I was up at 8:30 this morning and had a sweet, good-morning instant message conversation with Robert. 
During a breakfast of a yolk-less hard-boiled egg, one turkey sausage patty, some deliciously ripe cantaloupe, and coffee, I read the news online, including my daily perusal of the obituaries.
“You might be an emotional sap if…” you, too, cry reading this. I don’t even know these people, but it’s just so sweet.
| Jamie Hamilton Barrow | ||
 IN MEMORIAM
SEPTEMBER 3, 1955 – APRIL 14, 2007 Jamie, you graced your family with your birth in 1955 and later made me happy when you became my wife. It’s hard to believe that you have been gone for a year. We spent over 22 years together and I grew to love you more each day. You fought a long hard battle and endured many difficulties throughout your life that made you a stronger person to the end. Your family and friends will always remember your smile and outgoing personality. I will always remember your loving devotion to our lives together. It seems like only yesterday that you and I were discussing remodeling plans for the Lake place in anticipation of a well deserved vacation. I will always miss you and will forever remember you in my heart. Your friend and Published in The News & Observer on 4/13/2008. |
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| Guest Book • Flowers • Gift Shop • Charities | ||
I snapped out of it when I got to “well deserved vacation,” which should be “well-deserved vacation.” I’m just saying…
Oh the difference a day makes. Yesterday, I was so not into the gym. Today, I was totally into my workout.
Yesterday, I bumped my level down to 3; today, I bumped it back up to 4. I decided to rest my brain today and listened to 60 minutes of retro mix music instead of podcasts or some mixture of music and podcasts.
On the elliptical machine, I keep the “dashboard” on Calories Per Hour, but 20 minutes into my 60-minute workout, I like to switch it to Calories to get an estimate of where I am. Whatever it is, I multiply it times three. At 30 minutes in, I do the same thing and multiply it by 2. And at 40 minutes in, I divide what’s there by a half and add it on. Oh yeah, and sometimes, I take a final check at 45 into it, at which time I divide by three and add that on. Who’s counting?
About 25 minutes into my workout today, I opened my eyes to find this girl, who I can only describe as a red-hot-choochie-mama, wiping down the machine in front of me, which she evidently had been on, but I hadn’t noticed from the back.
While she did this, I had a side, and sometimes almost front, view of her. She had on a tight gray workout top, and had the fullest breasts. At the tips of her bosom, a little bit of skin bumped up over the edge of her bra—almost like a push-up bra would make it do— and her nipples were definitely hard enough to cut glass, and they were the size of gum drops. [Go ahead. Hover your cursor over it. You know you want to.] And yes, I could see all this through her blouse.
You’ve heard of gaydar, I’m sure; well, I used her as straightdar, and looked around. Any guy in there that wasn’t looking at her, couldn’t be straight. Of course, there is the caveat that even I was looking at her, and I am decidedly not straight.
To continue digressing, but on a totally different topic: One song came on in my Retro Mix that made this really cool sound in the middle of it. The sound played in my right ear, then paused just long enough before playing in my left ear so that it had the illusion of passing through my head. And then, after a slightly longer pause, it played again in my right ear, which gave the illusion that it had passed around the back of my head to get back over to the right side.
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Right |
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Left |
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Right |
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Left |
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Right |
Today’s workout statistics:
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Cardio (Elliptical) |
60 |
1212 |
I loved that I burned 1212 calories and finished right at 12 o’clock. If only it had taken 12 more minutes! But I digress…
Right before heading to Helios, I was warned by my friend Charles (chasman) on Twitter that “the place was packed fuller than a drug mule’s colon.”
On the way there, I passed a guy riding his bike, from which I realized: If I wore a hairpiece, I would definitely wear a hat while riding my bike, or better yet, a helmet. I’m just saying…
Helios was crowded. Charles and I started on the couch, moved to a table-for-two when it came open, and then graduated to a table-for-four when one of those came open.
The math tutor, who’s there a lot, was there, and at one point she said very sternly to her student, “No! The cosine is the ratio of the adjacent side to the hypotenuse.” I imagined her with a black, leather whip beating math into her clients—Cosina, the Dominatrix Math Medusa.
Wow. It was social networking mania today @ Helios. Just after Chasman left, Kitch arrived, whom I’d never met, but I knew was approaching the premises by his tweet-by-tweet photos of where he was walking downtown. As he walked by my table, I said, “Kitch,” and he joined me.
It turns out he’s an IBMer, and one who didn’t know about Beehive (IBM’s internal social networking system), and while we were in the midst of a philosophical discussion about Twitter, a guy at the table next to us, introduced himself, jessmartin, as he Tweets as well. We had a short discussion about a startup business he’s involved with, and after telling him I was a technical editor, and handing him one of my cards, he said, “Cool. A MOO card.” I thought it was neat that he knew about those.
As we were talking, I mentioned something about only IBMers owning IBM laptops, and a guy at yet another table near us said, “I have an IBM laptop.” I said, “And you don’t work for IBM?” He didn’t, but it turned out it was his work laptop and not his personal one.
Later on in our conversation, a lady sitting behind me said, “Excuse me, I heard you talking about IBM.” Turns out she, Theresa, was a retired IBMer, an information developer (a.k.a. a “technical writer” in the “real world”) no less.
Right around leaving, at around 6:00, dtraleigh made an appearance to meet jessmartin. Kitch knew him. I met him.
It’s a small, social world.
I had half-price-off-everything-on-the-menu-Sundays at Stool Pigeons (right across from Helios)—enjoying the Coop Sampler; I think that’s what it was called.
After that I spent the evening at Flex for free pool. The $.50-per-glass keg beer started tonight—Coors Light. I know I read somewhere that it was starting May 13th. Guess Brigner moved it up.