Today’s word is: cobbler

We’ve had an unusual number of visitors recently. Luckily, I have plenty to entertain them. Such as this week’s word: rocks

Because I have the BEST TOYS.

This week’s word is: jubilee

Today’s word is: peaches

I promised a friend this yesterday, and then promptly got distracted.

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Jed had a reputation in town as no one to joke with–not because he was mean, but because he simply wasn’t bright enough to get your joke, and everyone feels like an idiot when they’ve told a joke, and the person in the receiving end just stares there, blinking at you.

So, Jed wasn’t bright, but he was strong, so he found plenty of work–as long as it was a task that wasn’t complicated.

Farmer Brown (not related to the Mister Brown, who can moo) had done well enough in the previous couple years that he bought seventy more acres, but needed to extend his fence before he could let his animals graze there (he also had plans to extend his herds, but no sense in getting the cow before the fence.)

So Farmer Brown hired Jed and a couple other older boys at loose ends, who were likely to wander into into trouble if they weren’t put to use, to help him with his fence.

Farmer Brown was mostly acting as supervisor for this job, seeing as how young men left on their own tended to talk more than they worked, but he wasn’t a hard man, and so mid-afternoon he headed back to the house, to get a drop of something wet and a bit of something sweet for the boys.

Farmer Brown dropped off the jug and the biscuits and apple butter and then headed back to the house to get more rails. Unfortunately, he’d grabbed the wrong jug and instead of water, left the boys with the jug of hooch he’d left cooling in the spring. By the time he got back, all the boys were lying on the ground, laughing uncontrollably, except for Jed.

Jed was sitting by the fence, giving the post upon which Farmer Brown had set his hat a long talking to. It seems that Jed had seen the hat, and sat down and started talking to Farmer Brown about Miss Millie who sometimes worked the counter at her father’s general store. Jed was entreating Farmer Brown to put in a good word for him with Miss Millie’s father, but Farmer Brown (or more rightly Farmer Brown’s hat) said nothing in reply, and Jed was getting himself more and more worked up on the subject.

When the boys (sobered up by Farmer Brown, who was nervous his wife would learn about the incident, and thus learn about his stash of moonshine) returned to town, the story of Jed talking to the fence post quickly spread, as did the lack of response Jed received.

Soon, to tweak Jed, folk about town started saying someone was “as dumb as a post” when they didn’t have a response to a question, but Jed being Jed, he never knew they were making fun of him.

But he did eventually take Miss Millie out walking, and then asked her father for her hand, and if he wasn’t much smarter than the post he was known far and wide for talking to, he loved her to distraction, and their life together was as happy as the day is long.

—-

Well, that didn’t go at all where I was expecting, but there it is anyway.

That’s right. County schools start Thursday, WVU starts Monday, so abandon hope all ye who hope to drive anywhere.

Today’s word is: walking

A month or so ago, Michael and I had an argument about what you call an object such as the one he is standing next to here.

One of us said, “trunk” and the other said, “stump.”

Who is correct (or is there a more accurate term)?

Also, one of us has a degree in Forestry.

Today’s word is: statistics

So, Michael pulled out my data. I have to say what he could get wasn’t impressive.

What interests me is the activity data: how many steps, how many miles, how many flights of stairs, steps over the course of the day, what time of the day I’m most active…

So. I got daily totals for steps and distance.

Yeah, not really impressive. But, at least it’s something to play with.

Here we have weekly steps. That peak in July 2012 was our vacation. The trough immediately following was the discovery of my cousin Ben’s death and his funeral. Talk about literal highs and lows…

The low point of the end of Dec 2012 / start of Jan 2013 was vacation week, where I laid around and read books and didn’t do much of anything else.

The lowest point was when I got pink eye AND some kinda virus the same week, and my only activity was getting up to go to the room of resting.

Here is the data presented by month. Please note that I removed the partial months of January 2012 and July 2013.

Interesting to note that the drops from October through March correlate with a rather nasty bout of depression. That was kind of a vicious circle: I didn’t walk because I was depressed, and the less I exercised, the more depressed I got. But you can see I’m slowly getting back on track.

Something else I’d like to point out, is that FitBit didn’t give me any steps for bicycling, so a 20 mile bike ride counts for nothing as far as FitBit is concerned. But as far as my MOOD is concerned, it’s exercise, and definitely counts.

Once I figure out the best way to do so, I’m going to take the data from my Omron pedometer and combine it with the FitBit data, and that should give me close to five years of data. What I wish I had was some calculable measure of my depression over those five years, so I could see how my exercise and depression relate over time.

Not sure how to do that, however, since typically I don’t even realize I’m going through a bout of depression until I’m well into it. And it’s very hard to gauge “how depressed am I today” since that tends to be a comparison only to the previous day or two, which isn’t a very accurate measure.

So, there’s the first of my data crunched. Once I figure out how to combine this with my Omron data, you can expect EVEN MORE EXCITING data, looking at steps over an even LONGER period of time!

Nothing like constant flood warnings to keep you on your toes. Today’s word is: deluge.

Today’s word is: holiday

Today’s word is: espalier

And in case you don’t know the word:

a plant (as a fruit tree) trained to grow flat against a support (as a wall)

Today’s word is: rocks