2008 Postscript

I've been wanting to write this post for several days now, ever since we got back from our holiday trip home to Nebraska, but there was never time, and now time is up (I have to go back to school tomorrow), and it still waits to be written. No longer. It shall be done.

 

The trip to Nebraska was busy; it always feels like there is too much to do and not enough time. Stressful. Glad to be back home in Huskerland (BTW, congrats to the Nebraska Corn-Johnnies on their victory over Clemson in the Gator Bowl! A bowl victory for Coach Pelini to cap off a fine first year as head coach is sweet!), very happy to be able to see all the family and friends, but also glad to get back here, and I'm sure once I am comfortably back in the saddle of school again I will adjust back to it. But now, it is just not…good.

 

Enough about current times and the immediate future! Let's talk about the past for a few minutes! 2008, the year just now gone (I know, I'm a few days behind, cut me a bit of slack, OK?), it was a fine year. Picked for the Olmsted program, moved to Cali, 5^th wedding anniversary…what else? I ran my 3^rd Half-Ironman race, John turned 2, I started learning Chinese. These are all good things…busy times out here in CA. Caught up in the maelstrom and lost were my fitness training credentials from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA). You may not have know this (and maybe you did), but I was dual-certified through the NSCA as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS; you may have seen the credential around before, at least the abbreviation) and a Certified Personal Trainer (NSCA-CPT). I was also certified through the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) as a Heath / Fitness Instructor (HFI) (May still be? Not sure when it expires.), but if that has not yet passed, then it certainly must soon. I simply had no time to work on earning the continuing education credits (CEUs) to maintain my certifications (OK, there is always enough time, but I fell victim to the big bad Procrastination Monster, and by the time I realized for certain the predicament I was in – only a couple months until the end of 2008, when the certifications were due to expire, having earned hardly any CEUs at all, and mired deep in the intellectual quagmire that is the Chinese Mandarin Basic Course – there was no way I could make it.). It makes me sad to see the credentials go – after all, these certifications represented to me essentially what I had spent 4 – 5 years of college majoring in exercise science working for, now gone. I always thought it would be easier to maintain the credentials even if I was not using them (and as a Marine officer, I had really not formally used them in the past 4 years of service) so as to be able to use them perhaps once me and the Marine Corps part ways the next time, be that in 11 years or whenever, rather than have them lapse and have to strive to pass the certification tests all over again, this time without the required knowledge, skills and abilities so close at hand from recent undergraduate study, having atrophied from many years of non-use, covered in cobwebs… I guess I will have to find out, should the time come, whether I can pass the tests again.

 

And to close this one out, I thought it would be interesting (perhaps only to me, but as the sole author of this page, I can do as I like!) to list out the books I read in 2008. This is not a complete list; I only started keeping track when we moved to CA in June. Some (OK, most) are audiobooks (noted when that is the case), and they are so prevalent simply because they are more convenient for me. I typically listen to an audiobook each day at school over lunch. When coupled with also listening during my morning and evening commutes (only when driving my car, not when riding my bike), I have found this is a powerful way to capture about an hour or more a day of "reading" time that would have otherwise been lost. This is especially important in light of the fact that when classes are in session I rarely have much time at all for reading that is not of Chinese characters, a circumstance that I greatly dislike. Enough, on to the list!

 

• The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us by Robyn Meredith (audiobook)
  
• Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh (audiobook)
  
• The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom by Simon Winchester (audiobook)
  
• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (audiobook)
  
• Worth the Fighting For: A Memoir by John McCain (audiobook)
  
• The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II by Iris Chang (audiobook)
  
• Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (audiobook)
  
• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch and Jeffrey Zaslow
  
• In Pharaoh's Army: Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff
  
• The Forever War by Dexter Filkins
  
• Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond (audiobook)
  
• The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford
  

 

Currently I am working my way through reading Are We Rome?: The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America by Cullen Murphy, a book very highly recommended to me by a person whom I greatly respect. I had hoped to complete it prior to resuming classes tomorrow, but it was not to be. I am also listening to The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. 

You can see that many selections were related to my current Chinese studies, some were in the context of the U.S. presidential elections, some were about war (current and past), and some were simply popular books that I found interesting.  Bottom line: books rock!

 

Here’s to more good reading in 2009!  干杯！

 

GJS