2i018 Winter March 6 Tuesday

39 degrees this morning. No walk.

Kind of planned on walking this morning, but quickly decided to wait after starting to get ready to walk.  I’m a lot better, but not quite there.  Probably will be Friday now before I walk, based on my schedule, but I’d rather wait a day or two extra than get sicker by walking too soon.  

It will feel so good to feel better after I get over this!  I don’t want to take a chance on getting worse.

Getting a little bit of “cabin fever” when I wake up in the morning when I normally take my walk.  

Thinking about the article again on how the Great Wall of China would not have been built if they had tried to be “perfect” with the underlying thought  that “good enough” is an ok way of doing things.  

Obviously anything can be taken to extremes, but I think attempting to obtain perfection is a good policy.  While projects an be “over-planned”, there should be enough “planning” to ensure the project even needs to be built!

I will need to go back and read the article again.  I appreciate the fact that new thoughts are being discussed, but the idea that a major project should be built without planning just because it “may not be built” is a rather extreme statement that I simply can’t agree with.   

Certainly I have seen many more projects that should not have been built due to a lack of planning and consideration of all the factors involved than I have seen projects that were not built due to being “over-planned”

The city we live in is having meetings on plans for parks, bicycle trails etc.  While I probably won’t go to the meeting on the plans for redevelopment of the park, at least I had the opportunity to attend.  

Frankly I will probably never go to the park being redeveloped (although you never know!), but I feel it is important for the community to have the opportunity to comment.  In fact, I think the park is important to the city (even if I never use it), so I may attend the meeting anyway.  

I probably never really realized all of the years I worked for a city how much of a “sacrifice” it was for citizens to give up an evening to attend meetings or otherwise participate in city decisions.  It was simply part of my job, where now that I don’t work for a city, I realize it takes conscious effort and giving up other alternatives to be involved in the city meetings.  

I think it makes me appreciate all the more the residents that took the time to read about the projects, and, even more important, attend meetings and comment.  When we don’t, the “decision makers” assume they are doing what we want.  While there are some obvious power hungry and corrupt elected officials who ignore residents wishes, most of them I knew really wanted to do what was right for the community and appreciated the input of residents.

Another day without meat of any kind.  (I am not a “vegan”, I have no problems with eating eggs, etc.) Again, I don’t know how much longer I will continue, I may never eat meat again, I may eat it next week.  But not today.

That’s it for now, Tuesday, March 6, 2018.