Calendar Recycling
I normally buy my wall calendar in the second week of January as by this point they are usually 50% off. This year I decided to try something different. I have a really nice hiking calendar in my office showing people hiking in various locales around the world. Rather than buy a new one, I decided to staple a 2010 calendar page over each month of the year. The benefit of this is that I could pick the picture that I wanted displayed for a given month. In February, I decided to have a pick of a folks hiking in a spring-like setting rather suggested picture of folks hiking next to a frozen glacier. In the peak of the summer heat, I’ll switch to the arctic pictures to prep me for the colder months. The benefit is that I saved some cash on a new calendar and can now pick the scenery that I want for a given month.
Swing dancing innovations
This past weekend, I spotted something new on the sidelines of the dance floor. Chip, one of our dancers, who is a professional engineer has built himself a battery powered fan that is driven by ten “C” batteries. C-size batteries are the ones about twice the size of a fig newton or your thumb. Chip has mounted the batteries and the fan on a board which uses to cool himself between dances. The fan face is on a mount which means he can just the angle at which the gusts of air hit his body. I thought it was a cool concept but a little too geeky for me.
Finger socks
Today we are going to talk about my feet. Over the weekend, I stopped by a href=”http://www.blogger.com/mec.ca”Mountain Equipment Co-op /ato buy some new socks. They had some new socks — a href=”http://www.injinji.com/”Injinji /a– which are like the a href=”http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/”Five Fingers /aof socks. One of the ideas behind the Five Finger shoes is that they spread you toes apart so that each toe is allowed to carry its share of your body weight rather than being scrunched together with his pals. The Injinji socks use the same principle as each toes lives inside its own pocket. Like the Five Fingers fitting your toes into the Injinji takes a little bit of effort but once you put the sock on they are quite comfortable. I bought two pairs of white and black and will put them through there paces for the next little while. I am curious to see if I notice a difference when I go a run wearing them.
MacGyver moment
While on my run tonight I had a ibMacGyver /b/imoment. When I packed my running gear this morning I packed my large winter overpants. They are designed to be worn over a couple of layers. As I started out on my run they started to slide down. Every so often I would pull them up a bit. At the midpoint of run there is a span class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1224298917_0″construction site/span with miles of span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;” class=”yshortcuts” id=”lw_1224298917_1″yellow caution tape laying around/span. I grabbed a foot of tape and used it to secure my pants. My run back to the university was at a faster and more relaxed pace.
