Lots of confusion out there over the exact meaning of the adjective “black” in the phrase “Black Friday” – some take it to mean dark, angry, depressing, as in the supposed mood of thousands of foul-tempered shoppers, fighting over the last Oakland Raiders XL fleece jacket at the Crenshaw Wal-Mart.  In  actuality it means “profitable”, as in the phrase “in the black”, so it’s intended to carry good connotations.

Yet another example of language that can suggest different things to different people, which I need to keep in mind for Crowdify.  I may have to write a blog post about this on my Crowdify blog, which would mean I would need to get that blog working again after many months of disuse.  Which would mean I’d need to dust off my Perl/MYSQL skills (shakes fist at WordPress).  Which would mean I’d need to find the motivation…endless backwards branching from the leaf, to the twig, to the branch, to the trunk, to the root, to the earth itself.  Is nothing easy anymore?

Tomorrow I race in my first 5K in many years.  To prepare, I slept 11 hours.  Well, let’s just say that was the excuse.   I had briefly considered going to the gym this morning for a light workout but, hm, felt disinclined to do so for a variety of reasons.  Instead I stayed in bed a while longer and let my mind race over everything I have coming up, which is a lot – and yet also a just a little, when you tilt your head and look at it in just the right way.  Which way to perceive it?  That, my friends, is the endless struggle.  How to look at our lives and decide how to interpret circumstances.

I’ve been reading Martin Heidegger recently, and on the one hand it’s nice to get lost in philosophy, but on the other hand he’s a real bear, syntactically speaking.  The book is “Poetry, Language, Thought” (he disdains the and that one might reasonably put in the title) and it has some gems about truth and beauty and origin and connectedness, so I’ll keep reading.  I may pick up an old book I have called “The Enlightenment Reader” next, which I first read years ago, but which is probably due for a re-read.

What else?  Saw a request put out for volunteers to do a stair-climb challenge next week and offered up my name.  That sounds fun, and I can climb stairs better than anyone else my size I know so we’ll see.  It may be too late – the team may be full – and it looks like I may not know until Monday, what with all the people taking the day off today.