It's Sunday. There's a routine for Sundays. This is probably considered "off topic" but there it is...

 

Noellia. The backward glance.

Sunday is a rest day. Well, not completely. I try to get up around 7 a.m. to stretch and get the push-ups and sit-ups out of the way. Then coffee and a Ezekiel English Muffin get scarfed down while I read the news at the dining room table --- using the dining room laptop. No more printed newspapers. Only on Sundays do I get to drag my feet before workout because Sundays are the only day on which one of the swim practices starts at 9 a.m. Since the swim is an hour later than usual, and there's full sun on the pool, I get to practice early enough to slather on a good dose of waterproof sunscreen. We hit the water at 9. 

Today's coach was Brandon, a former world class triathlete, and an amazingly good swimmer. He wrote a set for us on the whiteboard based on time elapsed instead of distances. We did our usual warm-ups and a couple sprint sets to get our heart rates up and then he posted this challenge: choose a distance you can repeat every three minutes. My lane chose 200 yard freestyle swims. We paced them out to hit 2:40 time elapsed for the distance which gave us 20 seconds rest between swims. For the early sets we were hitting 2:25 and 2:30 per 200 yards but that was too tough a pace to sustain so we ratcheted back to the 2:40 mark and stayed there. At the end of the hour we'd done about 3400 yards and that's about all the energy I had to offer the water gods today.

Exactly at 10 o'clock the dark gray clouds arrived, streaming in from the West and accompanied by a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder. The timing couldn't have been more perfect. We were up and out and heading to the locker rooms because....safety first. We don't play around much with lightning at the pool. 

Back home at 10:30 to make another cup of coffee, eat some eggs and a small salad. Then out to the office to see if there were any Olympic swim races to watch via streaming. If, for some insane, inexplicable reason, you missed seeing the men's 4x100 meter freestyle relay yesterday you missed the best race so far. The Americans, the Australians and the Italians were the top contenders. The race was close until American, Caleb Dressel hit the water as the anchor for the USA team. He was amazing and touched out the other teams by a fair margin. Gold!!! I can only imagine that swimmers everywhere were glued to their screens for that one. Surely much more exciting than the Olympic Billiards competition...

After the "second" breakfast I worked in the studio for a while. I've been writing what hopefully will be my seventh book and I'm having fun with it. I'll never be a John Sanford but I sure have fun doing the writing. I also took some time to research a few more of those interesting medium format Pentax 645 lenses from the film days. There is a zoom I'm interested in. Seems pretty well sorted for portrait photography. It's an 80-160mm f4.5 FA lens. The "FA" means it's an autofocus lens but, of course, it is backwardly compatible with the manual focus stuff and, according to reviews, the focusing ring is pretty exemplary for an AF lens from the 1990s. 

That lens retailed for around $2300 when it first hit the market. I won't even do the inflation math. But it's chock full of interesting, non-standard optical elements and such. I found one on B&H, used, but in "9+" condition for $229. I bought it without hesitation and look forward to popping the box open on Thursday and trying it out on a Fuji GFX camera. At two pounds it's a bit heavy but probably lighter by a bit than the 24-90mm zoom for the 35mm Leica SL cameras...

When I couldn't figure out what happens next in the book (hours later) I headed back into the house and put together the same lunch I have nearly every day in warmer weather (half the year?).  It's a big bowl of Greek Yoghurt (2% fat), half a cup of Red Mills Muesli, quarter cup of crushed up walnuts, topped with a blanket of fresh blackberries. Tons of blackberries. Too many blackberries for amateur diners! All chased down by a glass of water, a vitamin B complex supplement and a 1000mg of vitamin C. 

I love the buzz I get from the Niacin included in the vitamin B mix. That flushed face feel is .... different. But I conjecture that the flushed feeling comes from the Niacin being a vasodilator and opening up all those arteries and capillaries. Nice. And pleasant to think about. Nitric Oxide addiction?

Lunch done and dishes washed then the next step is to write this blog and post a fun photo. Something light and whimsical for a lazy sort of Sunday. 

When I finish this I'll head out for the rest of the afternoon with a camera and lens and just walk around, getting some exercise and looking to see if there's anything interesting that fits into the style and gear for today. Back by 6:30 to help with dinner. The kid comes for dinner on Sundays and I'm excited to hear how his first week at his new job went. 

After the kid has dinner, picks up his random mail, grabs his father supplemented bag of coffee and heads out B. and I will wash dishes,  then grab whatever books we're currently reading and chill out. I'm reading a book about Stoicism. A follow-on to the books I've read in translation of Seneca, Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. Trying to learn how to be less.... reactive. 

Then, tomorrow, we'll start all over again. Hope your Sunday is fun and as productive or lazy as you'd like it to be. That's all I've got for today.