Category: Uncategorized

Following on from yesterday’s post, today my legs felt a bit stronger — not strong exactly, nor limber, but neither did they feel as heavy as yesterday — and I ran to a plausible, if not particularly exciting pace. Coffee and grapes, Morning Prayer, then to a café for working along with Margaret, then a church-related meeting, then home for lunch.

Having been running daily for years now, I always marvel at how unpredictable the experience will be. Yesterday I made the run at what is for me a decent pace, despite my legs feeling as heavy, leaden, as they ever have; today they were a bit livelier, but my pace was a bit slower. And I expect that they’ll never recover the springiness that I can observe in others and recall from younger days. Ah, well, two more miles in the book.

I’ll start my hot breakfast soon, then get ready for church. I’m both celebrating and preaching this morning, so I will be knackered when we get home for lunch.

Ran my two miles, despite 3° temps and complaining muscles. Coffee and fruit, cleaned up, off to Morning Prayer and a collegial meeting with Prof. Barton before I traipse up to Ox for the last New Testament Seminar of term. Last of term, ah!

Thursday of Eighth, so there are two days left of full term. I have two tutes today, some marking and reports to write, and I have some make-up tutes to arrange, but beginning Friday I will not be receiving any more essays to mark, and everything I do will move me forward to an all-clear academic desktop. My ecclesiastical desktop, of course, self-renews every week — I’m preaching this week again — but the lighter academic load will make relieve significant pressure on my time.

Two miles this morning, at a good pace despite muscle stiffness, in 3° fog. Coffee and fruit, Morning prayer, then off to Oxford for teaching.

Ran my two miles in 2° (did I report yesterday’s run? Same deal), coffee and fruit, Morning Prayer, off to the bus stop to just barely miss the X3, eventually got to Oxford to lead tutorials with my four lovely first-years, back to Abingdon, afternoon appointment, and various email errands till dinnertime.

The mornings have been lighter and lighter, thank heaven, though the zero and subzero temperatures have been disappointing. Two more miles this morning, anyway.

David Weinberger reports his extended interaction with ChatGPT which pivots on the topic of cultural situatedness. He elicits from his LLM interlocutor the acknowledgement that it operates on cultural assumptions (about food and ethics) that belong to the global North and West, but the moment that strikes me arrives toward the end, when it looks as though ChatGPT begins to repeat back to David the analysis that he had provided earlier in the conversation — that, in other words, ChatGPT seems to have assimilated David’s perspective into its database of responses. I find that both eerie and reassuring (in that the so-called AI seems still to be mostly just an extremely high-powered chatbot).

Speaking of AI, Mark Liberman wonders what accounts for a blogger at Medium suggesting that a particular idea — that Nickelback is a mediocre hack-rock act — has ‘boroughed’ into our consciousness. I note that the author seems to havve misspelled the name of the infamous WWII German dictator in the very first sentence, which seems to reflect poorly at least on their editing skills, if not their spelling overall. I wonder, though —is there some positive value in making obvious careless errors in such writing, as a measure of human authorship, over against AI writing that would never misspell Aldof Heltir….

It wasn’t raining this morning, so — why not run my two miles even though it was -1° out on 2 March? I made adequate time. I had spent yesterday working on two sermons (two different congregations, two different sorts of ethos). I was knocked out, then; and it knocked me out again delivering them. Struggled unsuccessfully to stay awake this afternoon — but I really need to catch up on marking. We’ll see what develops.

Steady rain this morning, so I doubt that I’ll go for my morning run. At any other point in my life, I would just roll my eyes and marvel at the rainiest spell in memory; now that I live in a low-lying house between two rising rivers, my feelings about a protracted rainy spell run more toward the trepidatious or even disastrous. Margaret takes a more confident outlook, but then, I spend more time walking along and across our rivers.

Ran my morning two miles on stiff, resistant legs, but came in at a reasonable pace. Coffee and fruit, clean up, Morning Prayer, and will spend the morning marking essays till I head in to Oxford for a tute.

Ran my usual two miles this morning, and although my legs were attempting passive resistance tactics, I kept to a pretty good pace. Fruit breakfast and coffee, cleaned up, Morning Prayer, a morning meeting with the Team Vicar (one of my two line managers), Staff Meeting, and in the meantime Margaret had arrived safely at home with two heavy suitcases. After lunch I caught up on email, installed a new doorbell, and now am set to square away some marking (of which I have a backlog that would be criminal were it not for my valid ‘mother-in-law’s funeral’ explanation). Have to work on Sunday’s sermon, and hammer away at my marking — but this is seventh week, only one more week of term, and beginning the week after next I’ll have more time, which will be welcome.

Did I say that Margaret’s home? Oh, and the dogs, too, but they’re definitely not the main attraction.

I slept almost nine hours last night, after napping on and off through the afternoon and evening — I expect that I’ll have some sleep-transition jetlag issues, but at least I’m off to a good start at returning to my home sleep-cycle pattern.

I ran my short route this morning to give my legs a chance to remember what they’re to be doing. Then coffee (no fruit at home), Morning Prayer, coffee in Oxford, two jolly tutes, hastened home for a phone appointment, then lunch, then grocery shopping, and a short break before cooking.

Best of all this, though, Margaret comes home tomorrow!

In all the spy and superagent and honest-cop and determined scientist-rescuer films, the travel from one exotic location to another goes largely unremarked, even though it takes up more real-world time than the dramatic confrontations, clandestine revelations, fight sequences, mind-blowing plot twists, and near-death experiences.
You can probably guess why this is particularly vividly on my mind this morning (US)/afternoon (UK). Yesterday morning I got out of bed in Abingdon after a fretful night’s tossing and turning (every raindrop that fell called out to me, ‘We’re going to flood your house while you’re away!’) at 4:15. I dressed, closed up my baggage, strode purposefully to the bus stop on Abingdon High Street, caught the X3 (I always forget that my magical ‘ride the transport system free’ card doesn’t work before 9:00 in the morning), changed for the Heathrow Airliner at St Clement’s, arrived at Heathrow around 7:40, checked my bag, ate a hearty airport breakfast, did an errand, made my way to the gate, at 11:30 or so took off for Boston, landed and made my way through passport control and customs rapidly (once bags started arriving), waited for and caught the 15:35 Concord Coach to Portland, changed at Portland for the 18:15 coach to Augusta, arrived at the Augusta Transportation Center (a designation that conjures a busier, more expansive enterprise than this humble depot), where Nate picked me up and brought me to our hotel at about 7:30 — meaning that I’d been more-or-less awake for twenty hours, most of them spent sitting in an airplane or coach seat. I had eaten breakfast, a reasonable in-flight lunch-dinner, and one of those peculiar savoury pastries that planes serve you to avoid giving you anything that resembles earth food. I devoured a serving of takeaway fajitas and Nate had already picked up.
I was in no fit condition for a dramatic confrontation, clandestine revelation, fight sequence, or a mind-blowing plot twist, though I wouldn’t argue if you suggested that it all amounted to a near-death experience.