat, and the lyrics tell a story and are superb.  I just wish the other stuff I heard was as good as those two.  They’re not necessarily bad, but I don’t think they’re on the same level with those two.

Her YouTube channel is good, she does some video blogging as well.  It’s amazing (to me) that she comes across as “genuine” as she does, but I think that’s what helps sell her image/message so easily.  Either way, it comes across in her video blog and her songs, and I think it’s refreshing to see a non-manufactured entry into the music business.

Jeff Friend Trail, Centennial Trail, Pine Beach Trail - Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge

Park: Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge
Ammenities: Day use, only open during daylight hours.
Page: ??
Entrance fee: Free
Photos: Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge - Day 1, Bon Secour Wildlife Refuge - Day2

I did this park twice over two weekends, to hit all of the trails.  Day 1 was the Jeff Friend Trail and the Centennial Trail, and Day 2 was the Pine Beach Trail.

Day 1

I started out heading for the main trail for this refuge, the Pine Beach Trail and instead stopped when I saw the sign for the Jeff Friend Trail. I decided it was short (1 mile loop), so I’d do it first.

People hike for different reasons: exercise, just to be outdoors, bird / animal watching, photography, the reasons are countless.  The Jeff Friend Trail is just about only good for exercise, as it’s completely graveled so any sort of walking scares off any animal or bird that might be in the vacinity.

About halfway around I found a sign for the Centennial Trail, which is supposed to be a 2 mile trail between the Jeff Friend Trail and the Pine Beach Trail. It was a normal trail through the woods, so I decided “why not” and off I went. Apparently I had the bad luck all around to be out during the wrong time of day and the wrong season- about the only wildlife I saw was millions of lizards and a few birds.  I don’t really count the billion + stinging flies.

The trail was fairly flat and easy, and swaps between sand and dirt, but the area has a fairly high water table as it stretches the length of the very narrow Bon Secour penninsula. It’s so low in fact, that in some areas water was seeping up through the ground to make little saltwater ponds.   The water throughout seemed to be brackish, and there was even some fairly large bodies of standing water about a football field in size.

Overall, there just wasn’t that much to see.  I ended up being on the trail between 10 and 2, so most wildlife (if it was there) was hiding out.  It was also miserably hot, and no shade since most of the trees were broken off from hurricanes or fires over the years.  I understand the environmental value of wetlands, but they’re just not that fun to visit in summer.  I reached the Pine Beach Trail around 1, but turned around as it’s 80% sand and hiking boots just aren’t made for that.

Day 2

Since I had read that the Pine Beach Trail ends at the beach, this time I packed a back and decided to make a day of that.  I got there earlier (cooler!), so  the walk was pleasant and I ended up doing the beach section barefoot.  Some better pictures this time around, there was definitely better weather, but still not much in the way of wildlife.