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Fitbit Year 11

A year ago, I set a goal of 2,730,000 steps, an average of 7500 steps per day. Thanks to a combination of old age and my weight finally getting the better of me, I fell quite a bit short of my challenge, finishing well more than a million steps behind with only 1,657,522, the seventh straight year I’ve failed to surpass my yearly goal but my highest total in in three years.  My average step total per week was 31,875.42, which comes out to about 4553.6 steps per day. The median weekly step total was 31,292.5.  My best week was Week 25, where I went to four baseball games and had a couple days off of work, propelling me to only 42,281 steps for the week.  My worst week was Week 7, where work woes took a toll.

Since medication is helping me get a handle on the weight and I am nothing if not a glutton for punishment, I’m going to keep things as is for the upcoming year.  I am leaving my goal for steps per day at 7500, which would again bring me to a yearly total of 2,730,000 steps. Hopefully this eighth attempt is the one that sticks.

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Giants All Time Leaders – Through 2025

To paraphrase from a famous movie, the one constant through all the years has been baseball.  With a little more than a month until regular season baseball, we continue our look at the all-time leaders in both offensive and defensive categories for all 30 teams. Today, we take a deeper dive into the San Francisco Giants.

The Giants began life in 1883 in New York, before moving west to San Francisco in 1957. I’ve seen 177 players don the Giants uniforms in the 26 of their games I’ve attended live, first at their old home at Candlestick Park in 1999 and most recently this past June at Rate Field against the White Sox.

Home Runs

Name Total
Mike Yastrzemski 3
Wilmer Flores 2
Pedro Feliz 2
Brandon Crawford 2
David Villar 2

Hits

Name Total
Buster Posey 9
Pedro Feliz 8
Mike Yastrzemski 7
Brandon Crawford 7

Runs

Name Total
Mike Yastrzemski 6
Brandon Crawford 5
Wilmer Flores 5

RBI

Name Total
Pablo Sandoval 6
Mike Yastrzemski 6
David Villar 5

Doubles

Name Total
Buster Posey 3
9 tied with 2

Triples Continue reading →

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Midseason Review – Fridays

Our final look back at the new fall season gives us Friday’s amazing slate of shows.

9:00

Boston Blue – The Blue Bloods spinoff sends Donny Wahlberg to Boston for some reason.

I never managed to watch this.

Debuting this spring:

Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars – The latest installment of dumbed down Jeopardy! for mostly D-list celebrities to win money for charity.

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Book 6 (of 52) – The Dark Hours

The Dark Hours – Michael Connelly

2020 has been a dark year for the LAPD, as Covid and the public’s waning trust in the police have affected morale.  As midnight strikes to close out the year. Detective Renée Ballard is out on patrol, waiting for the latest attack from the Midnight Men, a duo who use the excitement of a holiday as a cover to rape an unsuspecting woman.  While waiting, she gets called to a murder scene, a former banger who bought his way out years ago.  Working both cases solo, with help from former detective Harry Bosch, she finds the only thing bigger than her desire to close the cases is her desire to leave the department, and its bullshit, behind.

In the fourth entry of his Renée Ballard series, The Dark Hours, Michael Connelly continues to team her up with his old Harry Bosch character, first introduced in 1992’s The Black Echo.  The two seem likely to continue working together, so I imagine any future entries in the series (of which there are currently two more) will continue the pairing.  The next entry, Desert Star, is the basis for the first season of the Ballard series on Amazon Prime, which I am two episodes into as of this writing.  Hopefully that isn’t a mistake on my part.

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Midseason Review – Thursdays

We are on the back half of our look back at the offerings for the new fall season. Thursday night is traditionally the busiest night of the week for my television viewing habits, but not this year. Here’s what was on the slate for this season.

7:00

9-1-1 – Returning for its ninth season, and its third on ABC, although without star Peter Krause.

I’m not saying that sending two of the characters on a space adventure for the first three episodes of the season was a jump the shark moment, but I’m also not saying it wasn’t.

8:00

9-1-1: Nashville – Another spinoff, moving the franchise to Tennessee.

This isn’t clicking for me.  It doesn’t have the heart of the original.

9:00

Elsbeth – The The Good Wife spinoff returns for its third season, but I still have to watch the second one.

I’ve stopped recording this one but may circle back one day on streaming.

Grey’s Anatomy – The medical drama enters its 22nd season with the follow-up on last season’s explosion.

What can I say after 21+ seasons?  The show is what it is at this point.

And now the new entries:

Scrabble – The game show returns to The CW with a new host: Craig Ferguson.

Trivial Pursuit – LeVar Burton returns for a second go-around of the board game-based quiz show.

 

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Book 5 (of 52) – In The Woods

Tana French – In The Woods

When a young girl is found murdered in the woods outside of Dublin, a police detective with ties to those woods is assigned to investigate.  The deeper the investigation goes, the more his past comes back to haunt him, helping him to catch the killer but costing him his partner, his best friend, his job, and any chance at answering the questions of what happened to him in those woods years earlier.

In the Woods is the first entry in the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French.  Originally released in 2007, it somehow came across my path late last year.  The beginning of the book was excellent, setting the scene for an exciting thriller where the current mystery would help solve the old one.  However, the ending fell a bit flat for me, as the old mystery didn’t even come close to a resolution and the main character turned into a bit of a dick.  The next entry seems to revolve around some of the other characters from this one, minus said dick, so I may give that a shot at some point.

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Midseason Review – Tuedays

Continuing our look back at my thoughts on the new fall season, with the offerings that I found myself interested in for Tuesdays.

7:00

Murder in a Small Town – A second season of the Canadian mystery-drama of the week featuring old favorites Kristin Kreuk.

At some point, you would think someone would notice that there are an awful lot of murders in this otherwise idyllic small town.

8:00

Doc – A surprise hit last spring, Molly Parker returns for a second go-around.

Still enjoyable but turning into more of a standard medical drama as the Doc gets her memories back.

9:00

High Potential – One of the only breakout hits of last season, Kaitlin Olson returns for a second season as an under-employed genius who consults with the police.

More of the same here.

Now, let’s see what interesting tidbits are coming this spring:

Will Trent – The series very loosely based on Karin Slaughter’s novels returns for its fourth season.

 

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Book 4 (of 52) – The Impossible Fortune

Richard Osman – The Impossible Fortune

After a quiet year as Elizabeth mourns the loss of her husband, the Thursday Murder Club reconvenes when the best man from Joyce’s daughter’s wedding goes missing.  With over a quarter of a billion pounds at stake, can the crew of pensioners find out who is trying to kill him before the money disappears?

Richard Osman returns with The Impossible Fortune, the latest entry in his Thursday Murder Club series and a nominee for Favorite Mystery & Thriller in last year’s Goodreads Choice Awards.  It has been two years since I read the previous entry, but it felt like no time had passed at all and that I was meeting up with old friends.  I’m not sure what is next from him, but I look forward to whatever it is.