Goodreads has the following ratings: 1 star = did not like it, 2 stars = it was okay, 3 stars = liked it, 4 stars = really liked it, 5 stars = it was amazing. This year I read 77 books and only gave four of them 5 stars. Those four were:

Still Alice by Lisa Genova: This was a heartbreaking story about a woman who gets early onset Alzheimer. She is a brilliant Harvard professor and it is really hard to read about her experience as she struggles to deal with day to day life and to come to terms with her disease. I could not put the book down even though I really did not want to get to the end.

A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park: A true story about two different children in the Sudan. One is a girl who has to walk all day every day to go and get water and bring it back to her home. The other is a boy who gets separated from his family by war and ends up in s a surprising place in the end.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: I am a sucker for a book about WWII and this one was no exception! This was a story about a blind French girl and a German radio operator who we follow along each of their own paths in the war until they finally meet in the French village of Saint Malo. The writer does a great job of keeping you entertained while giving us a bit of WWII history at the same time.

The Nightingale by Kristen Hannah: Yet another WWII book, this one is also set in German occupied France and it gives us a bit of insight into the role that women had in the war and as part of the Resistance.

There were also several which I gave 4 stars to. Of those, these were my favorites:

The Martian by Andy Weir: A story about a man accidentally stranded on Mars and his attempt at survival and his hope for rescue.

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett: A bunch of short stories about writing, life, love and friendship. She has a quick wit and a way of writing that I really enjoyed.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: Another WWII book! This one is about an English girl who gets captured by the Germans and the story takes place while she is being interrogated by them. She gives them as little information as possible, but in the end, she does give them information.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio: The story of a kid born with a facial abnormality and his struggles to fit into "real life". You can't help but love him and you want to protect him from the outside world.

11/22/63 by Stephen King: The story of a man who goes back in time in order to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy. However, no action is without consequence. The only complaint I had about this book is that it was very long! It was almost 900 pages. Otherwise it was a hit.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion: The story of an autistic man and his quest for a girlfriend. Being a man of lists, he creates one to guide him on his quest.

What were your favorite books in 2015? 

I hope that everyone is having a wonderful week! Today after I get off work, I will drive up to the (snowy!) mountains where my parents live, where I will don flannel and wool and will spend time eating and reading and kicking butt in Rummikub (hopefully). This year my brother is not going to make it, but it will be nice to see my parents and my aunt and her family and to partake in the annual traditions.

The other thing I always love is getting together for the annual day after Christmas breakfast. It has been a tradition that my high school friends and I have had for probably about 10 years, if not more. Most years, most of us make it and a lot of the time the Moms and sometimes even my Dad, some brothers or even a boyfriend or two straggle in as well. It's always great to catch up with the girls and to see the kids get older and older. Last year I missed it since Christmas was on a Wednesday and I had to work, so this year I am looking forward to it twice as much!

I hope that everyone out there has a great weekend and a joyous holiday!

What are your plans for the next few days? Do you have any annual traditions? 

It's my favorite time of year again! It's time for the Best of 2015! First, I am going to start with one of my favorites, in fact you may even call it the best of the "Best of": travel.

It's always hard to decide where the best travel places were each year! This year I was lucky to go to several new places as well as a couple of "tried and trues". However, even in the familiar places, sometimes there was a bit of a twist!

Mt. Baker, WA

Portland, OR

Tetons, WY

Rocky Mountain, CO

Home Sweet Home, CA

Half Dome / Yosemite -- May

Sisters Wilderness, OR

Tahoe Rim Trail, NV

Antelope Lake, CA

John Muir Trail / Yosemite - August

TMB, Chamonix, France 

NYC - View from Tribeca

As you can see, much of my travels this year involved the outdoors! This year while traveling, I tried snowshoeing for the first time, I tasted at least 28 different kinds of new beers (that is just a guess), I made a lot of new friends and cemented a lot of old friendships.

This year, I got to see parts of Yosemite I had never seen before, I revisited a couple of states that I haven't seen much of (CO, WY), I revisited a couple of states that I know and love (OR, WA, NY) and I added one new state (Idaho) to my "states I've visited" list.

I had a fabulous 2 weeks in the Alps of France, Switzerland and Italy where I hiked every day, ate way too many baguettes and cheese, drank too much wine and took a lot of photos of the same mountain from all different angles.

I feel so lucky that I have the means to travel and that my health is good. I am also lucky that I have a family that instilled the love of adventure, travel and the outdoors in me!  I try my hardest not to take things like that for granted. I don't know who I would be without some of the places that I have been. All in all, I would call this a successful year of travel and I can't wait to see what 2016 has in store for me!

What journey did you take in 2015? What was your favorite destination this year? 

In my industry, when we are looking for information, we ask for "color", as in, "can I get some color on that sale at Nordstrom?" And the person would say, "it's tomorrow from 8 - 5." 

Here's a "bit of color" about me: 

I am reading two books (one for the bus on my Kindle, one hardback for home) and they are The Architects Apprentice and The Beekeepers Apprentice. It's a coincidence that both of them have the word Apprentice in them!! Both are good so far! The Architect is about Istanbul in the 1500s; the Beekeeper is about Sherlock Holmes. I hope to finish both by the end of the year, which will bring my total books read this year to 77 books. 

I am looking forward to this weekend, when we will have our group holiday dinner for work, next week, which is a short week where I will go and visit family and friends, and a good night's sleep, which I may not get for another week or so, but whenever I get it, it will be great. 

I am eating a lot of "comfort" foods lately. Soups, stews and desserts have been on the menu a lot lately, and I need to get back into the habit of eating more healthy. 

I am planning my running schedule for next year with hopefully a couple of vacation trips sprinkled in. It's hard to plan around 5 other people's schedules (only one of us can have a day off at a time at work), summer plans, family things and races!!! I know, it's a hard problem to have... 

I am putting off buying the last of my gifts. I have to buy a gift for a coworker's wife for our holiday party and I don't really know her well and I have no idea what to get her! 

What are you reading? What should I get my coworker's wife? 

This year has been a strange one for me. I would say I have been "busy" but I don't know if I have been any busier than I was last year, or the year before that. There is always something on the To Do list; there is always something to fill the time. (See this post from 2013 where I was having similar "issues").

However, for some reason, this year, I have felt more of a change in my mindset, or my motivation. Or maybe I have just shifted my priorities. I am not really sure what the catalyst was or where the mood started to shift, but this year, I feel like I have been slacking in a few of my normal, pleasurable departments.

I used to talk a lot about running on this space. In 2012, I think I ran almost 40 races, including 12 half marathons and 2 marathons and my first ultra. In 2013, I traveled to Boston, Washington DC and BC for races and I ran my first 50 miler. In 2014, I ran 10 races over 50k. This year, I started off great. I wanted to run my first 100 mile race. I was training in January and I felt strong. I was running up hills with gusto. Then I fell one day and sprained my ankle pretty badly and my training went downhill and my fitness started to decline. Of course, I still had races on the calendar, because a lot of the races you have to sign up for really early.

The first race was Jed Smith, which is a loop course. I ran it about 45 minutes slower than I had the year before. My ego took a dive. The next one was the Gorges 100k in Portland in March. I had not trained enough as my ankle was just beginning to feel better, and this one was not as fast as I would have liked either. Next up was Lake Sonoma 50M, where I did not do as well as I wanted but I actually did better than I thought I would. The weekend after that I had a road race, which hurt me more than all of the other races combined (I was sore for days!).

I had a few week gap, where I ran intermittently, and then came the big one, Quicksilver 100k, where I did much better than I thought I would and was actually very happy with my time. The "training" by way of racing actually worked this time. But I had signed up for another race the next weekend and this one was my nemesis. It's called the Silverstate 50M and it's near Reno and it's got a couple of huge climbs and it's at about 7000 - 8000 ft. Last year I ran it while injured and it was horrible. I got the worst time I have ever gotten and the last climb was torture. This year I actually felt pretty good for the first 40 miles, but then for the last 10 I felt nauseated and tired. I crossed the finish line and had to go and sit by myself in the porta-potty just in case I was going to lose my lunch.

In the weeks after that, I had no energy. BUT, what I haven't said is this. There is another component to the story. In February, I started house shopping. Every week I scoured the internet. Every weekend I went to open houses. Every couple of weeks, I put in offers that got turned down. Finally, in April, my offer got accepted and thus started the downhill slide into home ownership. My escrow was 21 days and it closed on May 19th, three days after Silverstate. So I was physically and mentally tired.

The trifecta of this story is that work also ramped up at this point in a major way. My duties and responsibilities were doubling and tripling. I am not complaining, but I am just saying that when I got home after work, the last thing I wanted to do was run. I wanted to sleep. I did not sleep. I pulled weeds and moved furniture. I made many trips to Home Depot and Target. I paid bills and sorted files and went through all my old clothes. But I barely ran.

Fast forward to now. Today my average miles per week are about 30, if I am lucky. I am snacking more than I would like. My pants are starting to get a bit snug. The only thing saving me is my daily commute to work. But who am I kidding; the commute is not saving me, it's only prolonging the inevitable. So I need to buck up and get back on the horse and stop making excuses.

But I don't want to. I would rather bake a cake (and eat half of it in one sitting while watching Top Chef and making excuses).

How do you get out of a slump? 

Until yesterday, the media narrative for the Labour party since the general election has been one of unparalleled disaster.  This only increased with the election of the very left-wing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, a man whose main political work was as a serial rebel and protest march speaker.  Wholly unelectable, rejoiced the largely right-wing media in mock-sepulchral tones.  And he didn't do the things that politicians should do, like pander to the media march - this is a leader who committed the cardinal sin of failing to turn up to an Andrew Marr interview.  Honestly, where were his priorities?

Corbyn hasn't been much of a hit in the Commons, the place where the Westminster village gathers, and has rather annoyed regular Westminster watchers by taking the sting out of Prime Minister's Questions.   He doesn't even seem very interested in Westminster occasions, as if somehow they don't really impact upon his own supporters and voters in the constituencies.

Then, of course, there came the disaster of the Syrian air strikes debate - or more accurately ISIS air strikes debate (or Daesh, or IS, or whatever acronym we choose in the fond belief that they're really very interested in what we call them).  Corbyn, a man of principle even if he does look eternally miserable on television, remained opposed to strikes and wanted his parliamentary party to join him.  An undeniably inexperienced leader, he failed to properly bring his colleagues on side by largely ignoring them, and his media management remains atrocious. He gave a poor if honest speech in the debate, was eclipsed by his own shadow Foreign Secretary but helped by David Cameron's ludicrous mis-step in having spoken about terrorism's fellow travellers.

Yet while the largely hostile media revelled in Mr. Benn's fine speech (most OTT love letter was probably that of Labour refusenik Dan Hodges in the Telegraph) the voters in Oldham West were preparing to deliver a more significant verdict - that of Labour's heartland voters.

Oldham is an early test of Mr. Corbyn's electoral potency.  This may be a man who won a huge grassroots majority in his election as Labour leader, but the depreciation of his image and apparently hopeless attributes as leader have been consistently trumpeted by a hostile media.  Even yesterday, there were serious hopes that Labour would be cuckolded by UKIP in Oldham - take this piece by the Spectator's Sebastian Payne (soon to move to the FT).  Payne even visited Oldham, escaping the Westminster bubble for a day, and his finely tuned village antenna revealed these truths.  That "Corbyn's leadership appears to be dragging the party towards electoral oblivion", that there were signs on the ground that "all is not well for Labour", that UKIP's John Bickley could be the party's second MP and believes "he has struck gold with Jeremy Corbyn".  On it went.  Despite visiting Labour headquarters in Oldham young Mr. Payne still reported that UKIP could win the seat, Corbyn was a disaster on the doorstep, every time John McDonnell spoke he turned more voters towards UKIP.

But who can blame the Spectator's correspondent?  He was hardly alone in his assessment or in his Westminster assumptions that Corbyn was simply not proving up to the task, and a single visit north was not going to alter that.

Then the voters had their say.  It wasn't a big turnout, but at around 40% it was not disastrously small either.  Labour won, and won handily with a 10,000 majority.  And Labour's share of the vote actually increased.  So Jeremy Corbyn, the man who won the Labour leadership with the largest popular vote ever granted a party leader, can actually win parliamentary elections too it seems.  It's almost as if he might actually be in tune with the thinking of supporters of a left-wing party.

The vote on air strikes, too, was instructive.  While there were some headline Labour figures opposing their leader's stance, and much of the media narratvie has been about a wretchedly divided party, only 8 of Labour's 53 new MPs supported air strikes.  The vast majority agreed with Corbyn.

Labour is undoubtedly a party in turmoil.  But their new leader's key attribute is that he reaches well beyond the confines of an insular Westminster village, and the civil war on his parliamentary benches may well be more of an indication of how out of touch the more traditional, or mainstream, MPs are than any suggestion of Corbyn's own isolation.  A Corbyn led party has won a by-election that the common narrative said would be very close or potentially a disastrous loss.  He has won it well.  He keeps the loyalty of his newly elected MPs - and the majority of his shadow cabinet, and the majority of his other MPS - in a highly divisive vote.  When we next read about Jeremy Corbyn in the press, if the narrative doesn't change as a result of Oldham we should at least be highly sceptical of any stories projecting him as an inevitably election losing catastrophe.

And the Tories should sit up and take notice.  While their party gets deeper into revelations of bullying leading to suicide in their retrograde youth movement, they cannot take any comfort from the complacently driven canard that the next general election is theirs for the taking.

November was one of those months where you feel kind of relaxed and you think you have plenty of time until Christmas and then all of a sudden, you get a slap in the face because it's already Thanksgiving and the advent calendars are about to come out. This November I even scheduled a couple of "free" days in order to get some of my December errands done early, but they quickly became "non-free days" or at the very least "not as productive as I wanted them to be" days.

Running: This month I did have a couple of long weekend runs (20 + 20 + 18 miles respectively). That coupled with a race gave me a grand total for the month of 126 miles. Aside from a run or two on the weekends, I have not been doing a lot of weekly workouts. However, I did rack up 20 miles of hiking, 18 miles of cycling and 3 strength training sessions. My goal for December is to do at least 2 strength training sessions per week.

Reading: I only read 4 books in November, which on one hand is a bit surprising since I did travel for work. However, on the other hand, when traveling on the plane I watched movies instead of reading (The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game). Also, one of the books I read was 849 pages long and it took me a while to finish! The four books were:

A Spool of Blue Thread (3 stars)
Into Thin Air (4 stars)
11/22/63 (4 stars)
A Tale For The Time Being (3 stars)

Travel: November was (mostly) a month of  doing things around my local area. I spent a couple of weekends going over to Marin to run on the Dipsea trail, I had my Dad visit and we worked on some things around the house, I had people over for dinner, and I met up with friends for hikes. In addition, I hosted 17 people for Thanksgiving at my house, which went over pretty well in my opinion!

I did travel for work to New York, and I spent a fun time with old friends in Brooklyn and Queens before heading over to Manhattan for two days in the office there. My favorite thing to do in the city is to eat and I did plenty of that! I had great Haitian meat pies in Brooklyn and Russian food in Queens, and then in Manhattan went to two great restaurants: Deux Amis and NoMad.

I am looking forward to January when it will be a bit more relaxed and I can finally do that project in the yard that I have been meaning to do for the last 6 months (wow, has it really been 6 months already?). Until then, there will be a barrage of Christmas parties (I have 3 in the next week alone!) and a bit of shopping and cookie making and eating and visiting and hosting. And eating.

How did November go for you? What is your favorite Christmas cookie (to make or to eat)? How many Holiday parties will you be attending this year? 

It was very common back in the day for houses to not have closets. Don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that it had something to do with getting taxed for each "room", and closets were counted as rooms. Therefore, many older houses are closet-less. 

My house was built in 1924. I  have friends with similarly aged homes which have teeny tiny closets, which I have heard came from the fact that homes were taxed per square foot (and why waste it on closet space). Luckily, my closets are not too tiny and I even have a bonus hole in my hallway. However, there is not a lot of shelving in any of them.

The other day my Dad calls me up and says that he would like to come down and fix something in my house. Fortunately, I do have a self imposed Honey Do list. However, most of the things on it are pretty easy things I can do myself (not that I always want to, but I CAN). Luckily, I can think quickly on my feet, and when he requested a project AND a drawing, I quickly got to work. Here is what I came up with. 

Bedroom Closet Plan

Hall Closet Plan

Aren't my drawing skills fabulous? NOT. For the bedroom closet, I wanted a few shelves to put shoes or clothes on, as well as a rod to hang things. For the hall closet, I wanted some shelves and also a space for the broom/mop and a space to hang people's coats when they came to visit. 

So Dad came down and got to work. Here are the before and after shots. 

Bedroom Closet: The day I moved in

Bedroom Closet : Before

Bedroom Closet : After

Don't judge me. I have a lot of shoes. 

Hall Closet : Before

Hall Closet : After

I still need to paint the shelves in the bedroom closet and to figure out how I want to organize everything, which will involve a bit of shifting and time to see if things are working the way I want them to. However, overall I am quite pleased with the way everything turned out! 

Do you have enough closet space? If you could have a closet makeover, what would you change/add? 

The western world is full of the distractions that our prosperity and liberal values allow.  So much so, that for the most part we forget that we are at war.  Then along comes a tragedy like the Paris attacks yesterday night, and for a few days – sometimes even weeks – we remember again about our war.

It is a war like no others before it.  It doesn’t often come onto our soil, but it pervades our governments’ and security forces’ actions almost in total. Our military forces are nearly exclusively engaged in military action in the middle east; our security services dedicate the majority of their attention to threats from that same middle east. 

But this isn’t just a one-sided military war.  It is a culture war too.  It is a war of liberalism versus fundamentalism, and the hinterland of this cultural dimension is at the heart of fears about the refugee crisis dominating Europe.

There is no clear resolution.  Well, there is no clear resolution that commands political support.  On our own domestic front – thrown into stark relief once again by the killing of over 120 innocent Parisians doing nothing more warlike than enjoying the leisure offered by a liberal society – it is an obvious misnomer to equate the killers with a single religion.  Their creed is a more nihilistic brand of fundamentalism, and that exists across all religions.  These particular fundamentalists are more militarised because their immediate counterparts in the middle east are militarised, but their core opposition to the values of liberalism are not much different from the opposition of any fundamentalist to the values of an individualist, free-thinking society.

So how did liberalism get here?  How has a western society, drawing its guiding principles from an ideology which elevates tolerance and individual freedom get to a point where it is in a terrible, almost underground war on its own soil against those who want to dismantle it?

Perhaps the problem originated with the inability of western governments to divorce themselves from an interventionism that has also been part of liberalism.  Liberalism shouldn’t be interventionist – or expansionist – but the foreign policies of liberal governments have never quite subscribed to that view.  Inevitably perhaps, since governments are the least able to protect themselves against a corruption of power which demands your aggressive defence against known and unknown enemies.

Thus, in the name of defending liberal values, western governments have found themselves at war. And they are finding what true liberals could have told them all along – war is fundamentally destructive of liberal values, both internally and externally.

Externally, in the ways we have seen.  The enemies the war has created do come after you, and if they themselves are weak then they come after your weakest element too.  IS are a brutal, murderous group governed by an abominable fundamentalist mentality, but compared to the military complexes of the liberal nations they are weak.  They win on the ground because our governments have started to hesitate in their use of their own military power.  Hesitated too late, alas.  So IS attacks in a way that their weakness finds most effective.  By taking aim at the ‘soft underbelly’ of western society. 

Internally, the threat to liberalism exists because each time an attack takes place, more credibility is given to the idea that governments and their forces should increase their own domestic power.

So has liberalism failed?  How do we escape this desperate cycle?  There will not be wanting voices to call for greater action in Syria; more bombings of sometimes military and sometimes civilian targets.  More boots on the ground.  More action in Iraq too perhaps.  Maybe Afghanistan.  But consider this.  The only real path for military success is to engage in a full, total and continuous war until we have utterly decimated and destroyed all the forces arraigned against us; and then to maintain a full military presence to suppress any resurgence of that fundamentalism which militates against us for as long as such feelings might exist.

Read that last bit again and see if it has any likelihood to it whatsoever.  Of course it doesn’t.  Not even war-based empires like Rome succeeded in such a path for any length of time.  But it is the only way of operating if you want to go down the path of military success.

Alternatively, we could try and rescue liberalism and the societies which embrace it by beginning the slow, painful retreat from interventionism.  It won’t be easy.  The seeds of terrorist opposition that have already been sown are still growing and being harvested, and will be a long time before that soil can finally dry up.  There is still a long slog ahead for governments and security services as they seek to protect their societies without reducing them to illiberal states.  But if we really want to escape from the cycle of mindless, fundamentalist, random attacks on the innocent of our societies, then we have understand where it has come from.  And it came from the failure of liberal governments to fully embrace an ideology that should never have allowed them to send half-hearted military forces into areas they barely understood.

Don't freak out; this post is NOT about what you think it is.

I decided that I would post from time to time about the joys of being a homeowner. I am sure that many of you have similar stories and I would like to know how things are in your neck of the woods. Are they the same as mine? For instance, do YOU have a nosy/creepy/annoying neighbor? A loud xyz near your house? An animal that poops in your flower bed or eats your homegrown veggies? What woes do you have in your neighborhood?

My first woe is this: Alarm Systems.

When I first moved in, the "curtain twitcher" (my nosy friendly neighbor across the way) came over to introduce herself (at 8:30 p.m. and mind  you, I normally go to bed around 8:30) and to talk about the neighborhood and the goings on and the other people on our block etc. Apparently the guy behind me "might" be a drug dealer, the people at the end never leave their house and the people across the street rented to someone because they moved to Paris for work (but that is the only non-owner occupied home on the block). I learned all of this (and more!) in about 26 minutes, as the clock was slowly ticking toward 9:00.

The other thing she told me, which was interesting but not great, is that since we live on a street that is very easily accessible from the freeway (great for commuting!) sometimes thieves will get off the freeway, kick in your door, steal your TV and get right back on the freeway in a matter of minutes. Now, I am not super attached to my TV, but I am pretty attached to my life, so I decided to get an alarm system.

First of all, getting an alarm system is a pain in the butt. It's worse than getting cable. First, you sign your life away by paying up front for the install/equipment and the first month. Next, some creepy guy comes to your house and tries to suggestive sell you on $9,000 worth of equipment, which by the way, will ONLY cost you an additional $900 in install/equipment fees and another $50 per month on top of the original $40 per month you already agreed to pay. Of course, in his spiel, your area is VERY dangerous and it's IMPERATIVE that ALL windows, doors, peepholes, cracks and crevices be set up with an alarm and preferably a camera and a direct line to the CIA.

So I get the standard, the one that I ALREADY paid for and I kick the creepy guy out. Now, one of the things you also have to get, which creepy guy pretty much brushes over the details of, is a permit with the city or county. This is like a registration with the local police. However, creepy guy did mention that they would take care of it for me. I thought this was great until I got a bill in the mail from them, asking me to reimburse them for taking care of it for me.

Fast forward to three months later when I am riding my bike to work and my phone rings. I ignore it because who the heck is calling me from a 1-800 number at five in the morning; I figure it must be an east coast telemarketer. Turns out it was the alarm company, calling me because the alarm went off for no reason. The police were dispatched and they did not find any signs of a break-in. I was happy to hear that, and I thought that was the end of that. Until I received a bill last week in the mail for $84 for a "false alarm". I thought, "No problem. I have a permit. I will call them and tell them there has been a mistake".

Not so fast, little girl. I looked it up and here are the details.

General False Alarm: With permit = $84, Without permit = $154
Robbery False Alarm: With permit = $156, Without permit = $226
Genuine: With permit = Free(!), Without permit = $70

So, the only way to save money is if your alarm is genuine, aka you get robbed by a burglar. Otherwise, instead of getting robbed by a burglar, you get robbed by the city instead.

Do you have a home security system? What are the rules in your area? If you don't have an alarm, what frustrates you about one of the rules of YOUR neighborhood? 

Another October is in the books! Finally, a month with a good mix of friends, family, work, running and getting things knocked off my To Do List (which is no mean feat). I had a couple of weekends at home, which, although they weren't "quiet", did give me a chance to get some things done that I have been wanting to do for a long time (like planting that darn orange tree in the back yard)!

Running: Finally I picked up my mileage a bit, mostly because I ran the Dick Collins 50M early in the month, but also because I am trying to get back out there little by little. Running mileage was 126 miles, which I have to say I am pretty darn happy with! I also put 36 miles on the bike, hiked 14 miles and did 6 HIIT/strength/core workouts. I mentioned in the race recap that I thought the strength workouts were helping my running and I plan to keep doing them at least a couple of times each week to see if it works out better for training. Something has to give; I am still having back pain and that plus my lack of motivation have led to a lot less running that normal. However, if I can find a substitute for one or two days of running per week and it works out, this may be the solution.

Reading: I am not super excited about any of the books I read in October. I ended up reading 5 books total and they were all just "okay". They were:

Heroes Are My Weakness (2 stars)
Life After Life (3 stars)
What Alice Forgot (3 stars)
The Dinner (3 stars)
Dietland (3 stars)

Travel: I didn't stray too far away from home in October, but I did have a nice trip home to see my parents, where we went on a couple of nice hikes, spent some time with my grandma and ate the last of the fresh tomatoes. I also went to my cousin's wedding which was at a nice vineyard about an hour and a half from my house. The setting was beautiful and it was great to see family that I hadn't seen in a while and to get a bit gussied up and to dance my booty off (I did not count that as one of the strength workouts, but it WAS a workout)!

November is shaping up to be another fun (filled!) month, with a couple of visits from friends and family, some big house projects, some running events, hosting Thanksgiving at my house and a trip for work to NYC!

How was October for you? Did you go trick-or-treating or did you hand out candy? Do you know of any good strength workouts I should try? 

When Marco Rubio scored his attack hit against former mentor Jeb Bush in the recent Republican debate, he may have been signalling that he was running against the old families of both parties.  For a long time observers and commentators have worried that the presidential election of the world's first democracy might end up being a slug-fest between two names who have come up before - Bush v Clinton.  What would it say about the nature of the American democracy if its two parties' best options were to produce the wife and son/brother of former presidents?  Well, Hillary may be sleeping easier at the moment as she continues to sail through the Democratic campaign, but Jeb Bush has never been a front-runner in the Republican one and the hot money is already gathering around Marco Rubio.

Rubio does well in debates, and his put-down of Jeb Bush - "someone convinced you attacking me is going to help you" - was further evidence that, unlike the senior politico, he can actually do politics and is an articulate candidate to boot.  Yes, the Republican race at the moment remains dominated by the extraordinary - as in extraordinarily ridiculous - Donald Trump, with retired neuro-surgeon Ben Carson in second place.  But there still exists a sense that when the votes start being cast, Trump might flounder, while Carson's lack of political experience is already causing him problems.  Then the Republicans will start looking for their serious, Hilalry-beating candidate. And at the moment that is looking like the senator from Florida.

Rubio is young, fresh, runs to the Republican conservative base without sounding or appearing overly wacky, and as the son of Cuban immigrants has a Latin appeal that is electorally powerful.

The Bushes deride him as a "GOP Obama", but that might seem to those outside the Republican bubble as a positively good thing.  Just as the fresh young senator from Illinois dispatched a member of his party's political aristocracy, it looks as if Rubio might just do the same.  If he does, Hillary really should be worried.  After all, her track record against dynamic incomers is hardly encouraging.

Wow! It's been a long time since I have done a race recap.

In 2013, Dick Collins was my first 50 mile trail race. I had no idea how to pace myself. I just said that I was going to "walk every hill". I finished just under 10 hours and I was very proud of that time. Last year, I was in pretty good shape and I ran it again, knocking about a half an hour off my time, and finishing in 9:29. This year, I was not in pretty good shape. I had been running about 15 - 30 miles a week and doing 1 or 2 days of HIIT training. I was not watching what I ate and I had been spending long hours at work and getting not enough sleep every day.

My expectations of myself were pretty low. I just wanted to get under 11 hours, which would mean basically I could run a minute and a half per mile slower (or walk more) than last year and I would still be okay. There was a friend of mine who ran last year and we ended up finishing together (hand in hand across the finish line!) and he was also running this year and I thought my A goal would be to just keep up with him.

The race starts off in the dark, along a paved path that goes partially around Lake Chabot. I ran along and talked to some friends, but soon I felt that need to pass people (I always get antsy at the start) and so I said goodbye to them and took off. Luckily this part of the race was on a fire trail so it was no pressure to pass or be passed, like it would on a single track. I ended up running with a lady who was running her first 50 mile race and she was doing a great job. We ran together for several miles before she peeled off to visit the bushes and I pressed on.

Luckily, the weather was cooperating. It was about 50 degrees and it was a bit foggy, which was perfect running weather. Like all trail races, this one has a lot of ups and downs (almost 9,000 ft total), but there is also a lot of trail that is runnable. For about 10 miles it was a slight downhill or a flattish area and I was running under a 10 minute pace. Around mile 15, I hit the Skyline Gate, which is where I often end up when I run from my house. In my mind for a second I thought how easy it would be to just run down the hill to my house from here. But no, I grabbed some watermelon, used the facilities and pressed on. From here on out, there is a lot of single trail. As I started out, there were two people just keeping pace with me. One was a girl, who when I came up behind her, happily pulled over to let me pass. In my mind, even though I did not think this was going to be a great race for me, I still wanted to pass that girl.

As the race went on, the girl and I were neck and neck. We would swap places on the ups or the downs (she was faster on the ups; I was faster on the downs) and we would sometimes both roll into an aid station around the same time and one of us would get through faster, but we were right next to each other most of the time. But we did not speak; we just kept leap frogging. Then came the long downhill to the turnaround. Since I had been faster at the downs, I got a bit of a lead on her at this point. I came into the 25 mile turnaround, grabbed a grilled cheese (still my favorite ultra food) and headed back out without slowing. She came in about 45 seconds behind me.

The next 4 miles was a steady uphill climb. I was about halfway through the climb when the girl caught up to me and I jokingly said, "darn it!" to her. We continued on together after that, talking and enjoying the company, and griping over our aches and pains for the day. I was feeling better than expected, but my back was hurting me and my knee was giving me a twinge now and then. After the long climb up, there was a pretty steep road down to the aid station and then a pretty steep downhill single trail, where my knee really started acting up. I actually had to walk down the hills in some places.

Soon we were back to Skyline gate, which meant we had about 15 miles left. The girl and I ran together for some parts and did our own thing for others. However, we were pretty much within sight of each other the entire time. Then we came to the last 5 miles. She pulled ahead of me, but I could still see her there, my carrot on a stick. The final 2 miles are paved and I could still see her, and I gave it my all, ramping up to under a 9 minute pace. My feet were hurting; my quads were burning; my back and knee were telling me to hurry up and get to the finish so we can rest!

I made it to the finish just behind the girl. I went up to her and thanked her for being my carrot and she told me that I had been her carrot in the beginning and she would not have run as fast if I had not been there. She ended up getting first in our age group and I ended up with 2nd, which I was happy with because I ended up being much faster than I had anticipated!

Final time: 9:31
Age: 2nd
Gender: 8 / 60 finishers (+22 DNFs)
Overall: 36 / 185 finishers (+69 DNFs)

Overall, I would say that I was very happy with my results. In fact, I may try to change up my training plan going forward so that it is more strength and cross training (cycling mostly) and less miles, since it surprisingly seemed to work.

Have you ever done better than expected at something even though you did not prepare as well as you would have liked? What is your "carrot" when you are going for a particular goal? 

It's 4:49 a.m. My alarm goes off and I hop off of the couch, where I have been sitting and reading. I wash my breakfast dishes, grab my lunch and use the bathroom one last time and then I put on my helmet and grab my bike and my backpack and walk out the door.

It's about 2 miles from my house to the train station. Luckily, in the morning, it's mostly downhill. I put on my bike light, hike up one leg of my pants and start pedaling. You never know what you are going to see on the streets of Oakland at 5 a.m. There are not too many cars, which is good because that means I can buzz through most of the intersections without slowing down too much. There are sometimes people, but they are mostly like me, heading to work in the dark of the night.

Except for one corner which is near the train station. This corner is a bit different that the others. Women hang around in short skirts; men in trucks slow to a crawl as they pass. It's usually pretty quiet though; I pedal through with no problems.

I reach the train station in about 7 minutes. I constantly try to break the 7 minute time and have only done it once. It all depends on how I hit the traffic lights and how many cars there are that I have to avoid. I get there around 5:07, lock up my bike and hop on the train to work.

In the afternoon, the same journey takes about 12 minutes. From the station, I have to ride uphill and generally its around 4 or 5 pm. I have to stop at every intersection, sometimes for 2 or 3 minutes. There are cars to avoid, as well as people, broken glass, a lone shoe and a condom. It's hot and the traffic is busy and I swerve around old ladies and kids on skateboards. It's a whole different world. I can see everything.

I get home, hop off my bike and push it into my living room, where it lives. I do everything in reverse: walk in the door, backpack off, helmet off, put my lunch in the sink and use the bathroom one more time.

Note: I have been commuting by bike to the train station for a few months now and am really loving the view I am getting of the world this way. Plus a little extra exercise using different muscles never hurts!

How do you get to work? Do you ever walk or ride a bike? What interesting things have you seen while cycling? 

David Cameron could be forgiven if he enters the Tory Conference week thinking about his place in history.  This, after all, is a man who doesn’t have to win another election, since he’s given himself a final term firewall against any future electoral catastrophes.  Not only that, but he’s been able to witness Big Bad Jezza Corbyn’s utter catastrophe of a party conference over the past week, with possibly only a few hours off to mull over the deteriorating quality of western foreign policy (currently sub-contracted out to the country formerly known as the Soviet Union).

Corbyn is a delight in many ways.  He’s not quite as different as a party leader as some hopefuls are suggesting, admittedly.  George Lansbury and Michael Foot were also bizarre lefty true-believers with a lofty disdain for practical politics, and both proved electorally disastrous for the Labour party, albeit from a better intellectual vantage point than the fuzzy minded Corbyn.  But Corbyn is the first of that mould to appear in the age of constant media, and his disdain for the “media commentariat”, coupled with his notoriously badly structured, dull black holes of speeches have all gone to contribute to the carefully spun image of a man who is “authentic”. 

Corbyn’s conference was a sheer joy for David Cameron.  The Labour leader’s select-a-policy style, and his refusal – or inability – to have his shadow cabinet speaking from anything like a single song-sheet, must all be making the current leasee of No. 10 Downing Street giddy with the prospects of his future greatness.  And Cameron has to think about his future greatness as he has no more general elections to win.

What he does have, though, is a referendum to win and if he is to finally rest on the front bench of Great Tory Leaders (Andrew Roberts examines the competition in this piece for the Spectator this week) he will need to ensure that he persuades the country – and much of his own party – to stay in Europe.  Whatever the Euro-sceptics say, Cameron doesn’t see leaving Europe as much of a triumph for his avowedly internationalist approach.

Musing on possible future greatness might have led Cameron to read more carefully the obituaries of Denis Healey this weekend.  Whether great or not – there is plenty of scope for debate – Healey was one of the best known politicians of his era.  He was an early example of the “celebrity” politician who could probably be recognised by the average don’t-care-about-politics-they’re-all-liars voter in the street.  Bushy eyebrows may have helped, and the fact that he was thus easily caricatured by the greatest performing impressionist of his day, Mike Yarwood, but Healey was also well known because he was trenchant.  He rarely expressed modest views and wasn’t shy about condemning his opponents.  His reference to Geoffrey Howe having all the savagery of a dead sheep in his parliamentary attacks has been well recorded.  Less often noted, and more scathing, was his outraged condemnation of Margaret Thatcher as a prime minister who “gloried in slaughter” during the Falklands War.

The problem for Denis Healey – who has received universally positive obituaries – is that his greatest achievement was born out of disaster.  As Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer during the awful 70s he had to advise a recalcitrant party that the days of ambitious spending were over.  He began – in the teeth of massive Labour opposition – a sharp programme of austerity.  It was forced upon him by the fact that he was the first – and to date the only – Chancellor to ask for a loan from the IMF to tide the tanking British economy over. 

I doubt that, when he entered politics after a heroic military career during World War II, Healey envisaged his claim to greatness resting on such a terrible reversal of fortunes.  He spent the rest of his active political career trying to persuade the Labour lefties of the need for responsible policies and a need to appeal to centrist voters.  He failed in this. 

Perhaps that is the lesson from Denis Healey’s career.   Cameron can muse that even if the worst happens, and the country votes to come out of the Union he thinks we should maintain membership of, if he should live long enough afterwards even his failure might be perversely turned into some sort of triumph.

September! Back to school days and leaf raking days; new pencils and old friend days; putting on pants and jelly making days. Early sunset nights and late sunrise days. Soup days and boot days. Crisp air and fog days.... What does September mean to you?

Running: I clocked just over 100 miles this month, which is better than last month! However, I did not get the same amount of hiking in, so the total "time on feet" was less. Instead, I have been focusing more on my strength training, and am doing a twice a week strength training regime rather than so much running. This month's totals were 45 miles of hiking, 53 miles of biking and 9 strength training sessions.

Reading: This was a good reading month quantity-wise, but only so/so quality-wise. I ended up reading 9 books and two half books (couldn't finish/had to put down)! My favorites were these four:

Farewell to the East End: The Last Days of the East End Midwives
Americanah
Station Eleven
This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Travel: My vacation spanned two separate months, so September marked the end of my trip to Europe. The first week of the month included a relaxing soak in a thermal bath, some hiking in the Alps of Switzerland, more cheese and bread and wine, and a trip to see a very old friend of mine, who had been an exchange student in my tiny high school when I was growing up. She lives near Geneva and so I not only got to see her house and to meet her husband and children, but I also traveled with her to her parents house in the mountains, where I got to meet the whole family, hike in the snow and drink Schnapps. It was a fun time all around!

Swiss cows are friendly!

After I returned, I spent a bit of Hobbit time doing things around the house, visiting local friends, going out for drinks with the work mates, cooking, shopping and eating and generally just catching up on life. I still have a mountain of items on my To Do list, but I am checking them off little by little! Unfortunately, new ones keep popping up!

And....Beer: New category! You know how you try things, such as beer, or wine or a new recipe, and then when you go to get another or make another, you can't remember the name or the website? Well, to prevent that, I am trying to remember to log things better and to write them down. So, the new beer I tried in September that I liked was: Fieldwork's Torrential Double IPA (website here).

What do you have on your To Do List? What new beer have you tried lately? What happened in your September worth mentioning? 

From here on out, this space will be called the "looking back" space. Before I go on, I am looking forward to Fall! Okay, now I am not just all about looking back. August is always a busy month: Last year I studied for and passed a licensing exam, took a vacation and still managed to run 189 miles (phew). This year was a lot less study, but was still packed solid every weekend of the month!

Running: For the first time in a long time, in August I dropped below 100 miles. My heart (brain/legs, etc) is just is not in it. My total for the month was about 85 miles of running. However, I am still loving the outdoors! August also brought 40 miles of cycling, 109 miles of hiking, 21 miles of walking, 1 open water swim, 1 kayak trip and 1 hour of strength training. All in all, this equals about 256 miles of "activity." I will take what I can get!

Reading: I read 4 books, and none of them really knocked my socks off.... The best two were probably The Boston Girl by Anita Diamant and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng.

Travel: Not a lot of running; not a lot of reading...but there was a lot of travel. There were 5 weekends in August and I spent them in 5 different places: Yosemite, Humboldt County (redwoods), Taylorsville (Dad's first half marathon), Milan and Chamonix (UTMB). Due to all of this, I have added a new category, which I will move on to now...

Family, Friends and Food: August really is "family, friends and food" month. The first weekend was a great trip to the lesser known regions of Yosemite park, aka, not the valley, where I spent some time camping and running with friends. The next weekend was another camping trip, but this time it was in the opposite direction, north along the coast, into the redwoods. It was great hanging out with the "in-laws" and my brother while swimming, playing catchphrase and drinking plenty of cold beer.

View of Half Dome from North Dome

The next weekend was ANOTHER camping trip, this time with the whole fam damily, and when I say whole, I mean three (or four?) generations of crazy, dirty, active, fun and loud family members. It was a side of the family that I don't see as often, and it was a lot of fun! My dad ran his first half marathon and kicked some major butt in the process (first in his age group and 7th overall)!!

Dad after his "Running of the Bears" win

After that, it was off to Europe for my annual vacation, where I ate baguettes and cheese, drank wine, hiked in the Alps, cheered on my friend at UTMB and in general had a lot of fun and time exploring the outdoors. I tired myself out so much, that I never even had time to read the 10 books (or even 4!) that I brought with me on my Kindle. Every night was a good night's sleep and I woke up each day ready for another adventure. Now I am busy resting from my vacation....just kidding! It's been straight back to the old grind with no easing in!

So...how was your August? What annual summer traditions do you have? Are you ready for Fall yet? 

There is nothing special about today, but I thought I would do a midweek TGIF regarding the past 7 days!

The high of my week was a trip north to the redwoods with my brother and his girlfriend's family. We had a good time hiking, playing games and hanging out, and on the way home we stopped and took a nice dip in the Russian river to top off the weekend.

The low of my week was a bit of a crazy busy workweek last week along with some ongoing work drama.

A book I am reading is The Boys in the Boat, except that I got the hardback from the library and then left it at home since I have been riding my bike to work and it is actually due today, so I am not going to finish it until I check it out again.

A podcast I am listening to is the Freakonomics issue of "how to create suspense". It is interesting, as they talk about how there is a perfect number of plot twists or surprises in a book or movie in order to keep people interested.

A workout I did was this Fitness Blender workout. They have a TON of different workouts on YouTube and you can also go to their site and search by workout length, calorie burn or intensity. I have been doing one to two of the 30 - 40 minute HIIT workouts per week and I have been enjoying them!

The best money I spent was probably my mortgage. I know, it's not exciting, but it sure is no joke!

My plans for the weekend include going up to my parent's neck of the woods for some camping and to see my dad run his first half marathon!

Happy Tuesday! What was the high point of your last 7 days? 

Looking back at this blog, I noticed that I am generally posting only a couple times a month, one of them being the "looking back" theme. Ah, well, such is life!! Just like everything, blogging and/or writing comes and goes and right now, I am happy with life and feel that I am getting things done, even if it doesn't include keeping up with this space! I do miss the connection that I have with many other bloggers, but I am keeping an eye on many of your blogs, even if I am not commenting!!

And now, welcome August; goodbye July.

Running: July was supposed to be a bit of a higher month for me. However, it ended up being one of my lowest months in a very long time. Lack of training, an injury and an unfinished race (sad recap to follow) meant that in July I ended up running only about 106 miles. On a good note, I started riding my bike to the BART each morning and afternoon. It's only about 1.8 miles each way, but it adds up to about 15 - 20 miles a week of biking. In addition, I am starting a 2 x per week HIIT class, which are about 30 - 45 minutes each.

The TRT

Reading: You can see the skew and maybe the reason my mileage was low when I tell you that this month I read 11 books. Okay, really I read 10 and a half. I started the Bone Clocks and just could not get into it, so I set it down half way. Some of my favorites were:

Still Alice by Lisa Genova
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes

Travel: I started the month off in central Oregon, on our annual "girls trip", which includes my friend, her two daughters and her Mom, except this year it was also her dad, her brother and her sister's family, which included three kids and a husband. It was a loud, crazy houseful but it was a lot of fun. I even took the boys trail running with me twice and they enjoyed the change of scenery (they are road runners and cyclists). I also went to Tahoe for TRT.

Otherwise: My other two weekends were spent painting and sorting and organizing around the house and then finally having a housewarming party, which was a hit. It was fun to finally get all the friends together, especially since there were some friends I haven't seen in a while, due to all the running and working and home stuff. I ended up having a lot of extra beer, but I am sure I can find a home for it!

If you came to my housewarming party, what kind of drink would you bring? What book should I put on the library wait list? 

Eleanor Roosevelt said to, "Do something every day that scares you". 

In less than 24 hours, I will be toeing the line of the Tahoe Rim Trail 100 mile trail race. I would like to say I am totally prepared, because usually I am good at planning and setting goals and executing those goals. However, this time, that has not been the case. I can make all kinds of excuses, but the bottom line really is the fact that I re-prioritized my free time and running took second seat to several other things in my life. 

I am scared, Eleanor. 

Flume Trail in Winter

Marlette Lake in Winter

When I signed up for this race last December, I was in my running prime. I had just placed in both a 50 mile race and a 50k race. I was ramping up my training and I was running up the hills with gusto! I had thoughts in my mind that I may try to place in a very important 100k in March and that maybe I would even get a sub 28 hour at TRT. 

Then I got injured, ramped up my hours at work, bought a house and started drinking heavily. Okay, that last part is a joke, but seriously, I started eating worse, exercising less and in no time at all, it was July and I had not even completed half of my necessary training.

What will this mean for me tomorrow? 

To start off, I am going into this with the thought in my mind that it is just a really long two day hike. The cutoff time to finish this race is 35 hours. Even the very fast guys do it in no less than 18. To finish in 35 hours, I would need to keep my pace just under 3 miles an hour. So, I could walk a lot of it and still finish in time. 

I may be walking a lot of it. 

I plan to start off at a run and see how far I get. There are a few gradual downhills which I know I can jog no matter what (even during the 2nd 50 miles). There are a couple steep uphills (think 1.5 miles with 1,200 feet of climbing) where I will barely make 1 - 2 miles per hour. 

What worries me the most? 

Of course I am competitive and I would like to do well, but I have mostly thrown that out the window. I just want to finish. However, the part which will be the most difficult will be the night portion. During the night, there is a loop called the Red House Loop, which is a 6 mile loop with about a 2 mile steep downhill (loss of about 1,000 feet) and then a 4 mile gradual to steep uphill. This loop is not fun in the daytime and it will be even less fun at night. 

The race motto is, "A Glimpse of Heaven; a Taste of Hell". The Red House Loop is the taste of Hell. 

On the other hand, there are many Glimpses of Heaven. So I will enjoy those and not think too much about the tastes of Hell. 

If you want to follow me, I will be running from Saturday at 5 am PST to Sunday around Noon (*cutoff is at 4 pm). The live tracker is HERE. Also, my brother will be pacing me and should be tweeting when possible (the service in the mountains is not great). You can find his twitter feed HERE Otherwise, just send good juju my way this weekend because I will need it! 

What are you up to this weekend? 

June was a whirlwind of a month full of good friends and some travel and lots of money hemorrhaging! Yup, you heard me right. June was not a happy month for my pocketbook, but it was a good month for friends. 

Running: I would like to say that my training was going well and that I am totally ready for my 100 mile race in a couple of weeks, but I would be lying. June was not a great training month, although I did try to step it up a little in order to feel semi ready for the big day. In June I had no races, but I did end up running 136 miles in the end. 

Reading: While I was not running, I did read a few (four, to be exact) books. None of them were that great. They were, in order of best to worst: 

- At Home by Bill Bryson (I did not finish this one -- it was good but there were a lot of facts and I was in the mood for a more frivolous book - 3 stars)

- The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes (3 stars)

- Mother Daughter Me by Katie Hafner (2 stars)

- Girls in Trucks by Katie Crouch (2 stars)

Travel: I did a lot of travel in June and much of it was in cars with other people, hence the reason I did not read as much, I think. At the beginning of June, I went to San Diego to crew/pace for a friend who was running a 100 mile race. I paced him in from mile 79 to the finish and he ended up getting 10th place! The next weekend was spent in South Lake Tahoe, doing trail work and a training run. I had a chest cold and the altitude really exacerbated that fact. It was really hard to run! The weekend after that I drove up to my parents' house to get some things from storage. It was a fun weekend with a lot of swimming and a run, but too soon it was time to load up the car and head home. The last weekend in June was spent crewing for a friend who ran the Western States 100M. He was such a champ and it was so inspiring (and daunting, thinking of myself doing the same thing in July) to see him push through and cross the finish line with pride. 

SD100

On top of that, my new category should be titled Home and Garden because there has not been a day that I have come home from work and just relaxed. There is always something to shovel, or to weed or to plant. There are things to be hung and cleaned and sorted. There is never an end to the things that need to be assembled or moved or painted. Basically I have been going to bed around 10 every night and getting up again at 4. There have been multiple trips to Costco and Home Depot and Target. I am a frequent flyer at Amazon.com. It's been busy! 

So....how was the month of June for you? What was your favorite weekend? Have you read any good books lately? 

I've got a piece in the European online magazine "Vocal International" about the Greek crisis and the comfort that Syriza's unlikely allies on the British right might be gaining from it.  It's certainly been fascinating to see British Tories from both parliament and the commentariat line up alongside the left-wing Syriza to attack the European leaders.  The eurozone crisis links them both by providing a common enemy and for the Brits this really must seem like a justification of their oft stated criticism of the whole euro project.

The crisis will take some time to unfold but the ripples from its wake will surely hit up against Britain's own referendum in 2017.  Eurosceptics will be hoping that a Greek exit will help to sour the whole EU image in the minds of British voters.  Europhiles might be concerned that after one exit, another will seem rather less of a big deal.

The Telegraph seems to have reduced its editorial column; I'm sure it's narrower than it used to be.  Whether that is a commentary on the reducing number of writers and journalists the Telegraph seems to have, or simply a reflection of the fact that it no longer has much to say on its own account I'm not sure.  After all, a couple of weeks ago it devoted its main comment article for two days to extracts from the "Business for Britain" manifesto; much cheaper than getting its own hacks to come up with something original one presumes.

So it was with a certain glee that I read their comment in today's paper, inevitably welcoming the cuts that the government wants to inflict on the BBC.  The comment piece soon cut to the chase with its main complaint.  apparently, government money is being wasted on producing an "imperial" BBC website which competes with those of national newspapers.  Which translated broadly means that it is unfair that a public organisation be allowed to produce better and broader journalism than the increasingly lean newspaper industry.

The Telegraph has been shedding journos and writers in commendable quantities in order to ensure that its Channel Island based owners get a good return on their investment so you can see why they might be miffed that the presence of a solid, newsworthy website still exists to show them up.  Perhaps it won't be long either before the newspaper also demands that the BBC adheres to its own brand of impartial comment by employing some serving Tory MPs as writers.

Incidentally, I noticed as well that the "world class" newspaper journalism represented by the Telegraph had to print a correction to its Nicola Sturgeon story from the election, although they did at least manage to squash it on the bottom of page 2 beneath the glowing spread of hard news reportage on the royal christening.