Missionary Talks 25: David Livingstone (part 1)

The epic episode is half way done. I just posted the David Livingstone episode at Missionary Talks. I am fairly pleased with the final product.

I had a Scottish friend record the parts that were quotes by Livingstone and Moffat. I met Gordon through a mailing list. Well, that is where we officially met. I had known of him for some time, but I made personal contact through the Phedippidations mailing list.

I plan to do more of these types of episodes in the future, but not too often. They mean that I have to actually read books and learn stuff. Can’t have that going on regularly. It might hurt my reputation.

Nice easy run

This morning I went out for my run. Normally on Saturday I do a long run (for me that means more than 6 miles). I am not entirely sure why I save it until Saturday. My work is mostly in the afternoon/evenings. I pretty much have total control of my mornings and can run for 2 hours just about any morning that I wish. But, I save it for Saturday none the less. There is considerably less traffic on Saturdays

Since I knew I would have a football scrimmage game today, I decided to make my run a short easy one. 5K at a slow pace should be around 10:20 for me. This one was 11:06. That was certainly slow.

Though it never really gets cold here, we still have a fairly dramatic Spring. This morning there were lots of trees in bloom. I have read several runners who state that their sense of smell is heightened while running. This is true for me as well. The trees smelled very nice.

Since it was 83 degrees on my run this morning, that also means that the dog “stuff” that was baking on the asphalt had a very strong smell.

One of the smells that I have come to enjoy while running is the smell put off by tortilla factories. We don’t have many on my current route. Only one. On the other side of town where we lived before, I could not do a run without running by 3 or more. They were plentiful over there. That is a nice smell. But, you can always feel the temp rise when running by one. The heat the machinery gives off is amazing. I can’t understand how people work in those places.

Livingstone episode at Missionary Talks

I am working on a very exciting episode of Missionary Talks. David LivingstoneI have not put out an episode for two weeks, but this one should make up for it. It is a short bio of the life of David Livingstone. If you are not familiar with him, you should check out his Wikipedia entry. In general, he was a very quirky personality and probably the kind of guy you could not stand being around too much, but he also did some amazing things. I am going to focus on the amazing things he did for the podcast.

At this point it looks like it will be close to 30 minutes or more in length. I will probably break it up into 2 episodes for the podcast and then have a single episode containing the whole thing that can be downloaded separately. This will keep the podcast within a close semblance of my normal episode length.

I have to get back to my regular arm twisting to get some other missionaries on board with doing some recordings. Starting next month I will begin to have contact with missionaries from different parts of Mexico. That should spice things up a bit. I still have 8 other missionaries here in town than I can interview, but I don’t want to saturate all my interviews with just this area. I am trying to spread the locals out a bit.

Basketball Goal

Basketball goalI had a basketball goal built this last week. I wanted to just go buy one, but the cheapest I could find was $300. A bit more than I wanted to pay. Ok, a lot more than I wanted to pay.

I ended up paying a welder $120 to build the basic goal and then I put together the backboard. Since I was unsure of what materials he would have availbable, I just allowed him to design and build it. He did a pretty good job, though I would have done a couple of things differently.

There was more to the cost than just the welding work. I had to buy wood for the backboard. Plywood is not at all cheap here. I did find a place cheaper than Home Depot and saved myself $10 in the process. Total cost for the project was less than $200. Maybe $180? I don’t have an exact figure, but I saved more than $100 by building it myself.

Now I just have to move some electrical wiring around so I can make better use of the space I have to play ball.

Fluffy’s next big adventure

Sunday morning while I was out racing, the family was eating breakfast. Fluffy was again in the exercise ball. While they were eating, the baby said “There goes Fluffy.” My wife told her that Fluffy was exercising.

A bit later, our son said that Fluffy was running around. My wife commented again that Fluffy was exercising in his ball. Then our son told her that Fluffy was running around outside of the ball! Somehow the lid came off and Fluffy was loose to roam free.

He was not hard to catch.

Lest you think that Fluffy is a new addition to the family, he is not. We have had 2 hamsters since the end of January, Fluffy and Spot. But up till this weekend, there really has not been anything exciting to say about them. Now they are getting the lime light. At least Fluffy is.

Some day I will have to take a picture of them when we try to put them together. We have our own ring side seats for a cage match.