Materialism, School, Traffic, Reading, and Being in Pathetic physical condition

I wish I could stop comparing my material wealth with those around me. All it serves is to make me feel bad; it's not like the others know or care. I need to learn to be happy with what I have and thankful that I am as fortunate as I am. This is one of those life-long lessons that I may never master, but I need to keep trying. Material wealth is not important, and I need to get that through my head.

I really don't give a shit about kids going to school. If they actually learned grammar and how to read, and graduated as intelligent individuals, then maybe I'd give a crap. But most of them will grow up to be entitled-feeling drains on society. Hard to get excited when education is a farce; misguided goals and no money.

[My comment above was supposed to mean that it's a farce to think the same standard of education can be delivered with fewer & fewer resources, and the misguided goals meaning spelling, grammar, and literacy falling by the wayside. It was not supposed to imply that teachers suck.]

I do care that school will add traffic to an already congested roadway and will force me to get up before dawn to eventually get to work on time. Construction continues on the bridge I take daily, with huge inefficiencies in traffic management. "Let's close an exit and then not change the traffic light pattern at the 2nd exit to account for an increase in the number of cars!" "Let's force cars to line up for over a mile in single-file rather than use both lanes to the merge point!" "While the bridge is under construction, let's also fix this overpass and add to the congestion, but make sure you don't work past 4pm!" "Let's ignore the fact that the speed limit is reduced to 70 near the overpass construction even when no one is there working, how's that for efficiency!" The city and province are horrible at traffic management. I guess they figure we "don't have much traffic" so why would we need to make alterations? They end up making things worse. There are still few traffic lights in our city with sensors. "Too expensive." I'm sure things are looking really nice in our new Police Palace though.

My reading tastes are changing. Probably a result of being in a couple of book clubs. I'm enjoying historical fiction more lately. I'm fascinated by the past and what it was like to live in those times. I often wish I could just step into the past for a visit, to see in-person what things looked like. I wouldn't want that to be my daily reality, but it would be very interesting to see.

I've started back on a goal of 10000 steps a day. Haven't managed 100% of days, but on the days where I've made an effort, I'm succeeding. Walking doesn't do a whole lot for weight loss, but I am at least getting some form of exercise and not sitting on the couch all the time. Not that you'd know it after my 2-day muscle burn from Saturday night candlepin bowling. It's pretty sad when I bowl for a couple of hours and then it takes at least 2 days before my thighs feel like they're not screaming every time I go up or down stairs.