Philip Brewer

Ashley and Roxie chewing on a stick.

Usually I count multiple times, until I consistently come up with the same number, but this time I just went with the first count. It’s about right.

The brats aren’t cooking quite as fast as I’d expected, probably because I didn’t do a great job of getting the bed of charcoal burning evenly.

But soon it’ll be time to put the veggie skewers on anyway.

I’m watching a video on how chronic stress reduces your adaptation to things like exercise. It’s down on passive coping strategies, such as “seeking out alcohol, watching TV, procrastinating, talking to friends, [and] moaning about the problem.” Instead the video recommends “active coping strategies, such as “actually deal[ing] with the problem,” and recommends such things as “if you have a problem with somebody, talk to them.”

And I’m like, “Okay, that’s a big nope.”

I mean, it’s not wrong… “This is what the stress energizes you to do. So you want to take advantage of that fight-or-flight mode? Seek out what the root cause of your problem is, what it is that is giving you stress, and then tackle the problem head on.”

Except I do not want to take advantage of that fight-or-flight mode, except that I do want to flee if at all possible.

And those passive coping strategies? I’m all-in. I mean, moaning about the problem is like 90% of my whole personality.

Ashley, on the other hand, is totally down with both fight and flight responses:

This many lilies is both too many to count, and too many to try to fit into a single photo, so I took a picture of just this little cluster.

I think this matches the highest lilycount previously recorded.

Jackie is drinking a birthday old fashioned, while I have a Rhinegeist Truth Bomb.

There’s unadvertised live music in the plaza!

A whole bunch of lovely lilies today.

I was tempted to just announce the lilycount as “too many to count,” but Jackie counted 36, and then I got the same number when I counted, so I figure it’s probably accurate.

Things are starting to get serious, lily-bloom-wise speaking.

Two ways I celebrated my birthday:

I got my Sword Master stickers from Lucania Arts!

https://www.etsy.com/shop/LucaniaArts

We study primarily Meyer in our group, so I put the Joachim Meyer sticker on the water bottle that I bring to practice:

But because I’m not particularly good at all the fancy stuff that Meyer teaches, I have a sneaking admiration for Johannes Liechtenauer, whose sword fighting instruction is accessible to any random peasant who happens to pick up a sword, so I put his sticker on my laptop:

Today there are 2 lilies!

Aren’t those glisteny water droplets pretty?

Jackie is working on a tapestry, the title of which is a reference to the effect of the Canadian wildfires on our sunrises and sunsets. With that in mind, here’s a picture of this morning’s sunrise.

The first lily of the summer.

This is rather typical. My activity score is down for two reasons: Too much inactivity today, and too little recovery after yesterday’s workout. :-/

Loch Duart salmon fillets, cooking in coconut oil. Seasoning is equal parts cumin, sage, and hot smoked paprika. I’m expecting great things.

My run was already supposed to be pretty short—about 2.5 miles, across Dohme Park, up First Street to Windsor and then back—but it ended up being even shorter than that, because Ashley wasn’t up to running even that far in the heat of the day.

According to my weather app it was already 75℉ when I got home, and I’ve noticed previously that starting at about 72℉ the dog starts to suffer.

You can see on the map a short spur off to the west just after I started north on First Street. That was where we saw a groundhog, and Ashley really wanted to chase it. I indulged her for a minute, hoping the groundhog would quickly find a place to hide, but it wasn’t to be, and I eventually had to drag Ashley back to the First Street path very much against her will.

Anyway, 1.3 miles is a very short run indeed, but I still spent most of 20 minutes with my heart rate up (average was 141, peak was 169). So, a good workout.

I listened to an unintentionally amusing fitness video a few weeks ago. It was by a body-building guy, and was specifically on cutting weight after a bulk. (Topics that I’m not very interested in, but something to watch while I did my morning exercises.)

What was amusing was the discussion of what macronutrients to cut, when you need to reduce your calories.

Of course you can’t cut protein. That (along with resistance training) is key for keeping your muscle when you’re in a calorie deficit.

You can cut carbs—but not much! That’s what provides the energy you need to do your workouts! And your carbs were probably already low, if you were doing the low-carb thing.

You can cut fat—but not much! You need to get in your essential fatty acids! And your fats were probably already low, for general health reasons.

Now, I’ve gained a bit of weight over these past few years, and would be pleased to get back down to what I weighed in 2016–2021. But I’ve been hesitating to maintain any significant calorie deficit: I’ve reached an age where it’s pretty tough to put on more muscle, so any muscle I lose while dieting might well end up being a permanent loss—which is why I was interested enough to watch this video on the first place.

So, I was a bit daunted. If I can’t cut protein, carbs, or fat, how I am supposed to produce this calorie deficit anyway?

And then I remembered that there is a fourth macronutrient.

So, for a few days now, I’ve been both back on the low-carb thing (not so much for weight as because my nasal congestion has gotten bad again) and avoiding alcohol.

It’s very sad.

Along with avoiding alcohol for the calories, I’ve been keeping an eye on my sleep metrics. Nearly everybody with an Oura ring reports that drinking alcohol messes up their sleep, so I’ve been expecting to see a notable improvement, but so far not. Sleep score isn’t better. Sleep duration isn’t better. HRV isn’t better. My resting heart rate is down, but just because it had been elevated earlier—first when I had a cold, then when I had a guest.

I’ll give it another few days before drawing a conclusion, but I suspect the alcohol had not been negatively impacting my sleep because I never drank very much, and because I tended to finish drinking by fairly early in the evening, so I was pretty much sober by bedtime.

The good news is that the reduced carbs seem to be helping my nasal congestion already (although maybe it’s that the rain has washed a lot of the allergens out of the air).

My brother sent a selfie he’d taken in the coffee shop where he’s staying for the SFWA board meeting and Nebula Awards conference. I wanted to reply, but I was out walking the dog, so I quick captured this image.

After a very congenial week visiting us, my brother and nephew departed for Kansas City and the SFWA Nebula Awards. Today I am back to my usual routine, with multiple dog walks and a workout. Now I’m sitting on the window seat and reading Asimov’s Foundation for the first time since I was a boy.

I came upon a handsome Great Blue Heron at the edge of the pond.

My brother Steven and his son Daniel are visiting, so we’re taking them out for lunch to celebrate our 33rd wedding anniversary.

What if—and hear me out here—instead of trying to bribe women with weird tax credits to try to get them to have more children, we just made it much cheaper and easier to raise a child? Free health care, free education, free day care, mandatory time off to deal with medical or family issues… Stuff like that.

In my experience cats are much better than dogs at realizing when you’re sick and need some rest and comfort. So I’m a bit surprised that Ashley is doing such a good job of it today.

(I just have a cold. No big deal.)