I finished reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow yesterday.
…would have been a neat way to start this post. The truth is, I finished it two days ago and have since been struggling to find my next read. I’m currently sampling Adrian Tchaikovsky’s novel, Children of Time. I’m not sold on it yet. For starters, am I ready for another sci-fi novel so soon after Project Hail Mary? I don’t think there are gonna be aliens doing jazz hands in this one.
I’ve already gotten in touch with Kristen for my next recommendation. As it turns out, she is currently reading Project Hail Mary!
Project Hail Mary is so hot right now.
Her recommendation was to download StoryGraph. Her response was the equivalent of me directing people here when they ask me what I’ve been up to.
“It’s an app. You can see what I’ve read.”
The last time I saw Kristen, she was on book #17. This was two weeks ago. Assuming her StoryGraph profile is accurate, Project Hail Mary would be her 23rd book.
So, I’ve jumped on the StoryGraph bandwagon to pick off some titles from my friends’ lists for my virtual bookshelf. StoryGraph, like GoodReads, lets users assign ratings and write reviews. At most, I’ll leave behind a trail of stars for each book I finish. It also lets me set reading goals:
I have yet to decide how ambitious I want to be with my reading this year. I’d like to at least read more books than I did last year, which was 23.
In my penultimate post, I griped about how Ryan Gosling’s appearance on the book cover of Hail Project Mary stripped me of the freedom of imagining the character the way I want. Zoée sided with Hollywood when they said, “Ryan Gosling does seem like a good choice.”
I mean, yes, BUT THAT’S NOT MY POINT.
The cover of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow features Hokusai’s The Great Wave. This image serves as a character’s inspiration for a game they design in the story. The physical appearance of the characters was left up to my imagination, until a character by the name of Lola was introduced halfway through the book:
“Lola was unchanged from high school, except for her hair, which was now a viridescent bob. She had big, brown eyes and was tiny, busty, and strong-looking. She was wearing a tight, red-and-white poppy-print skater dress and lug-soled Mary Janes, and she smelled like the same orange blossom-scented drugstore shampoo she’d been using as long as he had known her.”
Thus, the character of Lola assumed the form of Alexa. I have no qualms about this; in my head, Alexa played the role of Lola wonderfully.
Another goal-oriented app has recently entered my life: Garmin Connect. I’ve had it for several years now, but I’d always favoured Strava when it came to collecting my fitness data. Now that I have a gadget (Garmin Forerunner 570) strapped to my left wrist, I can get into competitive sleeping.
Last night was my first time wearing it to bed, and I woke up twice: the first time to pee, and the second for no real reason. Instead of rolling over to the side of my bed to remove the card blocking the giant LED display of my alarm clock for the time, I tapped the face of my watch. When I saw that it was 3am, I stressed out knowing it wouldn’t fare well for my sleep score. My disappointment didn’t slip by Garmin unnoticed:
I got up a little after 7:30am. My watch greeted me with a good morning and gave me a sleep score of 80. In Canada, that’s an A-. I was dumbfounded! Apparently, I excel at getting REM sleep, and this alone boosted my score. Sure enough, my dreams have been more frequent and vivid since giving up my nighttime THC habit.
The real reason I gave in and got myself this watch was to keep track of my runs. Up until yesterday, I was using the Strava app and carrying my phone in the pocket of my hoodie. Every so often, I would pull out my phone while in motion, fumble to unlock it, and check my heart rate and pace to ensure I wasn’t pushing it too hard. Soon, it’ll be too hot to even wear a hoodie while running.
The second message I got this morning came from Marianne, who went straight into a rant about the sloppy writing in the book she’s currently reading. I took this as an opportunity to introduce myself as the newest member of The Garmin Girls.
Marianne gave me a lukewarm,“Ooh.”
Me: “I went for an 11km run yesterday, and it is suggesting I do another ‘base’ run today. 40 minutes at 4:45min/km. But my legs feel fatigued! And that is a hard pace to maintain for 40 minutes.”
“Don’t listen to your body. Listen to the watch. Obviously.”
Perusing the dizzying amount of data given by Garmin has me believe my watch actually knows my body better than I do.
I mentioned my quandary to another Garmin fitness watch user, Yann, who responded with this tidbit:
“It will take a bit of data for Garmin to know your body better. But, ya, it often asks you to chill, and then reminds you how lazy you are.”
Essentially, listening to my Garmin this early into my ownership and going for that run is the equivalent of someone driving their car into a body of water because Google Maps directed them to.
It’d have been wiser to spend my day focusing on my reading goals, except that yet another Garmin cultist, Alexa, challenged me to a Steps Challenge.
Alexa on Wednesday at 6:44pm: “Oh yeah I CHALLENGED YOU.”
Today at 10:55am: “How are you stepping so much?!”
3:06pm: *sends me a gif from The Office with the caption “Is it just me, or have these tables turned?”*
3:07pm: “That being said, I am going to yoga later and also out for dinner, so you’ll have several hours to claw back your lead.”
At that point, I’d just gotten home from my Garmin-directed 8km run and urged her to take another gander at the numbers.
3:08pm: “WHAT”
There are 4 hours left in our Steps Challenge and I’m at 23,190 steps (20km). I’ll probably win, but my victory would come at the cost of a blister on my right foot.
I think I’ll name the demanding little coach on my wrist “Lola”.
squaremeat.com 