Michael

February Mail

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There is a group of people who will be exchanging mail in February. It is the InCoWriMo, aka the International Correspondence Writing Month group. It exists to “Challenges you to hand-write and mail/deliver one letter, card, note or postcard every day during the month of February.” This has been going on since 2014. (? about seven years now)

Some of the FAQ q&a:

  • You can miss a day, just write two the next.
  • You do not need to write to a different person each day.
  • It must be hand-written. Though I expect there are people who will typewrite them.

A fun part for me is to write to people I do not know. And for that, they have a web page where people can list their address. As I have done. I also went through all of them and found there are about 90+ people who do not live in the USA. There are people in every continent of the world. Of them, 26 indicate they will reply or respond to every letter they receive.

There are, as you might expect, several people who are doing this for the first time, me included. At least one who has been there since the group was started. There is also a nurse who will not be doing it again this year because of the Covid weight on her time and energy.

Final Thoughts: Some people are submitting their Instagram addresses as part of their introductions. 28 letters or cards starting in a week or so. I must admit it is a lot of writing to do.

Big Dog Backyard Ultra

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This is a fascinating ultra marathon run. You do not know how long it is until you drop out our win. The Big Dog Backyard Ultra does 4 1/24 mile loops each hour. You can run four miles in an hour? Great! Now do it again. And Again. And … that is the point.

You can follow one of these links to get more information. Or read about in on Wikipedia.

You may haven noted the distance – it is set to run 100 miles each day. They run a lot. The record to date is “75 laps or 502.95 km or 312.525 miles by Karel Sabbe at the international part of Big’s Backyard Ultra in October 2020.” Over three days of running.

Perhaps you will enjoy this video of it.

Patience

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Patience. “Please be patient,” advises Joe Biden. Some people filled with worry have problems being patient. There is a whole big chunk of counting to do. In our times of Covid there are more ballots to count. People did it remotely to protect themselves.

Oregon, and a few other states, had it easy. With our vote by mail with all (in Oregon) ballots due by 8:00 on Tuesday, the counting was business as usually done. We don’t have things like the North Carolina provision of allowing ballots to arrive before the 12th. So we have our ballots counted. They need to wait for all their ballots to be counted.

What if you did not have the chance to wait? What if you knew you would have to wait for results? Like for five years? Warren Buffet advised investors to do just that, make your investment and ignore it for years. Or tax the short term gains at 100%. Patience is good.

Or consider a person with a cancer diagnosis. The rule of thumb is to call it “in remission” for the first five years. You just do not know if your cure is a cure or not. You will not know for those years. Yes, you can believe it, or not, but you do not know.

You cannot know, You can only be patient.