On-the-fly rescheduling...

[alexpgp]

Receiving, offloading, and preparing the container for today's activities got us back to the Fili at 11:30 pm last night, whereupon we joined what appeared to be a meeting (or, more likely, a fat-chewing session) during which subjects ranging from James Doohan's demise to why it's so difficult to agree on a scheduled time at which to start work were considered. I finally got to bed after midnight.

In a way, it's amazing to me that the passing of a supporting actor from a late-60s television show (Doohan played the role of Montgomery Scott on Star Trek) rates so high in the news, though there is no denying the popularity of the Star Trek phenomenon. Listening last night to Doug M., the Launch Operations Manager, relating an experience when Doohan had been invited into the control room at the Kennedy Space Center, was pretty interesting. Two things that struck me particularly: First, when a couple of the console folks unpinned their own launch pins to give to Doohan, the latter joked that it was unusual for people to want to give him stuff (generally, it was the other way around), which unleashed a flood of further souvenirs. Second, after getting a good look around, Doohan expressed heartfelt gratitude, deprecating his role as merely that of an actor on a TV series, whereas the people in the control room at KSC were the real 'stars' engaged in the business of exploring space.

* * *I ran into Sergei Z., our lead interpreter, on my way downstairs to board the bus for this morning's assignment. He asked when we had returned, and I told him, at which point he insisted that I take the morning off and come in to work this afternoon. (Oh, had I but known that before I'd wired myself with three cups of black coffee this morning!) Anyway, right about now, I feel as if the only thing keeping my eyes open is that coffee, so I think after I finish this post, I will go for another treadmill walk and then nap for a couple of hours.

* * *Apropos of walking, the other day - while walking on the treadmill - I got to wondering how many steps I took per minute, as well as about a lot of other numerical minutiae, just to take my mind off the boredom of exercise. It turns out that, at 3.8 mph, I take 123 steps per minute. (There's enough there to determine the average length of my stride, but I'm saving that calculation for a rainy afternoon... or some future treadmill session.)

Then I recalled an article I'd read some time ago in Prevention magazine - which is always carrying on about walking away excess fat - to the effect that weight loss will occur if one regularly paces off betwen 10,000 and 15,000 steps per day (I forget the exact figure; call it 12,500).

At 123 steps per minute, a 50-minute walk equals only 6,150 steps. Throw in another 2,000 steps for office work and walking around the hotel (life during a campaign is normally pretty sedentary), and the sum falls way short of weight-losing numbers.

So, I'm thinking: Maybe that's why it's been so difficult to lose weight?

I don't want to give the impression that I'm a maniac about the subject; I'm just recording a thought process.

* * *Tonight will undoubtedly be taken up with packing two bags. One will be the one I take to Moscow (and hopefully, home). The other will be left here. I shall have to make a careful inventory of the bag I leave here, Just In Case™.

Time to go for a walk.

Cheers...

Comments

[bandicoot.livejournal.com]

That "steps" thing always confuses me. Is a "step" a left-right or a left-right-left thing?

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Well, the Prevention article made a big thing of wearing a pedometer when walking, and pedometers register a step whenever your foot hits the ground, so a left-right-left would be two steps.

I think.

Cheers...