Seek The Substantial

I wasn’t inspired to write so I didn’t. that’s it. Plus, I’ve been writing a ton for Staking the Plains.

1. Ever wondered why the tip of South America looks this way. On the left is Chile and on the right is Argentina. That area is called the Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire. Prior to the Boundary Treaty, both countries claimed ownership, Argentina having declared independence in 1816 and Chile in 1818, the idea was that the eastern border of Chile would be the Andes Mountain range, but the Strait of Magellan and the Cape Horn caused different issues. Ultimately, disputes about the border continued for 100+ years and even as recently as 1984 there were interpretations regarding the border.

Because each side was convinced of the legitimacy of its own claim, the pretensions of the other party were considered usurpatory, an ill-omened beginning that burdened the relations of both countries.[24]

The treaty did resolve an immediate concern of each side, but subsequently it became evident that in the far south, about 42°S to 52°S, Article 1 of the treaty posed problems of interpretation and application.

Some Argentine political publicists argue that Articles 2 and 3 of the treaty were ambiguous.[25] Nonetheless, the later Argentine interpretations were refused by the international tribunal, that Argentine maps of the first decade also applied the Chilean interpretation and the two papal proposals as well as the treaty of 1984 maintained the Chilean interpretation of the treaty, at least in so far as the land border line.

It should be mentioned that apparently further north, there are still disputes regarding the Southern Patagonian Ice Field and as of right now, the demarcation is still pending. There’s no agreement regarding the border.

2. Jim Walmsley is currently the greatest long distance runner (like really long distance). He attempted and failed the UTMB, the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc, which circumnavigates the White Mountain. Walmsley ended up moving to France to figure out how to win this race and it is the story of failure and problem solving and then triumph. Success is never a straight line.

3. If you want to know what it’s like to run over there, Good Beer Hunting did the route but in much less time, hydrated with beer, and actual sleep (rather than running through the night). It is a dream of mine to do this.

4. The Philmarmonik is all sorts of fun.

5. New Zealand awarded their tree of the year and we should have more trees of the year. That should be a thing for every city, community, state and country.

1. I don’t know how I heard about Huckberry, but I bought some Rhodes boots from there and I wear them at least 3 times a week. They are terrific. At that point, I suppose that my purchasing habits resulted in YouTube telling me that they have a YouTube channel. As an aside, those boots are some of the best things I put on my feet. I am not a cowboy boots sort of guy, but these are so good, apparently made in Mexico and the craftsmanship is outstanding.

2. Anywho, they have a show called Dirt and this video alone makes me want to go visit Atlanta. The idea is that the host, Josh Rosen (not the hot-tub quarterback) goes and tries to find ingredients for a feast at the end of the episode. Obviously, it’s a food-based show, which who doesn’t love food, but it looks like a fantastic city and am jealous of the 22 miles of old track that is now bike lanes throughout Atlanta.

3. And then they went international and this travelogue on Kyushu in Japan is fantastic. Japan is on my bucket list of places to go. Without question, just everything about it looks completely different than what I know and I think that’s exactly what life is about. I also love Ramen, so it would make sense that going to Japan would be a great place to go.

And Hokkaido looks amazing. There’s a scene about 13 minutes into the video where they are on this mount skiing and it doesn’t even look real. Maybe it’s because there are no evergreen trees, but birch trees and it looks surreal.

4. Hat-tip to Semi-Rad, this is a fantastic and happy video about marathons. I think I’ve decided to apply to run in the Dallas marathon now.

5. Media Diet Check: Netflix’s The Gentleman is absolutely bonkers, totally Guy Ritchie and fantastic in every way possible . . . season 2 of Reservation Dogs definitely delivered. The whole series has come full circle, from a robbery in order to leave their homes to realizing that community and where they are from is the most important thing . . . maybe feeding my desire to visit Japan is Shogun, terrific acting and set, just a beautiful series . . .

I turned 50 in March. I am not sure how to feel about that other than the only option is forward. I am eternally grateful to be where I am. I am a child who was born with a hole in his heart, “fixed” when I was 4 and “fixed” again (seriously) when I was 6. I was always told that had I not fixed this hole, I would be dead at 20. I don’t know how many times I repeated that and my large scar on my chest is a reminder of that every day.

Every day is a gift.

Every. Day. Is. A. Gift.

To take it any other way would be a travesty whether or not you were born with a hole in your heart or not. A lot of people write about things that they learned when they turned 50 and had I been better prepared, I would have this ready when I turned 50.

I have had a couple of bouts with diverticulitus. Both were remedied by a liquid diet for 72 hours and was told by both doctors to not eat red meat. Some stomachs can handle red meat, but I get the idea that it’s a bit difficult to digest and I’ve cut it out as much as possible. Maybe once a month and if I do, it’s a small amount.

Alcohol is incredibly fun. I used to be a guy that drank a beer a day for the longest time and thoroughly enjoyed all sorts of beers. Trying new ones and all of that good stuff. I know that all things in moderation are typically okay, but aside from the medical evidence, I can say that from my own point of view when I wake up in the morning and there’s no fog and no cobwebs to fight through ever is incredibly helpful. Am I missing out on potential good times? Maybe, but the cost-benefit situation seems to be in favor of not drinking.

Small habits are good. They are good to force you to do things. I have the current streaks:

* 1,257 straight days by starting my day with a glass of water.
* 1,252 straight days of writing in my journal.
* 1,496 straight days of reading a book (even if it is just a sentence).
* 1,535 straight days of 100 push ups.
* 1,167 straight days of at least 3 minutes of planks.
* 1,140 straight days of meditating each day.
* 1,167 straight days of putting my phone away when I get home until after dinner.
* 700 straight days of brushing my teeth at night. I missed a day 700 days ago and my streak prior to that was 712 days.

Please exercise. Start small if you have to and when you can, please exercise like your life depends on it. Exercise like you are a professional athlete even though you are not. There is no reason to do things half-assed. I think about being there for my kids and seeing all of the things they will accomplish. I think about if I am killing myself or keeping myself alive. My hope is that it is the latter.

Do some sort of art. Whether it is writing or painting or reading fiction. Watch something that’s not a documentary and get out of your comfort zone. Your imagination that you had as a child has never gone away, it is still there. Stretch those synapses.

Be really selfish with the time with your kids. Like really selfish. And make time to do the things with them that they want to do. We get caught up in school activities and all of the events that happen in life, but the truth of the matter is that it’s really important to do the things that they want to do. Don’t turn away an opportunity to throw the football or watch something that they want to watch.

Do the same thing with your spouse.

I do not know where I heard the following quote, but it is something I think about often.

Live well, and live broadly. Now is the envy of all the dead.

The photo on the left is 10 years ago. Maybe my worst picture that I know of. I think I have another where the double-chin is really prevalent, but those two are definitely my worst photos. The photo on the right is from November when Fitsum and I ran a Thanksgiving 5k. So much has changed and I am pretty sure that 10 years ago I started that journey to not look the way that I did, I am pretty sure it started with some light weights and I definitely started watching shows on YouTube, a channel called Fitness Blender where I would do HIIT workouts in 20 of 30 minutes. That eventually resulted in running, at first short distances and then eventually long distances. I consider myself a non-elite athlete. Non-Elite is a term that I’ve stolen from a YouTuber named Kofuzi, who reviews running shoes and is really good at it.

I’ve never run a straight road marathon and my best half-marathon time (maybe my only time) is 1:50:14 in Fort Worth a couple of years ago. My fastest 5k is 22:52 run from the race of the photo on the right. It’s probably decent to good for a runner who is nearly 50 years old. I can’t remember where I read this, but even if you are a run-of-the-mill athlete that’s not going to break any records and everything you do is recreational at best, you should still train like you are a high-end athlete. Do sprints, and hill work if you like to run (maybe the same if you like to bike) or if weight training is your thing, do it like you mean it. Test for your max and try to make gains, no matter what it is. It seems silly, but when you notice the improvement it’s rewarding and encouraging.

Father John Misty’s Real Love Baby is a fun listen. I don’t know why I love home videos of people dancing, but I do.

Strays: Quentin Tarantino has a coffee shop in LA dedicated to Pam Grier and it’s called Pam’s Coffy with coffee blends from Tarantino himself. Somebody order me a mug (even though I really stopped drinking coffee) . . . wrap your brain around this. The most luminous object ever detected, a quasar called JO529-4351 is 17 billion times the mass of the sun. This quote from Christian Wolf is terrific: “We have discovered an object which has previously not been recognised for what it is; it’s been staring into our eyes for many years because it’s been glowing at its brightness for longer than humankind has probably existed. But we’ve now recognised it, not as being one of the many foreground stars in our Milky Way but as a very distant object.” Glowing since before humankind existed. Science is awesome . . .

The current Beau Miles video is about the trek of one Angus McMillan, described by Miles as murderous and yes, that would seem to be the case. As Miles grew up as a young Australian lad, he was led to believe that McMillian was an explorer and pioneer, one to be celebrated. Heck, one to even have a trek named after him of more than 220 kilometers through the rugged terrain of Omeo and Dargo in 1864. The tricky part here is that he was murderous, particularly of the Kurnai indigenous people, which you could generally know that this is  south-east Australia. Check out this resume, not all by the hands of McMillan, but he’s got more than one entry (which is not good):

1840 – Nuntin- unknown number killed by Angus McMillan’s men
1840 – Boney Point – “Angus McMillan and his men took a heavy toll of Aboriginal lives”
1841 – Butchers Creek – 30-35 shot by Angus McMillan’s men
1841 – Maffra – unknown number shot by Angus McMillan’s men
1842 – Skull Creek – unknown number killed
1842 – Bruthen Creek – “hundreds killed”
1843 – Warrigal Creek – between 60 and 180 shot by Angus McMillan and his men
1844 – Maffra – unknown number killed
1846 – South Gippsland – 14 killed
1846 – Snowy River – 8 killed by Captain Dana and the Aboriginal Police
1846-47 – Central Gippsland – 50 or more shot by armed party hunting for a white woman supposedly held by Aborigines; no such woman was ever found
1850 – East Gippsland – 15-20 killed
1850 – Murrindal – 16 poisoned
1850 – Brodribb River – 15-20 killed

And then check out this quote from a squatter (that’s someone who is stealing land right from under your nose) named Henry Meyrick as to what he and probably others thought about the indigenous peoples there:

The blacks are very quiet here now, poor wretches. No wild beast of the forest was ever hunted down with such unsparing perseverance as they are. Men, women and children are shot whenever they can be met with … I have protested against it at every station I have been in Gippsland, in the strongest language, but these things are kept very secret as the penalty would certainly be hanging … For myself, if I caught a black actually killing my sheep, I would shoot him with as little remorse as I would a wild dog, but no consideration on earth would induce me to ride into a camp and fire on them indiscriminately, as is the custom whenever the smoke is seen. They [the Aborigines] will very shortly be extinct. It is impossible to say how many have been shot, but I am convinced that not less than 500 have been murdered altogether.

That’s quite a way to say that you think a human is not a human.

The good news is that the Kurnai are the traditional owners of Gippsland, the area where McMillan trudged through, which has led to trying to understand what “traditional owner” means. What I can tell, Australia is more open to the idea of giving back rights to land that was occupied by others before Europeans arrived, that there’s a difference between land rights and native title, land rights are created by the government and are like perpetual leases while native title is the recognition of pre-existing indigenous rights.

Back to Miles, he’s running because he hates that there is this track named after a man who murdered so many people. The video is great too because Miles fails his first attempt at the run, it’s too hot and he doesn’t urinate (that’s not a good combo) and he gives it another go in the second video (it’s a 3 part series).

Good on Beau for making me do a deep dive on something I never would have known about.

Texas Monthly’s Peter Holley writes about a man and the hog he raised that tried to kill him:

The memories feed off the mystery that surrounds them. More than a year after the attack, Riley still has no idea what caused his favorite animal to turn on him. They’d both been in the pen earlier that day and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Waylon’s pen-mate, an easygoing female warthog named Peaches, wasn’t in heat and Waylon wasn’t being cornered when he attacked, nor did he appear to be guarding his food. Extensive therapy has helped Austin work through traumatic memories and flashbacks that plagued him for the first year after the attack. A part of him now feels grateful for what happened. He frequently thanks God that Waylon attacked him instead of one of his family members. He credits the attack with bringing him closer to his then girlfriend of three months, Kennedy, whom he hopes to someday marry. He is also grateful that he didn’t stop fighting, not just because he gave himself another shot at life, but because—in a twisted Texas warrior sort of way—he survived an encounter with an animal that is built to battle lions. How many individuals can say that?

There are times that I hesitate to write about things, but then there may be things that although these things are incredibly personal, it may benefit someone to know that certain things happen. This isn’t so much about my kids as it is about certain kids in their schools who use racist terms to refer to them or use racists phrases in front of them. the N-word, monkey, slave, African (not in a good way) are the ones from this year. Oh, and a “joke” when the lights go out in the locker room that no one can see Youssouf unless he smiles. You wouldn’t think that junior high kids would say things like this, but they learn it from someone, maybe their parents, older siblings, who knows. The point isn’t to say why these things happen, but rather that that do. And it would be so easy to be in denial that these things happen, but they are. And my kids are good kids, not perfect, but good kids. They don’t get in trouble, Fitsum is in band, cross country, and tennis, as well as National Honor Society. Youssouf is in honors classes and is maybe the best athlete that the junior high has ever seen. If it’s happening to them with parents who have friends who are teachers and we know enough people to tell us what’s happening that we are able to do something about it. And this isn’t to say that the administration hasn’t been responsive, because they are and have been. There’s only so much you can do after the fact, but they make every effort make sure it is addressed. If your response is that these are merely a few bad apples and yes, that is true, but I would also tell you that it is more prevalent than you think and despite how far society has moved forward, it still has a long ways to go.

Brendan Leonard is a blogger, a professional one, and he put out a video about making a shed. Strike that. It’s not about that. It’s about starting a family. His dog dying. Working hard. Completing a project. Love having many languages, for those of us who know how to say I love you by just working hard and never looking up because sometimes find the right words is hard. Make sure and let those people know that you are saying I love you by putting your head down and doing the one thing that you know how to do, which is just work. It’s okay to say that.

We get a little less serious. Two guys climb a wall, but not vertically, which hard, but horizontally.

A unified theory of f#ck$.

This is one of my answers to the question of, why give a fuck about work? Why love your work? It won’t, of course, love you back. It can’t. Work isn’t a thing that can love. It isn’t alive, it isn’t and won’t ever be living. And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living. Give a fuck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them. Give a fuck about the land and the sea, all the living things that are used or used up by the work, that are abandoned or displaced by it, or—if we’re lucky, if we’re persistent and brave and willing—are cared for through the work. Give a fuck about yourself, about your own wild and tender spirit, about your peace and especially about your art. Give every last fuck you have to living things with beating hearts and breathing lungs and open eyes, with chloroplasts and mycelia and water-seeking roots, with wings and hands and leaves. Give like every fuck might be your last.

Outside Online’s Alex Hutchinson with a terrific article on supplements and whether or not they even work (there are a few that have scientifically been proven to work like creatine and baking soda and caffeine). Hutchinson talks initially about Andrew Huberman who I believe is one of these online gurus who and Hutchinson mentions that Huberman has a $370 supplemental stack and as part of that is the extract Fadogia Agrestis, which Hutchinson notes that there’s been no human studies on this supplement, thus thinking it is something that should be ingested or something that helps humans seems, well, problematic (I had no idea that Huberman, who I know about, but have never listened to, is attempting to sell products). Hutchinson mentions that there’s really only been a few supplements that actually do work, but larger than that it’s us and not them having an expectation of something or understanding that it’s usually not that big of a deal (supplements that is):

As improbable as these results seem, they fit within a larger body of research on a psychological phenomenon called licensing. We often pursue goals that are in conflict with one another, like having an active social life while still getting plenty of sleep. When we make progress toward one goal, we feel justified balancing things out in the opposite direction. Have an afternoon nap and you might think it’s OK to stay out that night for one more drink. When it comes to supplements, the calculus is almost always lopsided. We dramatically overestimate the benefit, and subsequent licensing leaves us worse off than we started.

People with an internal locus of control tend to be more highly motivated, which makes sense since they believe working hard and trying their best will be rewarded. They’re also more likely to take up demanding sports like running and cycling, while those with an external locus of control are drawn to activities like golf and fishing. And athletes with an internal locus of control tend to have lower stress and anxiety, presumably because they believe they determine their fate. We all have a mix of internal and external factors influencing our performance, and an emphasis on supplements nudges us toward the latter—toward belief that success is a consequence not of blood, sweat, and tears, but of ingesting the right pills and powders (and hoping that our rivals haven’t discovered them yet).

Hutchinson really concludes that what typically works is doing the work. Invest in that more than something external and yeah, I have found that this has worked for me. I’ve never been big on supplements or multivitamins and I mentioned last week that I’ve enjoyed drinking Bix, which is part supplement and part recovery drink with electrolytes, which is good after an hour of running for my end of things. If I get some extra vitamins that go along with it, then that’s great. I’ve pretty much subscribed to the idea that I get most of my nutrients from fruit and vegetables that I eat and I try to eat a bunch of them.

I have never heard of La Digue, but it is a small island in the Seychelles, east of Praslin and west of Felicite Island. All of that sentence is absolutely from some sort of fictional novel and places I never knew existed. However, La Digue is populated by 2,800 people and is essentially in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The main industry is tourism and the main way of transportation is bicycle, which sounds awesome. Oh, and La Digue is part of the Seychelles, which is is an actual republic with Victoria being the capital and it’s own separate island.

Things I’m consuming. I don’t watch much television and the only time that I really watch television, other than sports, is on Sunday morning when I’m lifting (that’s leg day) and last year I consumed Andor and thought that was one of the best things I’ve watched. Then this year I started watching Moon Knight and holy smokes, what an inventive and original show. Oscar Isaac as Marc Spector has been nothing short of amazing and it as F. Murray Abraham as part of the cast, so what more could you want. I’ve also been watching Ahsoka without really much history at all behind what I’m watching. I haven’t seen all of the Star Wars movies (obviously didn’t stop me from watching Andor). This has been the show I’ve watched with Fitsum. Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka is terrific as the lead and the other two female leads (which is pretty cool) with Sabine Wren and Hera Syndulla has been just a fun ride thus far.

I’ve never NOT enjoyed a Beau Miles film and I feel the same about this one. It’s 4 films that never quite were good enough to be actual full featured YouTube films and Miles critiques these mini-videos and why they didn’t work out. There’s a bit at the end that’s really good, there’s beauty in mediocrity and that’s the truth. Life’s pretty good. Everything’s 7 out of 10 and sometimes that’s okay. Don’t tell my wife that, she’s not one for settling, although she did marry me.

There’s this McSweeney’s satire where people who run love to tell you about their runs and just be thankful you don’t live with me. There are a few things that I’ve found that I really like that I’ll share.

BIX Hydration is something I’ve run across and they are a lot like Nuun, but I have really enjoyed the recovery supplement which has Vitamin C, Magnesium, Sodium, BCAA’s, Bromelain, and Calcium. It’s a bit expensive and I don’t drink it every day, but I do drink it on running days.

Roark’s Run Amok is expensive, but it is something that I enjoy. And I pretty much run in the same shorts and shirts over and over, so when I buy something it typically lasts me for a while and I get hundreds of run in what I buy. The Baja shorts are great and the Mathis shirts are great to run in. And if it isn’t clear enough, the designs are unique to say the least.

I am currently running in the Saucony Triumph 20, which is last year’s version of the Triumph, the Asics Novablast 3, which is last year’s version of the Novablast, and a pair of Atreyu Daily Trainers. The Triumph has a 10mm drop and a 37 mm stack height (it is high), the Novablast has an 8mm drop and a 31mm stack height, and the Atreyu has a 6mm drop with a 30mm stack height. I rotate them and as you can see, I do not buy the current version of shoes, but purchase last year’s version of shoes when they go on sale. The Triumph and the Novablasts are currently on sale on Amazon, hopefully in your size.  I’ve also read that changing stack height and drops is good for your feet. I also ran in some Adidas Boston 12’s last year that were great, but they had a plate and I think I prefer the non-plated shoes.

If you are new to running in 2024, like a lot of things I would encourage to pretty much run in what you have. If you don’t have much then what you have typically works. I also recommend trying to find a Nike or Adidas outlet store where you can typically find gear discounted. And most of the time, Nike and Adidas put out really good stuff even at the outlet mall. Oh, and I also really like Running Warehouse, you can search for cheap shoes and I’ve found that most shoes are pretty good, but you need to know what type of runner you are.

Since I’m putting things out there, I ran 1,564.77 miles in 2023, which is up from 1,535.61 miles in 2022. My biggest month was August with 176.48 miles and September I ran my 50k and had 152.48 miles. I can say that training for an ultra marathon in August in Texas and September is one of the least fun things that I do and I’m doing it again this year.

I have just three astonishing things from Kent Hendricks list of 52 things he learned this year, but there are bunch more if you want to read

• Pheasant Island is an uninhabited island in the Bidasoa River between France and Spain. It is called a “condominium”, which means, “in international law is a political territory (state or border area) in or over which multiple sovereign powers formally agree to share equal dominium”. The island is a French island from August 1 through January 31 and Spain the rest of the year.
• There 44% of people have one joint in their pinkie toe and 55% have two joints.
• There are 80,000 recorded UFO sightings since 1906 and 4/5’s of those sightings are in the United States.

This was really good. This is the story about wolves in eastern Washington. The ranchers there don’t like them because they kill cattle and this guy, Daniel Curry, is what’s called a Range Rider who tries non-lethal means of mitigating wolves from looking at cows as food. This was produced by Patagonia and you’re probably thinking that it’s not going to show both sides and it definitely does, but it really focuses on what Curry is trying to do, his love of his horses and dogs and wolves and how he’s trying to do something different rather than exterminate the wolves.

Now normally, I’m thinking that well, if the wolves are on private property, let’s talk about solutions, but these ranchers are being permitted to graze cows in the summer on public lands and these cows are also starting to cause harmful effects to the bull trout ecosystem and all of the other animals that are in that habitat with the cows being the one thing that’s not natural. I think that adds a different aspect to this that doesn’t make this an easier decision, but given that they are on public land, it doesn’t seem right that the wolves can or should be exterminated. They are what’s natural to the space there, the cows are the non-natural intruders, right?

I’ve gone over this numerous times, but Tommy Rivs Puzey was a world-class athlete who had an iFit on NordicTrack treadmills where he’d take you places running and teach you how to run, how to get better. He taught me about running and I haven’t stopped. He had cancer 3 years ago and he’s been battling back, running the New York City Marathon three times. Being an anchor of hope in what seems like a world full of disaster.

This is one of those things that I’ve never heard of and I like to consider myself well-read to an extent. The Imp of the Perverse is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, “In the story, the narrator commits murder to inherit a man’s estate. A coroner attributes the death to an act of God, and the narrator benefits from his crime. Several years later, the narrator starts obsessing about a possible confession for his crime. He acts on a self-destructive impulse, and confesses his crime in public, leading to his swift trial and execution.”

You can read the whole short story right there.

The idea behind the Imp of the Perverse is that we all do things against our own self interest. It’s that voice in your brain that tells you to do something that you know you shouldn’t. I feel like I do these sorts of self-destructive things, but not necessarily intentionally . . . or is it intentionally and I’m just not aware or smart enough to figure it out. Regardless, hopefully you have a new phrase to add to your daily life and when someone does something self-destructive, you can drop that term or you can just send them this gif.

https://tenor.com/embed.js

Did you know that if you need to top off your tires from the temperature drop that you can just use a decent bicycle pump? I did this the other morning and my pump has a PSI gauge so you get an idea of where you’re at while you pump. It took maybe 30 or so to get the tires up and took a total of 5 minutes while my truck was warning up.

This is the story of Ernest Shackelton’s attempt to cross the Antarctic (he didn’t accomplish his goal, but he and his crew had to endure a lot to make it out alive). As an aside, the creator of this blog has a handful of map videos explaining Manhattan and it was a blast to watch those to understand my way around Manhattan before I arrived on the island.

I finished 7 books this year, which isn’t a ton, but I read a little bit each day and sometimes I read a ton, but normally it’s just a bit each day. The books I read:

• Time and Again by Jack Finney
• A Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins
• The Time Has Come by Will Leitch
• Lamb by Christopher Moore
• How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key
• Fool by Christopher Moore
• A Green Lantern graphic novel

My favorites were How to Stay Married and Lamb. They were phenomenal. With Lamb, it’s a fictional version of the years between the ages of 10 and 30 of Jesus. If you at all get offended by religion, then this isn’t the book for you but it is funny and thought provoking. Fool is the comedic re-telling of Shakespeare’s King Lear. How to Stay Married is one of those books that I’d recommend to anyone thinking about being married and who is currently married or was previously married. The Time Has Come was also really good.

They were all good books.