Two things I was thinking about this morning

I slept badly and woke up early, so I went for a bike ride once the sun was up. There's a lot of traffic, so I have to pay close attention to the road most of the time, but it made me think about an important distinction.

Often, when I'm riding home I do the last couple of blocks on a major road. It's the quickest easiest way. There's another way on smaller roads, but it's longer and harder. But as I approached today, I thought, "I shouldn't go on that road, it's stupid." And then I thought, yeah, it is stupid, but the problem with it isn't that it's stupid, the problem is that it's dangerous.

For me at least, that's an important distinction to keep in mind. I do stupid stuff all the time. I'm a human being; it's hard-wired into me and I don't torture myself about it. Plus stupid stuff is often fun, and I like fun. Dangerous, however, is a whole 'nother matter, and even though I've ridden probably 20,000 miles on local roads without even coming close to getting in a serious accident, I always try to minimize the probability that my chosen action will kill me. Not a bad rule to follow in general, even when you're not riding a bike. When in doubt, pick the option less likely to result in your death. Yes, I like that.

The other thing I was thinking about is completely unrelated. I have a large number of college recommendations to write, and as always, many of the associated students are applying to the same schools. I have to be careful about not repeating myself, so when I think about the whole process I find myself kind of stockpiling superlatives. Because if I have 3 students applying to one school and I've said about all 3 that they're exceptionally good at learning new concepts, that would be kind of contrary to the meaning of exceptional. It's a good test of my ability to say roughly the same thing a bunch of different ways, so weird as it may sound, I'll enjoy it. And I like sound of stockpiling superlatives. It sounds very positive and makes me feel good.