This won't seem like much to you, but I have transferred my website to blog.joshbelville.com/ and I plan to figure out how to transfer my Substack posts here as well.

The reasons are the ones I give every time I bring this shit up: I’m consolidating. It seems insane to have a Substack AND a blog site. So I thought I’d just do a Substack. But I do like blogging from time to time–so I am here. The domain name will transfer in a few days.

It appears that WordPress has functionality for a newsletter function, and if I can get it to send only certain posts as newsletters, then I may do that and just move all my subscriptions to here, from Substack. We’ll see!

I hunted around for blogging site options and WordPress is just the best one, no contest. I’m trying to avoid Google as much as possible, so no Blogger. WordPress is owned by a corporation too, but at least the site itself is sleek and cool and the subscription options are reasonable.

So, there’s that. I’ll post more later.

really only remarkable because it was the day julius caesar was assassinated. there’s an ides every month, you know

Can you believe it’s March already? The Oscars just happened. The Chris Rock/Will Smith thing was at the last Oscars, which happened a year ago. Impossible. Someone is messing with time itself. When I find out who, there will be hell to pay. *cocks shotgun that I was holding this entire time*

What’s New, Pussycat?

Not a whole lot, Tom Jones. My friend Will has started up a D&D game using the Ghosts of Saltmarsh book. I think it’s his first time DMing? I’m playing a sentient skeleton bard named Skelly.

Skelly has glued a mustache and eyebrows to his skull and inserted two glass eyes into his eye sockets.

Imagine waking up in the middle of the night and that’s staring right at you.

We had our first session on Sunday and it was a good ol’ D&D time. Lots of mindless killing, which can be fun with the right group (read: psychopaths). I’m glad Will is taking on DMing, he’s got the rules lawyer bit nailed down because he is actual lawyer, now it’s time for him to stretch his narrative wings.

Meat for Cats and Dogs, the place where I get meat for my cat but not my dog, had its 18th birthday on the 4th. It was packed to the brim with folks.

Like, more people than I’ve ever seen in the store. So many people that I actually had a bit of an anxiety attack and had to leave. Well, it was that plus I discovered while I was in the store that I basically had no money, or less money than I thought I had at least, and couldn’t buy anything. That + loads of people + pervasive smell of dog breath was enough for me to grab one of the free treat goody bags and then head out. I did end up stopping by a couple of days later and got to chat with Heidi, the owner, which was great. She’s a good egg and I’m glad her shop exists!

Speaking of anxiety attacks, I had another full blown one on the 8th. It was weird! I have some anxiety but it never really peaks like it did then. I went down to King Harvest to get some breakfast and half-price hummus and while I was drinking coffee I realized my heart was beating like crazy. I looked down at my watch and it showed my heart rate at 100bpm—too high for just sitting at the computer working. I got up and walked around and tried to meditate and ended up laying in bed/on the couch for about 30 minutes until it passed. Not sure what caused it. I think some of it was running/fitness related; my knee and leg is a little messed up lately (more on that later) and I’m a little behind where I’d like to be. Probably a bit of existential crisis in there as well. Thankfully it lessened after a while and I didn’t drink coffee for the next two days, just to be safe.

That’s life, baby. Sometimes you’re on cloud nine, sometimes you’re on cloud -132.

T-Minus Two Months

My 40th birthday is in two months. I should do something fun for it but I can’t think of a damn thing. I rarely celebrate my birthday anymore besides maybe getting drinks with friends. I don’t even remember what I did last year, and forget about 2021 and 2020, they didn’t exist. But this year my b-day is on a Friday, which is perfect timing for Weekend Shenanigans.

It’s weird, I’m still unpacking my time living on 174th and how that’s generally affected my mental and emotional health, and my interpersonality. Is that a word? I’m not getting any red squiggly lines underneath it. My ability to interact and be around/with people. Like, I’ve never been an initiator at a party, for example. I’ve always been a person who bounces off of other people’s energy. It’s hard for me to instigate shit, in other words. I’m noticing this a lot at parkrun, where I will happily respond to people chatting with me but find it nearly impossible to strike up the conversation. I know why this is, to an extent; living out on 174th by myself sapped me of a lot of my self-confidence and that plus the pandemic sapped me of my self-worth as well. It’s coming back thanks to running and exercise, but now I’m trying to figure out how to be human again, among other people, where we’re not pretending to be fantasy characters in a tabletop role-playing game.

Anyway, I never ask for/expect presents on my birthday but I think it would be neat if, for my 40th, people who wanted to sent me D&D dice that they thought best represented me. Like, color and texture-wise. Like mood rings, except I can roll them. But I don’t just want to give my address out all willy-nilly and I certainly don’t want to pay for a PO Box for just a couple of months. I just like the idea of people who don’t play D&D navigating dice sets, stepping out of their comfort zone a little bit to find something that they think fits me as a person.

My Dumb Knee/The Shamrock Run

If you thought I was done running races, boy are you a stupid dumb person! Just kidding, you are lovely, please don’t go.

If you are interested in a deep dive on my time at the 45th annual Shamrock Run, feel free to check out ye olde blog, where I post about every race I run as well as other stuff that might be boring, I don’t know, who knows anymore.

Here’s a brief summary otherwise:

About a week or so before the run, or basically after the snow finally melted in Portland, I started getting some knee pain while running. Long story short, it’s probably my IT band acting up from overuse. Nothing terrible, the doc says, just rest it and ease up on mileage. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was running the Shamrock Run that weekend.

The Shamrock is arguably the first big weekend event in Portland, and it is PACKED. There were over 4,000 5k runners as you can see in the image above, and roughy 15,000 people ran it overall. That’s a lot of people! I ran a 5k and did alright; finishing under 40 minutes was good, but I really wanted to beat my first finish time in 2012, which was 38:28. The atmosphere was fun and lively as always, and they run a tight ship there. I signed up for the half marathon next year because A) I am insane, and B) it’s the absolute cheapest price for it right now. Had to.

Shamrock is perhaps a little too corporate now and has that feeling of as an event gets bigger, the rewards get smaller. A shame, but it is what it is.

Also, my knee/leg/body feel mostly fine. Nothing exploded or imploded or … sideploded. They hurt, don’t get me wrong. But not in a way where I feel like I really fucked up big time. Maybe fucked up tiny time. Nothing a little RICE won’t fix.

I have another 5k a week later (the 19th). The Couve Clover Run. There is an option to walk it and I may have to do that. Or just get a really awful time. We’ll see, I have two whole weeks after that to recover, which I absolutely will be doing. I’ll let you know one way or another!

Brief Oscar Thing

GREAT results. Happy for everyone who won, really, truly! Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan!, Brendan Fraser, Jamie Lee Curtis!, NAATU NAATU, Sarah Polley with the Best Adapted win, hell even Wakanda Forever, which was a boring film but did have great costumes. I was a little sad to see Banshees of Inisherin get shut out but that’s okay, I think Martin McDonagh et all will be alright.

A Video for You

This one’s slightly off my usual video path. I watch a lot of running videos now, particularly from The Running Channel, based in the UK. Great channel, lots of fun videos and the presenters are chill and it never feels like that sort of empty flash a lot of US videos have.

A couple weeks ago they released a video where one of their presenters, Sarah, just goes on a 5k run and that’s it. It’s labeled as ASMR but it’s not like tapping microphones or eating squelchy foods or any of that nonsense. For me it was great to see someone’s run from start to finish. I can’t run a 25 minute 5k to save my life right now, so I have no idea what it feels like to do so. So it’s cool to see someone else do it. Maybe you’ll enjoy it, maybe not

If you think that’s stupid, well, uhhhh, here’s a lady and her husband eating at celebrity chef restaurants in Las Vegas. Randomly popped up on my YouTube and it was fun to watch. (Apparently she is very popular on YT with almost 10 million followers, and I had no idea she existed until now. The internet is weird.)

Okay Bye

See you in a couple weeks! I really should work on my send offs.

Until next time … This is Josh Belville.

Hmm.

And that’s the news, with Josh Belville.

One more.

Oops, I farted, Josh Belville.

this one’s for real!

Well, it snowed in ol’ Portland town, and not one of those “snow in the morning, melt by noon” type-a snows. No, this one stuck. Flurries and whatnot. Many friends of mine were sharing stories on Instagram of them being stuck in traffic. Icy roads, schools shut down. General mayhem on the streets. Fortunately, I was able to drive to the grocery store and back and didn’t have to resort to killing and eating my neighbors. A shame; some of them look pretty tasty.

News & Updates

Really not much going on over here. Same old, same old. Livin’ the dream! Etc. Etc. I run a lot now. I’m getting pretty good at making stir fry. Like, not “wok with intensely high heat” levels of good, but you know. Pretty good.

Best Picture 2023 Showdown

I’ve done it. I’ve seen all the Best Picture nominees this year. Every single one.1 I would like to at this point rate them in order of best to worst, in my humble opinion. As always, you can follow my film reviews on Letterboxd if you really want to catch my opinions hot off the press. The press of viewing the movie, I mean. … Right after I finished the movie, is what I’m saying.

1. Banshees of Inisherin

   This and #2 are actually tied for 1st. If either one of these wins the Oscar, I will be happy. They are so diametrically opposed in terms of style and structure and theme, but so brilliant in their own ways. I love Martin McDonagh’s work to death, but EEAtT (EEEAAATT) is just so wild and weird and wonderful that I can’t pick one over the other. They are lovely and excellent in their own ways.

2. Everything Everywhere All the Time

   See 1.

3. Women Talking

   This movie was the most recent Best Picture film I saw, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I don’t think enough people will watch this film, and they should, especially men. It’s one of those movies in the vein of 12 Angry Men—people having to argue through a problem, which reveals their characters and intentions, except this is definitely made with a more artistic flair. Great stuff.

4. Tár

   I’m not even sure how to describe this movie. On Letterboxd I said it was like “Whiplash on quaaludes.” It was a slow burn for me to enjoy it but once I was in I was in to the end. I could see how this would not be everyone’s favorite though, it was one of those films where I had to put my smartphone down and actually sit and pay attention. (For the record, I pay attention to films, I just also … sometimes look at my phone too.)

5. All Quiet on the Western Front

   This film deviates from the book a bit but really captures the uselessness of war. I was supposed to read the book in high school but I didn’t, but I know the gist of the differences and I’m okay with it. Adding the return to the village part would’ve made the film akin to The Hurt Locker (go to war, come back and civilian life is not the same, go back to war), which was a great movie which won Best Picture, so maybe this film felt the need to explore a different aspect of filmmaking—the gruesome trenches juxtaposed with the gruesome politics. The war scenes are as without mercy as Saving Private Ryan, even more so at parts (compare and contrast the knife scenes, for instance). One of those “only need to watch it once” type of movies though, unless you’re one of those dudes who fuckin’ looooves war movies, in which case this movie’s point has probably gone over your head.

6. Top Gun: Maverick

   Speaking of dudes who fuckin’ loooove war movies … this is the film for you! I appreciate Tom Cruise’s adherence toward realism in his movies, with the cast flying their own jets and all. It’s also a film that knows exactly what it is and delivers on that. You know what you want to see, it knows what you want to see. Funny how shirtless dudes playing volleyball changed to shirtless dudes playing football though. What, is volleyball gay now? Sorry Tom, but I bet the gays love the shirtless dudes playing football too.

7. Triangle of Sadness

   This movie has an absolutely batshit crazy Act 2, with some stuff that genuinely shocked me and also made me laugh out loud. I do think it goes slightly overboard with its message (we get it, rich people suck), but I appreciate the near-absurdity the movie brings. Could’ve been shorter, and I didn’t like the somewhat abrupt ending. But I hope to see Dolly de Leon in more stuff! (Also, RIP Charlbi Kriek, who didn’t even get to see her film’s premiere.)

8. The Fabelmans

   Look, I know Spielberg is schmaltzy and all but this was like eating a Warhead made out of schmaltz. I really wasn’t into this film, even with the amazing final scenes. I may have to watch it again sometime though because I feel like the ending was a bit of an Adaptation moment. Regardless, I wasn’t a fan of the performances anyway and truly wonder what the deal was with Michelle Williams’s character. That coupled with Tony Kushner’s dated dialogue that made me feel like I was watching a play from 1994 was enough for me.

9. Elvis

   Only Baz Luhrmann could take a fascinating character like Elvis Presley and make him the side character to his fucking manager. Who, to be fair, is an interesting guy too, but Baz doesn’t really even do a lot with him either. This movie is a maximalist nightmare. Austin Butler makes a great Elvis though, and there are some good scenes with him, sandwiched between just atrocious flamboyant nonsense. Baz perfecting the kitchen sink directing approach but failing to present Elvis fucking Presley as an interesting character. This film really feels like maybe Elvis was actually kind of boring most of his life and Baz had to spice it up so Gen Z wouldn’t review bomb him on Rotten Tomatoes or something.

Well, that’s it! I hope Banshees or Everything wins.

Providence Heart to Start

Hey guess what I did a 5k again. Here’s my blog post about it:

Another month, another 5k. This was the Providence Heart to Start, part of the Hood to Coast … family? of events? Collective of jaunts? I don’t know. It took place at Cook Park in Tigard, Oregon, about 20 miles southwest of Portland. It was a lovely day for running, overcast, temperature in the mid 40s, the tiniest sprinkle of rain at times.

Getting here was easy, so I don’t have to belabor you with any commute issues. Cook Park is lovely and has lots of trails that I would like to walk on someday, but today is not that day! Today we race!

Atmosphere was chill, not a lot of people for this race. Sometimes races feel like a Big Deal (Shamrock Run) and others feel like a group of folks getting together for a thing (Tar n Trail). This one was kind of in the middle. There was a kids run before the 5 and 10ks, so lots of little warblers running around.

When I got my bib a couple days before, there was no swag. I think there were free passes to one of the big athletic stores, but neither of the women at the station were like “Here these are free things,” so I just left with my bib. At the event though, they had a few bits of free stuff, which included:

• Protein bars. Lots of different kinds of protein bars,

• A stress ball in the shape of a heart (remember, this race is for heart health),

• A pin that read, “Think With Your ❤️”, which, I’ll be honest, I personally think is a bad idea,

• A beer or seltzer after the run (10 Barrel Brewing IPAs or Michelob Ultra Seltzer, to be precise). Probably could’ve had a lot of beers/seltzers if you wanted to, I dunno,

• Bottle openers (there were no bottled beers or seltzers, only cans).

I think that was it. Not too shabby, but not my favorite group of swag. Again, I really do think you should think with your 🧠, not your ❤️. Lots of bad decisions have been made thinking with your ❤️.

Anyway, the Big Discrepancy! I started Strava right at the start line and I had this corroborated with two friends of mine who were at the race: the race was likely only 3 miles [but probably was actually a full 5k, read on]. I know, I know. Please sit down. We’ll get through this, together.

When I passed the finish line, Strava showed 3 miles, so I stopped briefly to grab my medal and then started running again, to pick up the other .11 of a mile, but was flagged down by a guy who needed the chip tag thing on the bottom of my bib, so I gave that to him and then proceeded to run the additional .11 of a mile. Ultimately, what I’m trying to say is that I think my time would’ve been slightly faster if I didn’t have to stop. I’m not mad at the event for short changing us a 5k, but it is frustrating to get your results and see that they are 38:01, only to discover that that’s your 3 mile result.

Although … if you reverse calculate a 12:15/mi pace (which is on my official results) into a pace calculator, for a 5k, the result is 38:04. So … maybe Strava fucked up on this one. WOULD NOT SURPRISE ME. I wonder if Strava gets nervous out in the woods or something? I mean, chip time is literally just the time between when you cross the start line and when you cross the finish line. I can’t imagine it being out of whack, especially since it’s a company that has set it all up and whose job is to set up chip timers. I think Strava’s GPS just screwed up somewhere.

Either way, I’m taking the chip time. 38:01! A very good run!

Running-wise, I think I did pretty good. Obviously we can’t completely rely on the damn Strava app for this, but we’ll use it anyway.

I really hoofed it out the gate, mainly to get around all the slow people walkers. The “track” was a thin concrete trail, maybe 5ft wide at most, and was a nightmare to deal with for the first 8th of a mile. A lot of us ended up running around in the grass, and I think I ran on some parts where plants usually grow, which probably was a bad idea. The start of the race is always a clusterfuck like this, but this one seemed especially annoying. I appreciate the Shamrock Run, which organizes runners based on their pace, with slower runners towards the back.

I only stopped three times, with the longest gap being a suddenly sharp hill that I absolutely did not want to run up or down. You can also see that dip at the end of mile 3, where the race ended [which was probably actually 3.11 miles, maybe]. Annoying. Meanwhile, when I run my pace is all over the place, which is something I’d like to work on, but I’m glad that the difference between the first mile and the third mile is only little more than a minute. That’s progress; my first mile pace at Race for Warmth was 11:53, while the 3rd mile was 14:13, a 2:20 difference. Slow and steady wins the race, as they say.

The weirdest part was at the end: when I decided to run the extra .11 of a mile, I felt like I could keep going. That’s dangerous territory, folks. That’s long run territory. Maybe we’ll talk about that some other time.

A very good idea I did before the race was massage my feet, specifically my left foot. Doing this virtually eliminated the numb foot I’ve been getting around mile 2. Plus it just felt good! I also moisturized my feet a couple days ago. This was nice, but I think it also made my feet slightly slippery this morning. Could be my imagination though. My feet were happier with me overall though, which was good!

After the race and the little extra run I chatted with a friend and commiserated over Strava, and then I went to the taqueria truck that was making burritos and ordered a big and delicious chorizo burrito with the works and a champurrado. I always forget how weird champurrado is. It’s good, just different. Could’ve gotten a horchata, but a warm drink felt like a better option.

And then I drove home! The end. See you at the Shamrock Run!

Thing 4 U

I binged through the Taskmaster episodes on YouTube and was disappointed when season (sorry, series) 12 ended at episode 6. They finally have started releasing new episodes, every week I believe, and FINALLY are releasing series 13. If you haven’t seen Taskmaster, you owe it to yourself. It’s brilliant. I’ve linked series 13 but obviously if you have never seen it, start with series 1!

The End

When next we meet, I will have ran my first Shamrock Run in 5 years! Also, it will be the Ides of March! Remember those? Caesar did! Ta for now.

Well, only three people voted on my newsletter poll, but two voted for shorter, more frequent newsletters, so I guess I’ll do that. I don’t think I have it in me for once-a-week posts, but I think twice a month will suffice. I’m not interesting enough for once-a-week posts. I’m barely interesting enough for once a month! Anyway, check your local email inboxes and the sides of industrial-area porta-potties on the 15th and the end of each month. I promise to be just as boring as always!

Big Congratulations

To the Kansas City Chiefs for winning the Super Bowl. Not a lot of people know this, but now that they’ve won, the Chiefs get one free name change from anything that’s not appropriating Native American culture. Normally this costs millions for rebranding, but for the Chiefs—this one’s on us! Big win!

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, win or lose, they’ve destroyed the city.

It’s Tuesday (I’m in Love [with These Bagels!])

Tuesday was Valentine’s Day. I am so absolutely emotionally and mentally disconnected from that holiday at this point that I don’t know what to think about it, other than chocolate. Chocolate and hearts, and little chalky heart candies.

That sounds harsh—is Josh Disconnected from Love™?!1—but it’s more like, Love is over there and I’m over here, putting a new GPU in my computer. I still love things. I love my cat! I love my family and my friends. I’ve got a least half of those Greek love types down. But the one you find over a candlelit dinner, the one that makes you eager to put genitals up against genitals and cook breakfast for them the next morning … that’s over there, sitting and staring at me like a creepy doll in the attic.

As I near the end of my fourth decade of life2 I have become a male spinster—a spinstro, if you will—and I’m laaargely fine with that. Like, 85% fine. The last couple of years I’ve been trying to take care of myself, after falling off the Wagon of Life, which was crossing a narrow, rickety bridge at the time, and at the bottom was, like, a pit of spikes, Prince of Persia style.

Dating hasn’t really been on my mind. I mean, it has, clearly, but not with any sense of urgency. I’ve been thinking about it, and might even get back into it soon, but like I said above—I’m workin’ on me now. I feel like once I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t going to be having kids (sorry mom, sorry dad), the idea of being with someone felt less necessary. I still like having a significant other, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t feel like I need to get married and have kids and protect my lineage or anything like that. Matt had the kids, I’m going to have a cat and too many video games and D&D dice.

Thankfully, I used To Good to Go again last week to buy some day-old bagels from Henry Higgins for $5, which I am still eating. The really load you up on bagels there, it’s nuts. Best of all, they’re mostly everything bagels. Hot diggity. Great app, highly recommend it. This part really has nothing to do with Valentine’s Day or love or anything. I just really love bagels.

I’m Taking Over for Marie Kondo

2023 has been my year of getting rid of stuff, which I guess Marie Kondo isn’t doing anymore. I’ve sold some things, I’ve donated some thing, and I’ve left some stuff in the little “free pile” nook in the trash room of my apartment building. I finally donated a ton of electronics to FreeGeek, which I’ve been meaning to do for ages. My old behemoth computer case for instance, the Antec-DF85, an absolutely stupid computer case—as tall as a toddler and probably weighed as much, had eleven fans, all with RGB but only glowed a demonic red. Ah, 2011, how I missed you.

I’m trying to downsize and let go of things that I no longer need. This has actually meant buying stuff, such as a smaller computer desk, so I can get rid of the giant gaming desk that I don’t really need. (I ended up throwing the desk in recycling because the screws had stripped the particle board so much that they were useless.) Gaming accessories are so fucking dumb. It’s all giant, dumb, RGB-lit nonsense. Gaming chairs are made to resemble race car seats, which, when you think about it, makes no sense whatsoever. I saw a post on Reddit years ago where a guy made a gaming chair out of an old Honda Civic car seat and that’s a gaming chair, folks. Something you can sit in for hours on end! Not a chair that usually has a protective cage of metal around it.

Anyway, it feels nice to get rid of stuff. I like donating things. I hope some low income person gets to use my old Chromebook, or a kid in a poor family gets my old GPU installed in a refurbished computer or something. Pay it forward and such. It feels weird to get rid of some stuff though. I gave away my Optimus Prime Transformer, the one I bought on one of my last days working at Hastings. Which means it’s been around for around fifteen years. I’m not going to toy-shame here, but I will say that I think my era of having toys is coming to a close. Don’t worry, I just replaced them with D&D dice and fantasy coins. I’m not saying I’ve de-nerdified myself, I’ve just changed directions.

Running Update

Some neat updates. Parkrun #4 (42:14, 13:36/mi) went well, but for parkrun #5 (39:47, 12:48/mi) I finally ran a 5k under 40 minutes! That’s a big goal for me. It’s very strange because I rode for 11 miles the day before and then ate an entire frozen pizza and two bags of chips. I thought I would be garbage at that parkrun, but instead I did better, which of course means I should be eating frozen pizzas and chips more often.

I’ve been running a mile non-stop on my workout runs, and running longer/faster at the track. Also been doing strength training again to strengthen my legs, which need it badly. My legs giving out is the biggest factor currently; my breath is fine, my core is mostly solid. It’s just that my legs feel like they’re dying and I have to stop so I don’t fall over. But, if parkrun and my track runs are any indication, I’m doing way better than I think I am.

Here, Watch/Listen to This

Let’s get down to brass tacks: a lot of “DJs” show up on my YouTube feed. I like music, and I like house/EDM music, so I get these videos of DJs, almost all of whom are very attractive women playing those Pioneer MP3 DJ turntable things, the ones that don’t have vinyl but you can still manipulate the track like it’s vinyl.

And look, I know, and you know, that attractive people can be talented. We see it all the time on TV and in movies. But there’s something about the glut of hot women DJs on my YT feed that makes me think that maybe, maybe, some of them are just hot women pretending to DJ and just being hot for views. Maybe! It’s fine, because the playlists are pretty good and the women are hot. Dopamine, folks. It just works.

With that in mind: Gia Fu is a hot woman who plays salsa music on actual turntables and she is very good at it. I think I caught her on My Analog Journal? Or maybe one of its offshoots. This type of YT video—people playing eclectic music on turntables and it’s just a cool groove—is great. I highly recommend getting these videos to pop up in your algorithm.

The End

That’s all. Life is coasting along. Hope you ate some conversation hearts.

Hi friends. I just realized I could make a poll and I’d like to know your thoughts on this newsletter.

Would you prefer:

A) One long newsletter every month, or

B) One shorter newsletter every week or two weeks

So far every monthly newsletter has hit the email limit mark, which I don’t mind, but maybe you do! But I also suspect that the longer the newsletter, the less of it is read. So let’s see how you feel.

Vote below!

alternate title: josh talks about running too much now

February approacheth, and it’s about time again for that sneaky fucker Phil to tell us if he saw his shadow or not. Are we really judging the future of winter based on a creature’s lack of object permanence? Why couldn’t it be Pittsburgh Phil or something that people know how to spell? Honest to god, what is up with this little shit?

If you raised me up that high, I don’t know that I’d be able to tell my shadow from anyone else’s, guy! Also, why are you wearing a top hat? That groundhog looks like he is so done with this gig.

I love Groundhog Day. Great movie. The type of movie 32 year old film school dropouts on YouTube call a “masterclass on” whatever they need to say to get you to click on their video. But it’s also kind of a sad movie to me, because it was the movie that caused Bill Murray and Harold Ramis to stop talking to each other for 20 years, until Ramis was on death’s door. Apparently Murray is a huge asshole, so it’s not surprising that he would stop talking to someone he didn’t like, but it’s still hard for me to watch this film, knowing that the two were about to cut ties after it was over.1

Anyway. These are the thoughts January gets you, folks.

parkrun

Hey, so my old high school classmate and friend Annie, who lives in Jolly Olde England these days, told me about parkrun recently. I was getting back into running (which I won’t stop talking about, jesus christ) and posted about it on Instagram and Annie was nice enough to DM me and let me know about parkrun!

Parkrun is a free 5k run or walk that lots of people in the UK do every Saturday at around 9am. It started in England but has since moved to all over the world, mostly in western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, and a smattering in America and Canada. There’s one on the Falkland Islands, which also appears to be the southernmost parkrun. The northernmost one appears to be in Oulu, Finland.

Most of the parkruns in the U.S. are on the east coast, which is not surprising, cause ain’t no damn Commie lefty bastard gonna make me get out of my 2014 Dodge Ram and ruin my pristine TRUMP 204EVER cowboy boots I bought at the Maverik on Chinden2 to take one step anywhere that ain’t closer to the brisket line at a Golden Corral, you hear me?!

However! There is a parkrun in Portland! Well, Somerset West. Which isn’t even a city as far as I can tell. This is Suburbs Territory, people. “Unincorporated Community” territory. They don’t do cities here, okay? These people left the cities, to get away from the riffraff and the copious amount of drugs everyone is doing right on the city streets! I’ve seen it, Margaret! A man, filthy and ragged, sitting on the curb, putting a needle straight into his arm! Land’s sakes!

So, for the past three weeks, I’ve been driving out to the Rock Creek Trail parkrun site in the morning to go for a run with a gaggle of other people. It’s fun! The trail itself is lovely, a sort of wetlands area nestled between … suburbs. Really, on all sides, suburbs and upscale apartment complexes. It’s not as bad as it could be, but it does have a creeping NIMBY aspect to it.

There are milestones for going to a certain number of runs (25, 50, 100, etc) or volunteering. You can buy special milestone gear, which is cool. You also get a barcode that gets scanned after every run, which keeps your times and some other stats on their website!

If you’re a runner, I highly recommend seeing if there’s a parkrun near you. There probably isn’t, just be aware. There isn’t one in Boise, which is insane to me. I think a lot of them in the U.S. are started by UK expats, and something tells me there aren’t a lot of UK expats in Idaho who also like to run. Though there isn’t one in NYC OR LA OR Chicago, which blows my mind. Anyway, they’re so chill and everyone is cool and it doesn’t feel haughty or overly pretentious at all. Just some folks looking to get some exercise together. Try it out!

Blazers Game

At the company holiday party last month, the very same which gave me COVID-19, I won the karaoke contest and got tickets to see the Blazers in my boss’s seats which are very close to the court. Just close enough to be good seats, but not one row closer, where you get food and drink service. Ah well.

I went with my friend Ryan because he is a huge Blazers fan and if I’m going to watch a sport I have little interest in, I’m taking someone who is far more interested in it, so I can watch them. Study them.

Here’s Ryan and me in 2016:

And here we are, seven years later:

Well, okay, this is from BeReal and Ryan’s head got cut off. It makes it look like I went there myself and tried to take a selfie with a random person beside me. I assure you that that is not the case.

Anyway, the Blazers won and Damian Lillard scored 60 points and is now the 5th(?) highest scorer of three points or something like that. I’m not a huge fan of basketball but I know how hard it is to get the thing in the dang hoop, and Dame can do it pretty much anywhere at the three point line. In fact I think he only missed one three pointer the entire game. Guy’s a beast.

Anyway when the game was over we went to the Matador and got nachos and beer. The end! Worth the covid!3

Another Gosh Darn 5k

Get used to these, I’m running one every month. Hey, YOU signed up for this newsletter, buddy! You knew what you were getting into.

I ran the Race for Warmth on the 29th. This was in Vancouver, WA. The Couv, baby. This is from my blog.

*sports announcer voice* “And oh what a race for warmth it is today, Todd!”

“That’s right, Jerry, it’s colder than a witch’s tit out here.”

“It’s colder than the balls on a brass monkey.”

“It’s cold as fuck Jerry!”

This morning I left my apartment at around 8:15 am. The Portland air was crisp and cold. I drove to Vancouver, Washington, which took about 15 minutes. I then parked at a high school parking lot. Upon exiting the vehicle, I discovered that Vancouver was WINDY AS HELL.

And that was my opening impression of the Race for Warmth, a 5/10k out in the Couv, put on by Clark (County) Public Utilities to benefit Operation Warm Heart which helps low-income families pay their heating bills during the cold months (or just in general, I guess). The race began and ended at the Clark Public Utilities building, which is right off the I-5 bridge, making for an easy trek. The packet pickup the day before was a drive through event, which reminded me a lot of when I got the covid vaccine, except this time I got the vaccine of … future exercise. How about that.

The “swag bag” (remember when swag was a thing the youths would say?) consisted of some free and discount coupons, two tickets to see a Ridgefield Raptors baseball game in June (hell yeah, why not), and one of those emergency blankets and a hand warmer, which I think people used during or before the race but seems to be more intended for an emergency kit for your car.

The atmosphere of the event was great. It wasn’t too crowded, everyone was fucking freezing, and there were a couple of tents with free stuff. Relevant Coffee provided the morning bean juice, which was very good. They also gave away a $5 gift card in the swag bag, which I fully intend to use in the future. Meanwhile, a tent for Why Racing Events gave away some stuff, including my favorite free thing, some old PDX carpet sunglasses. They had some other stuff too that I totally forgot to grab.

They seem to do a lot of triathlon races but also noticed I was wearing my Shamrock Run hoodie and suggested I run sign up for their version, the Couve Clover Run, which happens a week after the Shamrock Run. Maybe I will, Why Racing Events … maybe I will.

(Side note: I always thought it was “Couv,” not “Couve.” Both are colloqualisms, so who cares, but maybe I ought to trust the Washingtonians.)

The tent next to theirs was for NW Personal Training, also based in Vancouver. They gave out INCREDIBLY HELPFUL drawstring bags so I could carry all of my free shit. This was very good. Also, some sunglasses and the Weirdest Free Thing, a license plate frame.

Lastly, there were Franz cookies, which of course were delicious.

As for the race itself: I did good! I managed to run the entire first mile without stopping, which was one of my two goals for the race. According to Strava, my first mile was 11:44 and I was a 25:33 for two miles, both of which are current PRs. I knew running the first mile like I did would cause me to lose energy toward the end. My pace dropped pretty significantly during miles two and three, which is not really what I want, but I wanted to go faster overall and I guess I made that sacrifice.

My other goal was a sub 40 min 5k, which I didn’t hit, but I think I was only about a minute over. My Strava time was 40:54, but that was for 3.07 miles because Strava does that sometimes. I thought I started the app with ample time to hit 3.1 but I guess not! Regardless, I think that’ll be about my chip time. If there was a gun time, it will be about a minute or so slower, because the start was a goddamn choke point, and also because there were a surprising amount of people walking. It was a walk/run event but it seemed like most people around my area were walkers. Ain’t nothing wrong with that, except it was like running through a minefield trying to dodge walkers left and right.

There were some slight uphills along the way, which I tried to run every time. You won’t get better at running inclines unless you actually run them. My grandaddy told me that once. (This is untrue.) Also a nice stretch along the Columbia River and this Vancouver Waterfront section that I think is fairly new. I don’t remember the drive into Vancouver being so nice. Is Vancouver nicer than Portland now? That would be wild.

So, for next time, I think the goal is to actually slow down my first mile pace so that my second and third miles are steadier. Like, if they’re all 13 minutes, that would be great, plus I’d get under 40 minutes. I think the adrenaline of running a race with people made me start out a lot faster. But who knows? Maybe in a month or two from now, 11:44 will be my 5k pace. Here’s hoping.

After the race there was an after party with a live band (god bless you musicians for playing in the cold), some turkey stew which was alright, cans of Michael Bubly, and more cookies. I had a sit and ate my stew and then promptly left. One of these days I’ll make some runner friends, but today is not that day!

Overall, a nice race that I would absolutely run again next year.

See you in a couple weeks for the Providence Heart to Start!

What Else is New?

Not much, honestly! I’m just an Exercise Dude now, I guess. I bought a new GPU for my computer. If you’re a real poindexter you can read about it on my blog. Nerd!

Videos for You

To be honest, I’ve always been kind of a distant fan of dodie. I liked her YouTube videos and generally thought her music was alright (and, to be very honest, I mostly thought she was very cute), but this Tiny Desk Concert got me on board the dodie train. Absolutely lovely set.

Oh, you know, just the Radiohead album In Rainbows done with music from the Nintendo 64. Completely average, normal sort of thing. It’s actually very good, and some stuff sounds weirdly remarkable in the N64 soundscape. The opening of “Nude” could totally be used for some background music in a point-and-click adventure, I think.

I’ve been on a Phoebe Bridgers kick lately. I also recently discovered that she has shown her boobs on Playboy. These two items are related. Anyway, her music is great and her boobs are great too! #FreeTheNipple!

The End

These are always so damn long. Let me know if you’d prefer a weekly version or something. Either way, see you next month!

not really, but maybe? no, probably not. but kinda!

January is on its way, and you know what that means: it’s the new year. What, did you think I was going to make a little joke there? Look, January is nothing to joke about. It is a very special month. BOTH of my older brothers were born in January. An insurrection happened on January 6th—which is also my brother Matt’s birthday! I’m not saying that Matt had anything to do with the insurrection, by the way. As far as I know, he did not participate in it as some sort of birthday present to himself. He hasn’t returned my phone calls though since the event, but I’m sure he’s just a busy guy.

I’ve decided to post these at the end of the month, rather than the beginning of the month, to better act as an encapsulation of what I’ve been up to. So here you go. You’re welcome! Please, don’t send $100 to my Venmo account, I know you’re glad to have this newsletter but $100 is — wait, $200? You want to send—? No, please, that’s too much!

Hey Josh Didn’t You Have a Podcast Thing—?

LEAVE ME ALONE

I GOT THE COVID

Whoops. I went to the company holiday party on 12/17 and me and a bunch of other people got covid. I officially tested positive on the morning of December 21st, after a fitful night’s sleep due to a low grade fever. I’m writing this ten days later and I still have lingering congestion. It’s been a long time since I’ve been sick, especially with a fever. I didn’t like it and I don’t recommend covid to anyone, even if you’re vaccinated and boosted. Sore throat, fever, cough, and phlegm that occasionally appeared in my throat like it was choking me. Plus a lot of fatigue and aches and some chills. Was not fun. I’m doing better every day but today, for example, I had to go downstairs to pick up a delivery and walking back up the four flights of stairs to my apartment was a nightmare.

There’s nothing worse to the self-sufficient man than illness. I had to ask friends for help with simple tasks, which I hate. I needed groceries and asked my friend Ryan to buy some necessities for me (including NyQuil and cough drops, which were insanely helpful, thank you Ryan). The problem with those moments of no longer being self-sufficient is that I realize how little I help people in the same sorts of ways. I’ve had conversations with my therapist about how I help my friends in other ways, but it still nags at me that I am capable of certain things and nearly incapable of others. The truth is that I don’t want to help others all the time, I want to do my own things in my little hermit cave, which requires self-sufficiency; without it, I rely on people for even the basics, which means, to me, that I owe them. My therapist reminds me: “They don’t necessarily think you owe them though.”

Anyway, covid ruined any and all holiday plans I had this year, which absolutely is the worst. Do not recommend.

2022 Wrap Up

Aside from the glaring shittiness that was my father being in the hospital for around three weeks (he’s home now, and doing much better too), as well as the shittiness of having covid during Christmas, 2022 turned out to be a pretty alright year. In fact, compared to years past, it was very good for me. Lots of progress and upward momentum.

In the beginning of the year I learned that I did not, in fact, have the genetic mutation which my brother Matt has, which means I don’t have an increased likelihood of developing colorectal cancer. (At least, not more increased than the general increase people seem to have in modern times.) This was great news! A huge load off my shoulders.

In March, my dad celebrated his 80th birthday and I traveled to Idaho to visit him and my family. It was nice to be back as I hadn’t been back home since the pandemic started. Got to visit the war museum in Nampa and see some of my grandpa Jack’s memorabilia. He was a good man.

Over the spring and summer I started getting more and more into dedicated walks every day, which eventually spurned my renaissance of running. In June I acquired BIG TV. (Big TV is Good.) And then in October I had my first 5k race through Mt Tabor Park, which began what has become a rejuvenation into the world of the exercise, cut a bit short due to covid, but I’ll be damned if I let this disease keep me from exercising.

It was also my first full year in my apartment, which has been a very good apartment to me. Arguably one of my best living situations, and I sincerely hope they don’t raise my rent by a crazy amount.

And during all that time: near constant Dungeons & Dragons playing. Can’t hate that.

2023 is shaping up to be a good year. I have 5k races planned for every month and I even plan on running a half-marathon by the end of the year. The only part of my life that’s not great is my love life, which is arguably non-existent. But I think I just needed some time to work on myself, especially during this global pandemic, which has screwed my brain right up. So hopefully that will change as well. Or I’ll just be a hermit forever with a cat, which could be worse.

Every Park in Portland

A thing I tried to do in 20…16? 2017? was to visit every park in the city of Portland. I had a Tumblr set up and everything, with little blurbs and photos of the parks. Then I deleted Tumblr and didn’t make a backup for some reason.

Well, since I’ve been more active lately, I decided to reset and restart my project. You can read the blurbs here if you’d like, on me ol’ bloggo. British people should call blogs “bloggos.” Or, Australians, really. That’s a very Australian thing to say. “Bloggo.” Anyway, this isn’t something I’m going to finish in a year or anything, it’s just that this time I won’t forget to make a backup of my entries this time. Check it out!

The Inaugural Josh Belville Christmas 5k Extravaganza

Here’s the story: a couple months ago I missed the signup for the December Holiday Half. At the time I thought, Oh that’s alright, I’ll just run my own 5k in December. So I’d have a 5k every month, right? Ain’t no progress without repetition.

In between then and now, my leg was giving me some serious guff. What with the hurting and the muscle seizing up and whatnot. By the end of the November my revised thought was, You know? I think I’ll just rest my legs until next year.

Then, a week ago I decided to incorporate strength training into my exercise routine. Specifically, I started a bodyweight routine I found on the goddamn Red Bull website. To be fair, these were exercises you could find on hundreds of websites, but the fact that I found one I liked on the Red Bull site was funny to me.

So cut to yesterday: I’m up, I’m feeling energized, I think, Hey, let’s go to the track and run a couple of laps. I figured I would run a mile or until my leg started hurting, then call it a day.

I get to the track. There are always soccer games happening on the weekends, I think high school games? So there was a nice gaggle of people to make the experience feel wholesome. And I ran. And I ran two laps entirely (three laps is about a mile). The third lap I ran 75% of. At that point, after hitting a mile, my leg was feeling a little stiff, but otherwise fine, and I decided to keep going, splitting the track 50/50 for running and walking. When I got to mile two, I realized I could do 5k. So I did! That’s the end of the story.

My time was a full five minutes (and twelve seconds) faster than the Turkey Trot. I am amazed by this. My pace was 1:47 faster. I attribute this to the 50/50 splits, because when it got to the running portion, I pushed myself to run as fast as I reasonably could. Definitely going to incorporate this into future runs because I think it was very successful.

I also side note own a Pixel Watch now so I was able to track my BPM as I ran. I was, as you might say, running a bit hot, especially with those running splits. I think my highest was around 170, going down to about 130-140, then back up, etc etc. Not terrible but I’m hoping to lower that a bit as well. I’ve got some work to do.

All in all though, strength training! It’s good for you! Building muscle helped my body protect the parts that weren’t doing as well. Ice and rest helped too, of course, but I truly think the squats and stretches were the key factor. Felt good, bro.

Anyway, next year hopefully I’ll A) get to do the Holiday Half and B) actually do a half marathon. (This is a 2023 resolution.) Until then, it’s 5k races and getting my pace down.

2023 Resolutions

So, I’ll be honest: almost every time I create new year resolutions, it is done half-assedly. I make them as a sort of amorphous guideline of something I want to do, and then promptly forget about it two weeks later. This year I wish to eschew that in favor of putting down actual, serviceable goals that I can achieve in a calendar year. Thus, instead of making a resolution that says, “Do less of a thing,” I am instead going to write down five achievable goals. Here they are!

1. Run a half-marathon and/or run a 5k every month. I’ve been thinking about this one a LOT. I really want to do this, and I think with enough training and time, I can do it, even by summer. I don’t know where all this positive energy came from buy god damn it, I am going to grasp onto it as if my life depends on it. Because it does, kind of; exercise is good! Right now my goal is to keep running 5ks until my legs feel strong enough to run farther, so if that doesn’t pan out, the plan is to run a 5k every month and just get better at those. But I am raring to swap out one of those 5ks with a half, I’m telling you!

2. Bench press 225lbs for reps. This requires me to get a gym membership, so maybe that’s the resolution. But regardless, I’ve done this before and I can definitely do it again. I was going to put a few weightlifting goals here, but I decided to settle on one because otherwise it gets to be too many and I end up doing none of it.

3. Eat 100-150g of net carbs a day. This will be the toughest one. Lord knows I love carbs. And carbs are good for you! But I suspect I eat too many of them, and often those high on the glycemic index. I need to change this, for my gut and my own good. I actually did this a few years ago, as part of a research thing for 23andMe, and I ended up losing a bunch of weight and feeling pretty healthy. Plus, as I get older sweet and sugary foods just don’t cut it anymore. They’re too sweet now! It’s time to cut back. I’m going to measure my carb intake each day and track how I’m doing overall. In truth, I’ll also probably eat more carbs before races and such, but those will be utilized carbs, not just “floatin’ around in my blood stream doing fuck all” carbs.

4. Avoid social media. I already started this (you can read about it on my blog), but the idea is to just get away from it all, with a few exceptions. The biggest one being Instagram. I need one tether to humanity, you know? And that’s the one. But no more Twitter, no TikTok, I unsubbed from all my Reddits except the D&D related ones because I get maps from them sometimes. Strava is social too I suppose but it’s exercise-related and fairly positive, so I’m keeping that. And BeReal, because I love BeReal. This should be an easy resolution.

Suggestions

Twitch is annoying most of the time, so it’s lovely to watch a guy like Limmy, a (Scottish) BAFTA award winning comedian take fifteen goddamn minutes to try and figure out how Worldle works. Guy’s a gem, truly, and I’m thankful that there are people who are putting his clips out there (with Limmy’s permission too) to watch on YouTube. If you have a chance to watch Limmy’s Show, do it! It’s funny and weird.

Honestly, I’m just suggesting that because I’ve got covid brain and can’t think past five minutes.

Happy New Year

Thanks for reading and I hope you had a good holiday season and I hope you have a great 2023 as well. I almost wrote that as 2013 and you know what, I hope you had a good 2013 too. See you in January.

Santa Claus has his own LANE now? Just what the leftwing media wants.

Good Lord, It’s December Already

Folks. What the hell. Yesterday I woke up and it was April 3rd, and this morning it’s December 1st. To be fair, I was in a coma for six months. That’s on me. But the point still stands: what the hell is happening with time? Because this surely isn’t an aging thing anymore. No, for some reason time is moving faster and faster for everyone. I’m convinced based on my singular anecdotal evidence. I suspect this can only be because the universe itself is speeding up as it inevitably rips itself apart in a matter of a dozen billion years or so. Scientists talk a lot about the Big Crunch or even the Big Freeze, but nobody talks about the Big Rip, except for that story my dad tells about that one Thanksgiving in 1986.

Hey, so some of the things I write in this newsletter come from my website blog! I only pick a couple of them, it’s not like every single one, okay? Also they are updated for this newsletter. (Also, transferring them from WordPress to Substack puts random spaces between words, which is infuriating!) But if you want More Content so you don’t have to think about your own problems, go check out the blog! Bookmark it, like we’re in 1998!

My Fifteen-Year-Old Christmas Album

As is holiday tradition, after Thanksgiving I promote a Christmas album I recorded fifteen years ago. It’s called Get Behind Me, Santa!, which is a play on Get Behind Me Satan, which you might know as a phrase from the Bible, but for me is the name of the White Stripes’ fifth album, released in 2005.

It is free to download and listen to on Bandcamp. It’s silly and heartfelt and a nice little encapsulation of 24-year-old me. Give it a listen, will ya?

Post-Giving of Thanks

My Thanksgiving was nonexistent. My dad is in the hospital back in Boise as of this writing for a gallstone issue which became a slightly more concerning thing involving infection and inflammation. He’s better now but it’s a lot of “two steps forward, one step back” at the moment. That has taken my mind away from most anything else. The guy’s 80 years old, he could have a hangnail and I would request a hospice nurse and a priest. (Dad, if you’re reading this I love you and I’m going to visit as soon as possible!) So, not much happened on my end. I didn’t even eat a pumpkin pie. Holidays be like that, sometimes. I hope your Thanksgiving went well and that you ate twice the recommended daily allowance of calories.

Meditation

I’ve been meditating for awhile now, using Medito’s 30-day challenge. It’s been pretty great. Medito is an amazing and totally free meditation app. It’s run on donations and it’s not trying to sell you anything. Highly recommend it! For me, meditating can be difficult, not because I’m easily distracted (I am, but not when I’m meditating), but because meditating tends to dredge up whatever energy I’m holding onto or trying to push away. So when I’m done I often feel melancholy or sad, which makes me feel like I’ve failed the meditation, which is trying to get me to acknowledge and let go of thoughts and emotions.

But lately I’ve come to realize that this is all part of the plan. Some things are easier to let go of while meditating, while others require some purging, so to speak. And lately I’ve been finding myself both feeling depressed and acknowledging my depression, almost as it from a third person perspective, which feels different than normal. Normally I feel bad about myself when I get depressed; now I am able to compartmentalize it, in a way. Not the right word — I give compassion to myself for how I am feeling.

After I meditate I write a little bit in a journal which is meant just for after meditation. It’s another one of those notebooks I’ve had forever (2016 in this case) but barely write in. Another acknowledgement: I have to stop buying notebooks. But I write how I feel or just whatever thoughts come to me, and then I write down three things that I’m grateful for. That part is the hardest, because for some reason I decided in my head that the three things have to be different each morning. A couple of days ago I realized I was doing that and very kindly told myself that they don’t have to be different things and, in fact, they could all be the same three things if that’s all I could think of. The idea is not to think about it or give that many rules to it; I only picked three things because it seemed more beneficial than one, but writing ten things every day sounded like a chore.

(Since writing this, I have stopped writing the three things, not because it’s difficult, but because I feel like my mind is in a place where I can more organically acknowledge things I’m grateful for throughout the day. I do still recommend writing about things you’re grateful for!)

Anyway, the holidays always tend to make me depressed for reasons that go to the therapist, not to my blog. Suffice it to say, it’s nice to be able to acknowledge that without wallowing in it. I can’t say that every day will be like this, but it’s good to know that they do exist, and that the feeling of them will pass. My higher brain telling my lizard brain that things will be alright. It’s good.

I Ran Another 5k

Introducing, the 2022 Turkey Trot.

‘Twas a foggy November evening at the Portland International Raceway when a gaggle of people gathered together to do a run. I was one of those people! The Turkey Trot is one of the Hood to Coast-affiliated races, and despite being a bit of a pain in the ass to register for, the run itself went swimmingly. I mean, I ran, I didn’t swim, but you know what I mean.

I had signed up for this the same day that I finished the Tar’n’Trail 5k race at Mt. Tabor, which you can read about here. In short: the race kicked my ass because of a variety of reasons, but mainly A) that I was in the middle of my Couch to 5k training program when I ran it, and B) IT WAS VERY MUCH UPHILL. Look at these stairs!

The race vibe itself was awesome though. A smaller group of chill people, an acknowledgment of the Native American land on which we were running before ther ace, and afterwards I got sugar cookies and booze. A++ in that regard.

Following that race, I took a day off, and then the day after, I started Couch to 5k again, right where I had left off. I am determined to finish this Zombies, Run program, even though I honestly don’t think I need to keep doing it. But anyway: running so soon after running a mostly uphill 5k was a bad idea. My feet were seizing up in a weird way—not like my toes were constantly curled, but the opposite, they felt like they were seized upwards? I don’t know how to explain it. But my shins hurt a lot about five minutes into the run and so I had to stop. Thankfully, my shins felt better a few minutes after stopping, which meant that the pain was muscular and not any sort of stress fractures or things that would be More Bad.

So, I took a couple of days off (still walking though) and then tried to run again. Shin splints. I took a few more days off, tried to run: shin splints. At this point, I was a week away from the Turkey Trot, and I thought to myself, “By gum, Josh, you’re going to have to not run for a whole damn week.” So I didn’t, I just walked. Frustrating, but necessary.

Then I had to go get my Turkey Trot bib. This was a pain in the ass. First, the bib was at a running store in Tualatin. For reference:

The southwest section of the Ross Island bridge in Portland is an absolute nightmare to navigate by car. It’s one of those places where sometimes in order to get to where you need to go, you have to merge from a far left lane into a far right lane with about 200ft of space and when three other roads are merging cars into the road as well. Plus one street has two roads right next to each other, heading the same direction, with a stop light at EACH of them which alternate I think for merging into one road. If that sounds confusing: it IS confusing. I ended up taking a wrong turn because I was trapped in my lane and had to double back over the bridge and drive over it again so I could finally get out onto I-5. The I-5 part was fine. THEN, I got to Tualatin and my exit, which was another absolute mess. It’s times like these that I honestly kind of miss Boise roads, because Boise is such a sprawling city that the roads have room to breathe. The Connector is a dream compared to the intricately and confusingly packed roads of Portland.

But, I got there, finally, and entered the building. A woman at the front of the store handed me a coupon for the store, but only for right then. Like, once I leave, the coupon ends.1 I get my bib; no issues there. Go to get my shirt and the guy there looked me up and down and sheepishly said, “Sorry, but the largest men’s size we have now is Medium.” I said, “Maybe I could get two and stitch them together.” He laughed politely and explained that everyone sized up when they got there for some reason. He gave me a Medium sized shirt. Great.

I grabbed a couple of free protein bars (which were as good as protein bars can be) and a free can of Celsius energy drink (which was actually pretty good). A woman next to me was lightly complaining about, I think, the shirt situation. I wasn’t really paying attention because I still get weird remnant covid anxiety in public indoor spaces.

As I left, the woman who gave me the day-of coupon said, “Good luck at the race!” I barely glanced at her and replied, “Thaaaanks” in a way that wasn’t meant to be sarcastic or mean, but feels like it in hindsight. There was a Best Buy in the shopping center area; I genuinely thought to myself, Is there anything I need from Best Buy? The closest one to me at home is in Clackamas, so, you know, it was an honest thought.2

The traffic back to Portland was a mess because it’s always a mess, but more importantly, I left at around 4pm and so it was rush hour time. I ate a protein bar on the drive; maple donut flavored. Not too bad! Protein bars are always, at max, about 80% good. This is just how protein bars work.

The next day, work, work, work, and then after work, I drove to Portland International Raceway up at Historic Vanport for the race. I should mention that while I have GPS on my phone and all that, I don’t enable mobile data, so I oftentimes just have the list of directions from Google Maps, rather than a voice telling me when and where to turn. This, it turns out, is annoying, but whatever. The place was packed with cars trying to get in. Moreover, people were trying to park at the main lot, which was farther away. I, on the other hand, parked at the Delta Park & Ride Trimet stop, which was closer to the venue as far as I could tell. I suspect some people wanted to park farther away because they were WASPy types who were afraid of their car getting broken into by the nefarious hooligans who use public transportation.

Once parked, I chugged my Celsius energy drink, hoping that the 200mg of caffeine within would help my body run while not absolutely destroying my sleep when I got home. (Spoiler: it kind of wrecked my sleep a bit.)

Every time I go to the Christmas lights display out here, it’s foggy, and this year was no different. It truly is lovely, though my camera didn’t do a great job of showcasing this.

The race was a run/walk situation (lots of people with strollers, too), so there were food carts selling things like pizza and beer and stuff that you probably don’t want to eat right before running. There were musicians, which, props to them for playing in the cold. A keyboardist, a drummer, and then after the race I noticed there was a third guy playing drumming on buckets. I don’t know. It felt very much like a “Oh shit we should have musicians for this” type of last minute concept.

Then, I unlocked a serendipitous achievement: the 5k was supposed to start at 6:45pm, but was pushed back to 7pm due to traffic. In that fifteen minute span, my stomach began to rumble, and for the first time ever running a race, I took a shit beforehand. My stomach had been weird all day and I was joking to myself on the way to the race that I was going to get the “turkey trots” at the Turkey Trot. And then I DID. Serendipity! If the race started at 6:45, would I have pooped my joggers on the raceway? In an alternate universe, yes, probably. There is nothing like navigating a porta-potty shit in the cold, damp, foggy evening though, I gotta tell you.

And then, the race! It went well! Most importantly: my shins did not explode. I was shocked. I expected them to give out on me about five minutes into the race, but I guess the adrenaline of a race plus the 200mg of caffeine kicked my body into high gear. The track was a joy to run around (even if it was a bit slick). Lots of festive lights, including the whole gamut of “Twelve Days of Christmas,”3 where each one was a visual display of each verse of the song, except for Ten Lords a-Leaping, which for some reason they had the visual display of a lord leaping and the words “Ten Lords a-Leaping” above it, I guess so that people knew for sure that this display was Ten Lords a-Leaping. There were also some dinosaur lights on display for some reason. (That’s the Keep Portland Weird that I like.) Also, I forgot to get a photo of it but there was a display of a reindeer that looked like A) it had shapely women’s legs and B) it was giving birth. I’ll let you fill that image out in your mind’s eye.

At the start of the race I ran a solid 7 minutes straight, without stopping to walk, which is a big improvement. I also was able to get in several shorter runs in between walking. My end time was 48:56, which is a :48 second improvement from the Tar’n’Trail run. Granted, this run was completely flat and didn’t have a section with a million stairs to climb, but still. Improvement is improvement, and I’m proud of what I accomplished.

After the run I got a medal that looks like a punkin pie!

I then went home and nursed my pinky toe, which quickly grew a big and terrible blister on it.

Lastly, the next day I signed up for yet another 5k. This one’s in February so I have some time. I took a couple days off to rest and recover with some walks, before getting back into the running routine again.

So that’s that. I’m a god damned runner now.

Recommendations

I’ve been watching a ton of James Hoffman videos lately. He’s a coffee nerd—not a snob, mind you, but a guy who loves coffee so much he’s willing to deep fry it. Very interesting breakdown of bean juice and the ways we make it.

There are a lot of DJ videos on YouTube and most of them (suggested to me, at least) are hot women with those digital DJ stations—no records, just two turntable things that act like turntables but instead just manipulate a .flac file or something. It’s all well and good but it doesn’t seem authentic. (And honestly I feel like those women don’t do much besides look hot and the videos are more just for views/money, but that’s another topic for another day.4) My Analog Journal, however, is an excellent YT channel where people are actually playing a curated playlist of songs, on records, from a wide variety of genres. I’ve included the Japanese Funk and Soul video because it’s popular, but there truly are a lot of great setlists on this channel; you will find something you enjoy. It’s one of my favorite things to listen to on a Sunday morning with a cup of coffee.

The End

Sorry these are so long. Even Substack is giving me notifications like, “Wrap it up, buddy.” Hope you have a great December and a good holiday season and I’ll see you in 2023, unless I decide to upload something else before then for whatever reason.

or, thoughts on consolidating your internet life

Before we begin, very important announcement: I am drinking eggnog. It is now officially Christmas season.

Perhaps you live on the planet Neptune and have been far too engrossed in the drama between Mme. Pilgrix Meflmlork at the Skurzzzzz Awards1 to see that Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion dollars a week ago. Judging by his behavior since the purchase, he seems to be attempting to keep the ship he sank afloat by tossing weight overboard in the form of Twitter employees, while also asking Stephen King what he thinks about charging $8 for verification, thus completely obliterating the concept of verification. He is the capitalist version of Donald Trump; a grifter, in other words, who flounders when actually put in the hot seat. Thankfully, Elon’s decisions with Twitter do not impact actual Americans/people of the world like the ones Trump made. His other companies, on the other hand….

I joined Twitter in 2008 and long story short, I liked it. It was the perfect spot for writers, a place that felt like a chat room except it was more like a bunch of people shouting into a collective pot to make a “word stew” that other people could eat from if they wished. Twitter was especially fun before News came and fucked everything up. The moment people realized that they could get millions of views disseminating news and information, and then politics, the site became less weird and fun and more “Thank god we can make money off of this now.” That’s the plot, see: find what reels everyone in and then trap them so you can start showing ads at them.2

Recently though, since Elon’s purchase, I deactivated my Twitter account on a whim, for a few reasons which all centered around the purchase and the general response by everyone to the purchase. On both sides were smug assholes, either for or against Elon, and I was just kind of sick of it. Gone was the fun, weird Twitter that I enjoyed posting absolute nonsense on. Trump already ruined that during his presidency, and when he was banned I thought we might return to a bit of silly normalcy. But alas, it was not meant to be, for websites are capital now, and capitalism is anti-fun.

Thus, with the blue bird to my back, I signed up for Mastodon. Mastodon is a more communal social media app which is open source (I think?) and has multiple “instances” which are basically communities. You can sign up for an account at any of these communities but are still able to access the whole “fediverse” as they call it. On paper it seems fine, but the problem is that it feels like a thing on paper and not an actual fun, enjoyable experience. I’ve signed up to this site three separate times (the third being my current), and each time it feels like tech bros talking to other tech bros about the site and how great it is more than anyone actually having fun or interacting with each other in any meaningful way. It’s a reaction to Twitter, which is the inevitable problem; it’s not a thing of its own. It’s a sequel, and we all know that sequels often aren’t as good as the original.

Another issue I have is that people on Mastodon seem to be looking for other people within their network, whatever that may be. Like, geologists looking for geologist communities, for example. Why? Why are you doing that? People’s jobs are not their personalities! You’re turning this into a networking site.

Most recently (read: today) I logged out of Mastodon. It’s just not it. The vibe feels like a LinkedIn Slack channel, not a cool group text thread where no one is really listening to each other but everyone’s saying something funny. Right as I left, people were arguing about the concept and deployment of the Content Warning system (and even attempting to redefine what the letters CW could stand for, instead of Content Warning). It’s just banal chatter to me. Content warnings are great but the discourse was either “All CWs for everything” or “No CWs for everything” and then people of color came by and were like “We’re not putting CWs up for racism, btw,” and white people were like “But that’s what CWs are for,” etc etc etc.

The policing of speech is a difficult one; I definitely want people to feel safe and comfortable where they are online, but I also, truthfully, don’t want to look at every single piece of thing that I write and assess it carefully for any type of content that might trigger any type of person. Maybe that’s the artist in me talking. Some people get triggered by things I wouldn’t consider triggering, while other people aren’t triggered at all by incredibly traumatic things. A lot of people are doing content warning screens on political topics on Mastodon, which I think is what incited the argument in the first place. Are politics triggering? Shouldn’t they be triggering? If you don’t find politics triggering then what’s your deal? So people began to discuss what “CW” could actually mean, especially in the space of a “federated” social media app, where not everyone is receiving the same information all the time, since the whole thing is meant to be decentralized. It’s like … didn’t you guys figure this out years ago? You’re still arguing about it? Sure would be nice if you hired some content management people or something.

In the end, I think there is a lot more nuance to the content warnings discussion than conservatives give a shit about, which sours the whole experience, making it near impossible to come to any sort of concensus on how we should implement them. Honestly, I’m surprised we don’t have AI capable of reading whatever it is you’re writing and cross-referencing the concepts with whatever the reader doesn’t want to read. Instead we just have photo AI stealing base images to make Richard Nixon eating phở in the style of a political cartoon.

Anyway, without Twitter and feeling less-than-good about Mastodon, I decided to restart my blog. Yes, my blog, like a 2000s era technophile. A place where I would write more freely about whatever the hell I wanted. No text limit, no concern about Elon Musk buying my website for $44 billion dollars. (I would sell it, though, if he wanted.) No real concern for readership—hopefully somebody will read it, but I won’t cry if they don’t. Somewhere where I could feel like writing a bit more personally and a bit more concretely, as I had set an app on Twitter to delete my tweets after a month because nothing gets you cancelled-and-then-eventually-rehired-because-you’re-a-white-man faster than a tweet from 2012.

With that in mind comes the obvious question: what do I do with a newsletter? Well, I think I’m going to just put the best two or three blog posts in here, gussy them up a bit, and post ‘em. That way if you’re not into reading blog posts, you can read a couple of my insights and be done with me. Otherwise, things will be the same. In fact, I’m hoping to get a podcast episode up by the end of the week; I’ve been surprisingly busy with stuff this week!

That’s all. I just wanted to say that I’ve got my blog up and you can go check it out if you wish, but instead I went on a diatribe about a meaningless social media app. Whatever. This is MY newsletter!

Thanks for reading!

when you do things over and over again, that is known as repetition

It occurred to me that when I restarted this newsletter last year that my first post was in October. My newest post since restarting this newsletter this year was in October. I think there is a pattern here, one where I develop some kind of drive to create in the later months of the year, which peter out in the early part of the following year.

That’s the explanation for the title of this newsletter. YOU’RE WELCOME.

This is Astrologically Known as Turkey Season

November. The leaves are turning vibrant colors and then just dying, just dying right there, in front of you, holy shit. The cold wind of winter whips through your hair from around the corner, teasing you with its promise of Santa Claus doing a B&E at your house. Your favorite hipsters have donned their cardigans, pea coats, and thick cable-knit sweaters, sometimes all at once. Decorative gourds are fucking everywhere. Check your bathtub for errant gourds.

November begins the two months where it’s family time, whether you like it or not. Families get together for Thanksgiving, families get together for Christmas. You eat a turkey and a ham, respectively. You argue on Thanksgiving, you complain about your presents on Christmas. The president pardons turkeys, arguably the dumbest tradition in the history of the United States. And we’ve got some dumb ones over here!

I haven’t traditionally had great end-of-year holiday experiences. Thanksgiving was a nightmare for me as a kid, as I was terrified of eating new foods and felt incredibly embarrassed to be at a table surrounded by my extended family eating all the stuff that I was scared to eat. It’s weird to think of my child self back then; I wish I could somehow go back and tell him that all that stuff he didn’t want to eat is actually pretty good! Especially the stuffing. Man, 10-year-old me would’ve loved stuffing.

Christmas, meanwhile, tends to be an awkward holiday mainly because I don’t give presents, but I don’t expect presents either. When I see everyone’s social media feeds, though, it feels like everyone gets presents. I grew up poor and as I got older, the presents were fewer and fewer. In a way it’s my fault; I am notoriously hard to shop for because whenever I see something I want, I just buy it, because I don’t expect gifts. Similarly, I’m not great at hearing code words from friends or loved ones, cueing me re: things I should gift them for Christmas. So I just stopped doing gifts, and I don’t expect gifts. I miss the quality of Christmas you get as a child, though—the tree, the lights, the look of presents underneath the tree, the social warmth that you feel during that time of year. It’s not the same as you get older, at least it hasn’t been for me. Going to other people’s houses feels awkward; it’s not my tradition I’m going to, it’s yours. It’s different.

When I first moved to Portland, for a couple of years we did a Friendsgiving that was a lot of fun. But most of those people have left and gone to other places. It happens. I feel like Christmas as a holiday is poorly defined for loners. At least for Thanksgiving you can plug into anyone’s home who will let you in. Thanksgiving feels more like a rich meal experienced with people, a social tradition, if you will, whereas Christmas feels like a family tradition, something you and your immediate loved ones experience together.

Also, the recent tradition of watching movies on Christmas has also kind of ruined it. Though, on the other hand, what the hell else are you going to do on Christmas Day? I remember as a kid, waking up early, ripping open presents around 10, 11am, and then what? Food, and then you tinker around with your gifts for a bit, but then life goes on and you might as well go see a movie.

Anyway, this isn’t a plea for help or anything. More of a rumination on getting older. Things change, traditions change. People change!

Movember

I have signed up for Movember this year. The gist of Movember is raising awareness of men’s health by growing a mustache.

I had really only known Movember as “when guys grow a mustache in November,” and didn’t realize that it was this big fundraising event for men’s health and men’s suicide awareness. Maybe it was the former at first but then over time grew into a fundraising thing. I don’t know. What I do know is that starting today, I will be clean-shaven except for a patch above my upper lip which will grow from nothing, to wispy bullshit, and then eventually into a pretty nice mustache if I do say so myself.

Movember also includes moving 60 miles in the month, raising awareness of the absolutely staggering statistic that around 60 men end their own lives every hour. That’s 1,440 men killing themselves every day, over half a million every year. So I will be moving for them, moving for myself, keeping my head up and appreciating the life and the body I’ve been given.

Mental health is a big deal for me because mine has been pretty bad for some time, and the only thing that’s really made it better is my cat, therapy, supplements, and exercise. In basically that order. I won’t go into great detail (unless you really want me to) but 2014 to about a year ago was rough for me, lots of ups and downs, lots of depressive brain fog, lots of avoiding bridges because of intrusive thoughts. Thankfully I already had a therapist and Jowers and those two were enough to keep me healthy, relatively, and I want to help make sure that more men have access to mental health resources so they don’t end up in worse positions than I was in.

With that in mind, I am attempting to raise $200 for Movember to help fund men’s health and hopefully end the stigma of men’s mental health. I know inflation is making buying everything shitty, but if you have a few bucks to spare, consider clicking the link above or below and donate! I would seriously appreciate it, as would all the men out there who need the support to help deal with their mental and physical health.

NaNoWriMo 2022

I shaved my face AND I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year? Utter lunacy. What am I, some kind of … guy, who … does things? Gone are the days where I’d just play video games all day long. Today, I play video games like 60-70% of the time!

This is my 20th NaNo. Twenty. I started in 2002, when I was nineteen years old. Today, I am 29 years old, so something’s clearly wrong with the math there.

It’s crazy to think about the passage of time. There was a time when I was nineteen years old. I’m not that anymore, but I was once. That time existed, and I was in it. But when I think back on it, I’m not in it anymore. It’s back there, and I’m here. But it happened! The future’s going to happen to. The only difference between the future and the past is that I can’t remember the future. But it and the past are still things that exist and that I will be or have been a part of, but will never exist in. Wild stuff.

Also, who knows if the past is a concrete thing? Just because we have records of things that happened in the past doesn’t mean that when the present ends, the past remains the same. It could be the langoliers out there, chomping up time and making a terrible miniseries out of it.

So, my idea is to write articles for my wiki about my D&D homebrew world, Avo. That way I’m not stuck with a single story idea, I can just develop articles and maybe dabble in some short stories if I want. If you feel like reading along, I’ll link the NaNo articles on the wiki’s main page. Huzzah!

I Ran a 5K

Folks, I’ve been running again. I started up around the beginning of October, trudging around the Lone Fir Cemetery with Zombies, Run!’s1 Couch to 5k training program. This was the natural progression from all the walking I’ve been doing recently; at some point a tiny voice in the back of my head would pop up while I was walking and say, “Go run.” “But I am fat, and lazy!” I would respond. “No,” the voice said. “Go run.” So I bought some running shoes. Fucking voice.

Basically, I’m Getting My Shit Together in true Belvillian fashion: very slowly. After 2.5 years of sitting on my ass during a global pandemic, eating way too much Del Taco and … well that’s it, really, just being lazy as hell, I started going on walks, and now I’m running, and on the 30th I ran a 5k. Well, mostly ran.

This was the Tar’n’Trail run at Mt. Tabor here in Portland, OR, a hybrid street/trail run that kicked my ass all the way to next Tuesday (which is today, the day this newsletter is being posted). I always run these things on my own because I don’t have any Runner Friends. It’s sort of weird to show up and see all these people who know each other or are in family packs, etc. It’s not too bad now but there were some Shamrock Runs in the past where it felt kind of melancholy, if not downright depressing, to just be there by myself. You run and then you go home and that’s it. (To be fair, I was also much more depressed back then, which didn’t help my general outlook.)

It was All Hallows Eve Ever so there were some costumes. One lady was dressed like a hot dog and made me wish I remembered quotes so I could quote Tim Robinson at her. A guy dressed his cute dog like a referee.2 Another lady dressed as something that I will describe through our awkward interaction after she asked me to hold a map of the run route so she could take a photo of it:

Me: Are you Inspector Gadget?

Her: More like “noir detective” but you can call me Inspector Gadget if you want.

The morning was cool but not cold and it wasn’t raining, which was perfect.

If you’ve never been to Mt. Tabor before, it used to be a volcano. It’s not an active volcano anymore, or else this would’ve been one hell of a run. But it is very hilly. VERY hilly. It’s gorgeous and there are lots of these reservoirs (and by lots I mean three) that the city uses for drinking water. They’re empty now because apparently there are structural issues underneath the reservoirs. Also sometimes they flush the entire reservoir because people pee in it. This has happened twice, I believe, since I moved here in 2008. It’s strange because it’s an open air reservoir, so ducks get in there and shit and piss. What’s a little human pee gonna do, eh? You actin’ like you ain’t never drank no human piss before?!

Anyway, I knew this run would be rough because of the uphill climbs, but it was 10x more rough than I realized. I also didn’t know that we were going up these stairs:

After those stairs, I resigned myself to walking most of the way. There were some sporadic runs here and there but stairs kill me. I know I’m not alone here but still. However, I did maintain my one cardinal rule for running races: I ran past the finish line. Unless my leg breaks off or I collapse unconscious, I will run the last bit to the finish line.

At the end was my favorite part of running races: snacks. Also, booze! I picked up a bottle of Honey Spiced Cider from 2 Towns; it was very delicious. I ate a sugar cookie, drank some Gatorade. Good times.

Overall, 51 minutes is a terrible 5k run time, but a pretty good run/walk time for a guy who hasn’t run a 5k in over a year and has been mostly sedentary since the pandemic, and a very good run time for a guy who has all that AND the course is like 75% hills. I’m pleased with the results and know that I’ve got work to do to improve. Always improving!

Jambon Beurre

As you may have noticed because I told you about it before, remember?, I created a little side podcast to this newsletter, called Jambon Beurre. I did it because Substack allows it; that’s the only reason. It’s like they opened a door in my house and there was an empty room in there. “Hey, you want this room?” They asked. “Free room!”

The first episode was me talking about wellness and then eating and reviewing a jambon beurre sandwich along with some macarons. This upcoming episode will be Thai-centric, with a classic pad thai, and mango sticky rice for dessert. I will also have a ratings system in place, mainly because reviewing food by saying “Mm this is good” is basically just how everyone eats food.

We’ll also be talking about running and how much it sucks and is also awesome. So stay tuned for that.

Recommendations

This is the part of the newsletter where I recommend some stuff at you.

Grounded

Grounded is a video game wherein you play as a teenager who was shrunk down to tiny size and you wander around in a backyard trying to figure out how to get unshrunk. That’s basically it. It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets “survival crafting game.” And it’s very, very good. I cannot stop playing it. Every time I play I find a new, fun thing. Last time I remembered that ziplines exist and made a zipline from the Upper Yard (the more dangerous part of the yard) to my base, situated on the banks of the Pond. The above screenshot was taken after I finally realized that if you blow up the rock next to the shovel, the shovel moves and creates a pathway up to the picnic table, where bees are hanging out over a pot of honey. Why does this table where people were playing D&D have a big pot of honey on it? Who knows. This game rules.

Carly Rae Jepsen – The Loneliest Time

Look, I won’t belabor this: the new Carly album is excellent. It’s better than the new Taylor Swift album. There, I’ve said it. Deal with it, Swifties. Just go listen to it okay?

The End

Thanks for reading through my latest missive of what’s going on in my life. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. The podcast will be out like a week or so after this so stay tuned for that. It’s funny how we still say “stay tuned” even though nobody tunes into TV or radio stations anymore.

Have a great November! See you next time.