I was not at all efficient enough to run this afternoon, when I frankly should have, but it wasn’t such a bad thing to be pushed onto an evening schedule. Unlike my last two evening runs, this one had 60-degree temperatures, and felt great both environmentally and bodily.
It doesn’t seem as though that made me faster, but the measurements I have are indirect. I was more than a mile along before I noticed I hadn’t set my stopwatch, so my estimate of my start time comes from the end time of the phone call I made before embarking. That was a five-minute affair which I spent hemming and hawing about whether I’d attend a cinema broadcast of the Met’s Tosca on Wednesday. The only thing I know about it is that it occasioned boos from its original audiences, but that might not be relevant evidence – maybe one has to be a proper opera fan, and knowledgeable, before one would bother being bothered by this Tosca. So the chief reason I might not go doesn’t fit well…but the reasons I do go to operas as a non-operaphile don’t fit either. Sometimes I go because I feel obligated to keep my girlfriend from going alone when her mother or others can’t go, sometimes I go as a way of expanding my awareness of cultural touchstones, and every once in a while I take the initiative. This plan originated among a trio that didn’t include me, so she won’t be soloing; I don’t feel Tosca is as salient as Carmen (Quantum of Solace notwithstanding); and I traditionally advocate for well-reviewed comic operas, most recently a praiseworthy L’Italiana in Algieri. My impulse is not to go, and I have permission to decide only once she’s fully ready to buy, when a few responsive e-mails have come in from others.
I couldn’t, however, just measure from the end of that call to the time I returned to my car; I was interrupted on Hackett by a call from a neighborhood parent who needed to give me a schedule for what I’m doing with his son tomorrow morning. My final time, which was normal enough that I don’t doubt it, came from checking that call’s length and subtracting it from the basic number.
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