~Friday~ I ran behind this morning, so I drove up to the Wolfline stop, and I approached the Kaplan / Gorman intersection just as the Wolfline bus did, which is to say, I missed it.
Checking the current whereabouts of the next one on my phone, I knew I had about ten minutes to wait, so I sat in my car at the bus stop listening to a three-and-a-half minute clip on NPR called, “Mother To Son: Hard Choice Led To Great Love” from its Storycorps project, which is “recording loved ones across the country talking with each other about their lives.” I was crying before it was over. You can cry for yourself, or not, by listening to or reading it.
This clip made made me wonder how many people adopt children as babies who later come out to them. A quick Google search on, “how many adopted kids turn out to be gay” gave results about gay adoption, but not specifically to that question, and several of the highlighted sentences in the results that were returned, such as, “It is not surprising that children adopted by ‘gays’ have mental problems from this insanity!” made me know I didn’t even want to go any further with the query. Let’s just say that the rhetorical function of the quotation marks around the word gay in that sentence seems to be to make gay people appear to exist only in their insane minds. But I digress…
On the bus, in an instance of déjà vu, I sat across from the sexy guy who sat across from me some time last week, and whom I took two pictures of while he slept, but said pictures got corrupted somehow. He was fully awake the entire ride today, and I dared not repeat my antics. [As a complete aside, just recently, I once again heard someone use the construct, “I had déjà vu all over again.” People. That’s redundant. “All over again” is the essence of déjà vu.]
At the intersection of Dan Allen and Western Boulevard, a man got on whom I at first thought was trying to bring his bicycle aboard, but it turned out to be a walker. It had hand breaks on it much like those on bicycle handlebars, which is what I saw first when he was boarding.
My boss’s boss brought in a dozen donuts, but it turned out that a lot of people who work for him were out today, so I ate two of them to help him out. That’s my story and it’s sticking to me.
My boss was generous enough to let me take some time after lunch to run down to a reception in honor of my friend Joe’s mother, who passed away recently. (Note: This is not my friend Joe who I’m always talking about here, but in fact, the partner of my friend Phil, who I do talk about somewhat often here—though not often enough for his taste.)
It was a very nice gathering, with pictures galore of Joe’s mother’s life, including several with Joe in them at various stages of growing up, which were fun to look at it. There was a woman playing the harp there, which added a nice touch to the whole thing.
There were some delicious finger foods, too, of which I took full advantage, and several people I know dropped in while I was there, including Cronin and Wayne, Steve Harris, Robert Fox and Leigh Samuel Blaylock, whom I actually met in grad school, but as it turned out was babysat by Joe when she was a kid. Small world.
There was also a gal named Jean there, with whom I at one time went two-stepping at the Longbranch. We’d met at Flex, or perhaps at a party, through a mutual friend who mentioned that we both two-stepped and we’d ended up meeting at the Longbranch one Friday or Saturday night to dance. Neither of us, even after thinking hard about it for a while, could pinpoint who it is that we both know and through whom we were introduced. She was there with a friend named Ralph, whom I believe Phil said was a massage therapist, and whom I also feel like I’ve met before.
I took Jean’s e-mail address down as I told her I could probably find out who it was through my blog, but once home, a search through it only revealed this: “Steve and Jean came after nine some time, and it was just a fun, fun night. John Paul was there to see us dance, since he’ll be emceeing on Friday along with Mary K. Mart. He seemed really impressed with us. He even got out on the floor and took the lesson [doing the Tush Push] to the Janet Jackson song. I had a great two-step with Jean. We danced much better together than we did the last time we danced together at The Longbranch. I guess I’m just more comfortable dancing in ‘our little bar.'”
I thought I would look back on the days and weeks before that entry to see what night we had been at the Longbranch dancing, but found no mention of it. At the reception this afternoon, I’d asked her if she knew Steve Moore, as I was thinking that’s who we’d met through, but she’d said no. Interesting that this entry refers to “Steve and Jean.” Not sure what to make of it all.
The first thing I did when I got home, before that blog search, was to call Ace Towing to come and remove that car from my parking spot. That towing company has some horrible online customer reviews, but I had no problem with them.
The tow truck driver arrived ten minutes later, and he was absolutely adorable. He had a spot on the right thigh of his jeans that was threadbare, and for some queer reason my eyes were drawn to it. Sexy.
I’m starting to think this car may have been abandoned, since it’s been left for so long, and it had expired plates on it, with a May 2010 date on them, so not that expired, but expired nonetheless. However, there is a bicycle helmet in the back seat, and I would think that someone who was abandoning a car would clear it out. On the other hand, it could have been stolen. Oh well. At any rate, I’m done with it.
I made myself go to the gym, where I wanted to do upper body work again in spite of my arm muscles, as predicted, being sore for the days following my upper body work on Monday. I reduced my number of sets on each machine from five to four, hoping to not re-strain my muscles.
Following that I did 30 minutes of cardio on the cross-training elliptical machines, for a 582-calorie burn. I listened to workout music on my iTouch while doing it, and watched the subtitles of a little bit of Jeopardy. Alex Trebek gets on my nerves even when I can’t hear him.
I also actually used the new combination lock that I bought about two months ago to lock up my stuff in the locker room instead of keeping my bag beside me the entire time.
I ran into the grocery store beside the gym, where I just had a few things to get, but not finding the Diet Coke on sale (well, it was a dollar off, which is not enough off), I just left without picking up the few other things, since I’d have to make another run (to the Food Lion) anyway.
Back home, I did a load of mixed colors and whites, had a short instant message conversation with Robert during which we arranged meeting on Sunday to pick up a fridge he’s buying off Craigslist, had a short conversation with Curtis (curtimack) about our meeting for lunch tomorrow after my board meeting in Durham, and made several Scrabble moves in several online games I’m in the middle of.
Later, I caught up on my volunteer work for Manbites Dog Theater, finishing the clean-up of last month’s board meeting minutes, and preparing the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting, and then alerting the board members to the availability of both.