~Monday~ This morning’s buscapade:
There was a man, who I’ve seen once before—last week, so he might become a regular—who sat in the very front seat facing the driver, and he talked to her the entire way. That’s what he did last week, too.
He made me think of two things: 1) Will Sampson, that Native American guy who was in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and 2) this website I “stumbledupon” over the weekend:
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Championships |
The guy on the bus looked like Will Sampson, but had a gray moustache—Fu Manchu-style—with the ends tightly braided.
A lady, who had run to the bus with a baby in her arms, rushed to the back and put her baby down. Then, she came up to the front to pay her fare. She had on some kind of restaurant uniform—a black polo shirt whose back read, “Where there’s a grill, there’s a way.”
At the next stop, a man got on and took the seat in front of me. He was bald, and he had a scar that was bout 8 inches in length, starting in the middle of the back of his head and extending down to his neck, disappearing into the collar of his shirt. It was a very, very thin scar where it started, and widened to perhaps an eighth of an inch toward the bottom.
This morning’s weather was that rare combination of fairly cool (low- to mid-70s) and low humidity. A few of the bus windows were slid open and it felt just great.
I had a non-meeting, but interrupt-driven day, with odds and ends and bits of pieces of communication-related things needing to be taken care of.
My officemate was out today, due to the death of a family member over the weekend.
On the way to the gym this evening, I stopped by K-Mart for some more ibuprofen. I opted for the generic brand over Motrin for a saving of over $2.00 for the 100-count.
I worked out from 8:00 – 9:00, with a 60-minute, 1013-calorie-burning cardio workout on the elliptical machine. I did do 75 ab crunches, but had to stop, as my sternum area is still aching from the 225 I did on Sunday.
I reverted back to my old trick of setting the workout time on the elliptical machine to 60 minutes, thinking, “I can stop after 30 minutes if I feel like it.” Then when 30 minutes arrived, I thought, “Okay, I’ll stop at 40 minutes. That’s a nice even number.” Then at 40 minutes, “Just 5 more minutes and it’ll be 45 minutes, which is a good number.” And finally, at 45 minutes, “I’m feeling pretty good. There’s no reason whatsoever to not just go for another 15 minutes.”
I had the most ridiculous time trying to get the iPod armband on that I bought to hold my iTouch while exercising, but at least I remembered to bring it tonight. What I didn’t remember, though, was to grab my other earphones that I bought specifically for working out.
while working out. |
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While exercising, I listened to a most compelling podcast episode of This American Life (these first two of three stories) about fathers:
| Episode 289: Go Ask Your Father
In this show, sons get to find out the one thing they’ve always wanted to know about their father. The answers aren’t always what they hope for. Prologue. When Aric Knuth was a little kid, his dad would leave for six months at a time. He was a merchant marine. And Aric would record cassettes of himself and send them. He’d leave one side blank, for his father to record a response. But he never did, even though Aric asked him to on every tape. Aric talks to host Ira Glass about what it was like to finally ask his dad why. (7 minutes) Act One. Make Him Say Uncle. Lennard Davis grew up hearing from his parents that he should, at all costs, avoid being like his good-for-nothing Uncle Abie. Later, after his father died, that very same uncle told him that his father was not, in fact, his father. Instead, he said, Lenny was a product of in vitro fertilization, and he, Uncle Abie, was the sperm donor. At first, the evidence points to the possible truth of Abie’s story, then more evidence seems to indicate he was lying. It takes Lenny more than 20 years to sort out whether it was true, and he finds out the answer—definitively—as tape is rolling. (30 minutes) |
Good stuff. Turn off the TV for a little while. Light a candle. Have a glass of wine. And listen. [Go here and under the picture, click on the orange icon that says, “Full Episode.”]