I’m still making myself a better person. I’m now rolling my press ups and sit ups into a more comprehensive morning exercise routine. This ‘comprehensive morning exercise routine’ consists mostly of me rolling my shoulders, stretching my back, and laying on the floor psyching myself up.

The physical and mental warming up is becoming necessary, as my body isn’t really used to this amount of physical activity so early in the morning. My brain is not either. Not at all.

Some highlight days.

Day 26. We’re staying at Chiara’s mom’s place in Rome. Chiara asks me to do some push ups for her in the late afternoon, just to see how I’m doing. I’ve already done my daily quota. It’s an unorthodox request. But I oblige. Yeah, that’s right I did 31 press ups.

Day 27. Chiara is more actively involved in that she puts her feet on mine to help me in my sit-upping. She makes sexy, alluring faces at me, which layer an emotional imperative onto the physical activity

Day 29. I had an early morning train for Brussels. Which meant leaving the house at 6:15. I did my ‘ups before 6 in the morning!

And I also managed to do my haikuing, though I appear to have misplaced my notebook which has the haikus in it. I will post some haikus once I find it. But here’s a bonus haiku:

I lost my notebook.
Left it on the train I think
Not for the first time

For this ten-day stretch I’m touring lists.

Yesterday it was a list of awesome things, inspired by the Periodic Table of Awesomements. It’s in my notebook. On the train.

Today’s list, in honour of New Year’s Eve, is a list of month names from the French Republican Calendar, which they tried to institute Metric Time in France following the French Revolution. Their were 10 hours in a day, and one hundred minutes in an hour. Weeks were called decades and were 10 days long. There was three of them in a month. It sounds crazy.

The month names were

Autumn:
Vendémiaire (from Latin vindemia, “grape harvest”)
Brumaire (from French brume, “fog”)
Frimaire (From French frimas, “frost”)

Winter:
Nivôse (from Latin nivosus, “snowy”)
Pluviôse (from Latin pluvius, “rainy”)
Ventôse (from Latin ventosus, “windy”)

Spring:
Germinal (from Latin germen, “germination”)
Floréal (from Latin flos, “flower”)
Prairial (from French prairie, “pasture”)

Summer:
Messidor (from Latin messis, “harvest”)
Thermidor (or Fervidor) (from Greek thermon, “summer heat”)
Fructidor (from Latin fructus, “fruit”)

Happy New Year! (Or Duodi, Decade 11 of Nivôse)