Keep moving

24 March 2020 (Day 5) - One of the biggest problems with self-isolating in an apartment is staying active.

Before we went away in January, I was playing hockey three times a week, 80-minutes games, often doing vigorous exercise one other day, and supplementing with walks and, in better weather, bike rides.

How was I going to stay fit and keep the endorphins flowing?

Karen pointed the way.

Karen is a dedicated Fitbitter. Even before we went away, she would often pace around the apartment to help meet her hourly goals – which her Fitbit reminds her about.

It was like watching a caged tiger.

Karen’s pacing, which she picked up almost immediately after we got home, also reminded me that when I used to travel on business, I sometimes jogged around my hotel suite if I didn’t have access to a gym or time to go outside. Boring as hell, but it worked.

So on the second day of our confinement, I jogged around the apartment in sock feet for 20 minutes: through the kitchen, along the hall into our bedroom, around the other side of the bed, back out and down the hall, through the living room and dining room and into the kitchen.

Repeat. About 40 times.

Now I’m dressing in my running gear, including shoes, doing 25 minutes in the morning, 20 in the afternoon – if I have the energy. And I’m wearing a headset, listening to CBC podcasts and shows.

Such is our new life.

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Photo of the Day

Sorry, a bit lame...

Discs of the Day

Bobby Baines, my son-in-law, challenged me to come up with one desert-island disc – one album I keep coming back to – every day for seven days, He asked me to cover the period before his ken, or interest, which he characterizes as “the dirty hippy” period.

The trouble is, I don’t keep coming back to that music. I remember it fondly, but I don’t listen to it very often. Most of it rattles my brain pan too much. So I’m going to modify the challenge and offer one of my real desert island discs, and then one blast from the “dirty hippy” past. Here goes.

Desert Island: The album I listen to when I need to calm down and mellow out – on a plane, for example. Just cello. If you don’t like the instrument, you won’t like the music.

I have a few versions. This one, by the Chinese cellist Jian Wang, I like the best. Here’s an exerpt. 

Dirty Hippy: Tougher choice. This one will raise groans and actually makes me go a little pink when I admit to still liking it – not because I think it’s bad, but because I think many won’t get it.

Ian & Sylvia, Beginning of the End

I bought it almost 50 years ago when we were living in our first apartment, the site of which – the building is long gone – I can see from my living room window today.

Corny as hell, but lovely. A sample.

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The Cryptic Corner

Wanna learn how to do cryptic crosswords? C’mon. Sure you do.

You can do them online. The Globe & Mail makes them available daily, for free. The Guardian in Britain also has free daily online cryptics. (Be warned, the Guardian puzzles are devilishly difficult.)

Basic rules of the game:

• Clues, even when they seem to make sense – they more often don't – are never what they seem; the setter is always trying to trick you.
• Ignore punctuation. If included – usually not –it's a diversion.
• There is always a non-cryptic clue embedded in the cryptic clue, usually at the beginning or end – a synonym or near-synonym, or at least a reference to the answer.
• There are many types of clues – anagrams, word builders, double meanings, puns, etc. (More on these as we proceed.) Sometimes it's a combination of types, and it's rarely obvious which it is.

Yeah, it’s meant to be difficult.

The simplest type of clue, to me at least, is the anagram, just like in the old Jumble game in the newspaper, though with a few wrinkles.

Here’s an example from a recent Globe & Mail puzzle: “Affected by heat from the Red Sea” Answer: SEARED.

Cryptic puzzlers talk about “parsing” clues – the essential task of sorting out which parts of the text point directly to the answer and which are...cryptic, and how. Here’s how you parse this one:

“Affected by heat” is the embedded non-cryptic clue. “From the” is a cue phrase for “you make up the answer from what follows.” RED SEA is an anagram for seared.

Simple, right?

So here’s another, one of mine: “A clean pin at the top.”

The first correct answer gets...fullsome praise. Murray Young, if you’re reading this, you’re ineligible for this competition.

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Finally, for Andrea McCann, as requested, here are pictures of Karen and I. Okay, maybe not exactly what you meant. They're from our "dirty hippy" period.