Robert and I were up at 10:00 to greet 2009. He got up first and put on coffee and turned up the heat, making my ascent easier. For breakfast, we had bagels with a couple of strips of bacon, along with our coffee.
We listened to a bunch of podcasts, and at some point during them had little ham sandwiches for lunch. The podcasts we listened to were all interviews by Terry Gross from recent Fresh Air episodes:
- For Jenna Fischer, ‘Office’ Life Is A Great Act (29:17): Jenna Fischer may be best known for her role as Pam, the receptionist on the NBC comedy series The Office. In this interview, Fischer tells Terry Gross about creating all those pained looks and knowing smiles — and about how her five years as an office temp helped to prepare her for the role.
- Eccentricity? All In A Day’s Work For Rainn Wilson (15:37): Rainn Wilson plays beet-farming, archery-loving middle-management kook Dwight Shrute on NBC’s The Office. Rainn Wilson also had a recurring role as Arthur on HBO’s Six Feet Under.
- Tina Fey’s Gubernatorial Turn (9:29): Comedian Tina Fey created a sensation this fall with her impersonation of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. A former head writer for SNL, Fey stars in the NBC comedy 30 Rock.
- Geoff Nunberg Nominates 2008’s Word of The Year (5:29): Early in January, the American Dialect Society will meet in San Francisco to vote for 2008’s Word of the Year. Several dictionaries have already made their own selections. After looking over the field, Fresh Air‘s resident linguist has a candidate, too.
- In ‘The Visitor,’ Richard Jenkins Takes A Lead Turn (33:36): After appearing in supporting roles in more than 50 films, actor Richard Jenkins takes the lead in The Visitor, Tom McCarthy’s film about a solitary economics professor whose world opens up when he discovers an apartment he rented in New York is already occupied.
Kevin (av8rdude) and I headed to the gym at about 4:45, where I did 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, again with no hills, but twice as long as yesterday with no ill effect on my knee. I burned off 445 calories.
After that, I did 9 sets of 15 ab crunches, and ended with one set of 30. While I waited for Kevin to finish up, I did some lower back and lower abdomen stretching exercises.
From the gym, we swung by Blockbuster, where Kevin helped an old man out by running my two DVDs up to the outside dropoff box, and then we stopped by the State Employees’ Credit Union, which is right behind the shopping center in which the Blockbuster resides.
At home, we each had one of the two remaining pepperoni rolls from yesterday, and then Kevin headed out for the evening. Kurt gets off at 9:00 tonight, and they’re spending the night at his house.
Largetony, who stopped blogging last year, much to the dismay of a lot of his readers, has returned to blogging under a new blog name, West of Mayberry. This totally sweet New Year’s Eve vignette of him, granny, and the attorney is precisely why so many have missed his writing.
I was in bed at 11:00 and asleep by 11:05.