“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.” ― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

 (daily ex, morning stretching and yoga, dog walk 1.2 mi, 20 min easy step aerobics, pm tm jog 3.1 mi slow)

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be”. - Leonard Cohen.

 (daily ex., dog walk 0.7 mi, tm jogs 1 mi plus 1.5 mi, morning walk/jog 3.5 mi, some stretching)

“We are all just a work in progress.” — Mary J. Blige

(daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.2 mi, pm tm jog 4.5 mi) 

The one thing you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can.

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.2 mi, pm jog tm 4.5 mi with cooldown walk 0.5 mi)

“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.” – J.B. Priestley

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.1 mi, pm jogs totalling 3.5 mi)

“Time is a thief of memory” ― Stephen King

 (very hot day, morning dog walk 1.6 mi, morning stretching, pm tm jog 4.5 mi)

“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” ― Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

 (daily ex, morning stretching still rehabbing my knee, dog walk 1.3 mi on a very hot morning, pm slow jog 4.1 mi. just to get it done)

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truthteller.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.7 mi, pm tm jog 6.5 mi)

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” —Albert Einstein in a letter to Carl Seelig, March 11, 1952

 (daily ex., 2 walks 3.5 mi, 2 jogs 4.1 mi, stretching)

I find it amusing that we're all pretending to be normal when we could be insanely interesting instead -Unknown

 (daily ex, morning stretching and yoga, dog walk 1.5 mi,  15 min step aerobics, pm jog 5.1 mi)

 I am so tired of waiting.

Aren’t you,

for the world to become good

and beautiful and kind?

Let us take a knife

and cut the world in two—

and see what worms are eating

at the rind. ~Langston Hughes

(daily ex, morning stretching, dog walk 1.2 mi, pm slow streaksaver jog 2 mi)

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

 (daily ex., morning stretching and yoga, dog walk 1.2 mi, pm tm jog 5.6 mi with 1.2 mi cooldown walk)

"And how should we behave during this Apocalypse? We should be unusually kind to one another, certainly. But we should also stop being so serious. Jokes help a lot. And get a dog, if you don’t already have one." Kurt Vonnegut - The Idea Killers, 1984.

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.6 mi, pm tm jog 2.8 mi)

But if this whale be a king, he is a very sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem......Herman Melville, Moby Dick

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.5 mi, pm slow tm jog 4.5 mi with 0.8 mi cooldown walk)

"A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well." - G. K. Chesterton

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 1.7 mi., pm tm 6.5 mi with 2 mi cooldown walk)

“A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated...” ― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

 (daily ex., a little morning stretching, a.m. walk 2.2 mi, tm jogs 4.5 mi)

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling's closing narration Twilight Zone "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" 1960

 (daily ex., stretching, step aerobics, tm jog 4.3 mi, cooldown walk 1.5 miles)

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.” Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

 (daily ex., morning stretching, 1.2 mi dog walk, pm tm 5.5 mi, cooldown walk 1.5 mi)

I tell myself I am searching for something. But more and more, it feels like I am wandering, waiting for something to happen to me, something that will change everything, something that my whole life has been leading up to. In my heart, I know that this is not true. Life is not leading up to anything, nor are we headed anywhere in particular. We are just wandering, circling around each other, we are all, in the end, just walking each other home. ~Khaled Hosseini

 (daily ex., morning dog walk 1.6 mi, pm slow jog 2 mi., rest day, very hot)

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.” – Harper Lee

 (daily ex., morning stretchng, morning dog walk 2.2 mi, pm slow tm jog 6.2 mi)

“Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.” ― E. B. White

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 2.5 mi, pm tm jog 3.1 mi)

"Compulsive liars shouldn't frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars' enablers." - Nick Cohen

(daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 2.1 mi, pm tm jog 3.1 mi)

"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.” ~George Carlin

 (daily ex., morning tm jog 1 mi, 30 min stretching,  do walk and brc group walk 3.7 mi)

“If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” ― Confucius

 (daily ex., morning slow dog walk, pm tm jog 3.1 mi, 1.5 mi cooldown walk)

“I was laying in bed one night and I thought ‘I’ll just quit...to hell with it.’ And another little voice inside me said ‘Don’t quit...save that tiny little ember of spark.’ And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.” ~Charles Bukowski

 (daily ex., morning dog walk 1.6 mi., pm tm jog 5.5 mi. with 0.5 mi cooldown walk, then my tm broke down again)

When people talk about traveling to the past, they worry about changing the present by doing small things, but pretty much no one in the present thinks that they can change the future by doing something small.

 (daily ex., morning stretching, dog walk 2.1 mi, pm tm jog 5.6 mi,  rest day tomorrow, must go refrigerator shopping)

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.” ― Ulysses S. Grant

 (daily ex, morning stretching, dog walk 3.2 slow miles, pm very slow jog 3.1 miles)

“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” ― Colette

(daily ex., morning dog walk 2.6 slow mi., morning stretching, pm tm jog 4.5 mi)

“The most important message of a crucifix, to me anyway, was how unspeakably cruel supposedly sane human beings can be when under orders from a superior authority.” — Kurt Vonnegut

 (daily ex., morning dog walk 2.1 mi, morning yoga and stretching, pm slow tm 6.5mi)

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.” ― Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

  One day, when it's safe,

when there's no personal downside

to calling a thing what it is,

when it's too late to hold

anyone accountable,

everyone will have always been 

against this.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. ~ Desmond Tutu

(daily ex., morning stretching, walk total of 3.5 mi, pm slow jog 3.5 mi on tm)