~Monday~ Gerald Sydnor, my plumber, arrived at about 9:20, and he spent a good three-and-a-half hours here replacing: my kitchen sink faucet, my garbage disposal, my master bathroom sink faucet, and my master bathroom shower head.
I actually didn’t have the garbage disposal or the shower arm/head, so I ran to Lowe’s to buy them while he worked on the kitchen sink.
I’m quite sure the girl checking me out was a Lesbian, and she was so darn cute. After I said what I said to her and saw her reaction, I realized she’s the same one I thought this very thing about several months ago—either back in October when I bought the faucets or perhaps even Christmas a year ago when I bought my sister and brother-in-law’s gift certificate there and she helped me. At least I’m consistent.
I said to her after she handed me my change, “You are adorable!”
Her face lit up beyond measure and she said smiling and genuinely touched, “Awwww. Thank you!”
The way she said that reminded me of Ellen, whom I also adore.
In response to yesterday’s implicit affirmation of asking me to review a friend’s resume, I received this explicit one after doing it:
| You rock John. A few of those suggestions had been bugging me too. You’re pretty good at these technicalities, have you thought about further pursuing technical writing? lol jk. |
I’m quite pleased with my new kitchen sink faucet, to have a new garbage disposal, with my new bathroom sink faucet, and especially with my new shower head. Additionally what’s nice about all of it is being able to check it off as a long-outstanding to-do item!
At the gym today, I did my upper body routine, followed by 225 (15 sets of 15 reps) ab crunches. I felt extra good about this today for two reasons:
- When I was working out regularly starting in January of 2008—when I missed going to the gym less than ten days all the way through August—for the first four months of that time, I only did cardio. So, I’m happy to be adding strengthening in early this time.
- The dailyburn.com app let’s you create an exercise routine, and I’ve entered two different routines—one containing all the machines, weights, sets, and reps that I do for the upper body routine and another with the same information for my lower body routine. So now when I do a routine, I can record it with one click, and it calculates an estimated calorie burn for the routine, as well. I am very motivated by knowing how many calories I’m burning doing exercise, so this is a huge boost for me. I did the same thing with my ab crunches routine.
To that end, my upper body and ab crunches today amounted to a 489-calorie burn. Yay!
After my workout, I stopped in the next door grocery store, where I bought mostly fruits and vegetables for this week, including five apples, three oranges, sliced mushrooms, an onion, a butternut squash, a spaghetti squash, some shredded Mozzarella cheese, green seedless grapes, asparagus, a cucumber, a couple of red potatoes, and some bananas.
At home I diced the sliced mushrooms (call me crazy), diced the onion, and washed and then bagged the grapes into one serving size baggies to grab and go during the week.
When I’d arrived back from the gym and grocery store, there was a car in my other parking spot, and I thought, “Oh no. That’s got to go. I have a guest here this week.”
But, it turned out to be Casey’s rental car, which I hadn’t gotten a good look at the night before, nor remembered what kind it was though I’d asked him. He’d gotten home from IBM a little earlier than expected, so we had just a little overlap time before I was off to Salon VII and he was off to the grocery store and to grab a quick dinner out.
Salon was an absolute ton of fun and laughs tonight. This meeting’s agenda follows with various soundbites and memories of the evening.
- Slippery Yoga Pants and other 80s hair band names
- Tainted Bangles (Kim)
- Stealing Spandex (Kim)
- Tight on Me (Kim)
- Butt Eyeballs (Sarah)
- Much Underpants (Anna)
- Size Matters (Anna) [Must be an all-girls band.]
- Dialog Screams (Brad)
- The Curly Permanettes (John) [I did not offer this up during the gathering, as I hadn’t understood the agenda item. But while writing this up, I remember the short period of time, maybe a month, that I had a curly perm. Bad move. Fortunately, I outgrew it. Literally. ]
- Words we hate, reprise—Anna still loves corporate speak (even found an online collection where she’s been shopping for more gems like “bangalored” and “boiling the frog”) but there are some words she’d call right hateful.
- We had “boiling the frog” explained to us. It ain’t a pretty metaphor, folks.
- Sarah noted that she hated “baby words” used by adults, and others chimed in. Among them: tummy, panty, telling a teenager to go potty, and “give loves” as in when everyone’s saying goodbye someone says, “Let’s give loves to each other.”
- Kim shared that Carlos’ mother refers to things as being “boob white,” alluding to how white that area is when it isn’t tanned.
- Favorite holiday poems
- Like father like daughter—Kim shared a pastiche that her father wrote many years ago based on ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, followed by one written by herself when she was somewhere between 14 and 16 years old
- Anna shared her favorite, Christ Climbed Down by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
- This agenda item digressed into talking about camps we went to as kids.
- Brad never did go to one. Perhaps it’s an American thing, and he’s from Canada. He said his mother did send him to go out and play all day and unlocked the door again at the end of the day so he could get back, usually around supper time. I guess you could think of that as “Wilderness Camp.”
- Kim attended an intellectual camp (college prep while she was in junior high school, if you will) for two weeks
onefor about six summers. - Sarah went to vacation bible school, where she eventually learned that the fabric pulling tight in a circle, worn into one of the counselor’s back pockets, was caressing a can of Skoal.
- Anna attended some kind of arts and crafts camp.
- John attended band camp.
- New Year’s Resolutions
- To do things even when they’re complicated. (Sarah)
- To have more sex than last year. (Sarah) [Don’t really have a good place for these three soundbites that were uttered sometime during the evening, but this seems as good a place as any to note them: “Andrew rode the Zamboni,” “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick,” and “Lick my thesis.”]
- To quit smoking. (Brad)
- Kim’s meeting with her ex-husband
- Brad inadvertently showed up at their meeting location during their meeting
- Kim left the meeting with her dignity, reputation, and well, with everything but her hymen, intact
- Holiday songs: most beloved, most hated, and one with an annoying grammar “situation” in it
- We were going to strike this item, but before doing so, Sarah asked what the song with the grammar situation in it was and what the problems was
- I explained that it was a “conjunction function” issue in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer; that I think the phrase, “…but do you recall, the most famous reindeer of all?” should be “…and do you recall…”
- Sarah explained that “but” was being used a rhetorical device here because Rudolph wasn’t really a reindeer. So it’s more to elicit a response like, “No, I haven’t, do tell me about him.”
- Someone else said that they weren’t so sure that Dasher, Donner, and Blitzen were real either
- I was totally thankful for this, as it finally puts the matter to rest for me
- Kim hates: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, Feliz Navidad, and All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth and loves Carol of the Bells, White Christmas, and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
- Kim’s holiday family photo story, and a group viewing of the result
- Kim showed their family holiday photo, which did indeed get made and developed in time for tonight’s meeting. A study in black & white—shirts.
- What Matters Now: From that e-book, we were to each pick words that reminded us of each of the other salon members, which turned out to be quite a heart-warming exercise
- Sarah went first, as she had a spreadsheet with the elaborate cross-pollination of people and traits, which was just beautiful. Her conclusions: Anna: Gumption “You can… declare war on passivity”; Brad: Attention Not like the article—but focused attention so maybe Focus. Maybe neoteny? (keeping childlike attributes in adulthood); Etta: Dignity “easy to take dignity away from someone but difficult to give it to them”; John: Timeless “heart, simplicity, story”; Kim: Change “what is working today and how can we do more of it?”
- Anna thought outside-the-box (a.k.a. not following directions) and she chose a word that she thought applied to the entire group, and that word was “mesh.” In a follow-up e-mail to me she, noted: “I chose the word MESH for everyone. ‘Some things are best shared,’ leads off the blurb and, while it veers away from anything I associate directly with our group, the word and the opener remind me powerfully of the last time I had a group of friends who all knew and liked each other and worked well together as a group. That was 17 years ago. It’s so nice to mesh again.”
She went on to say, “But if our record is amendable (and why not, the Congressional Record is), I’d like to add a couple more, again because they evoke my feelings about the group as a whole: ADVENTURE—Our meetings are a magnificent escape from my routine and enable me to ‘make for the horizon,’ ‘observe and open [my] mind,’ and, not least, ‘unleash [my] curiosity.’ FASCINATION—Because the description is all about smiling when captivated by a person or an idea. I smile like crazy before, during, and after salon. I’m smiling now.”
- Kim chose the word Connected for John, Harmony for Sarah, Autonomy for Anna, Knowing for Brad, and Dignity for Etta. Kim also went above and beyond (it all started with Intellectual Camp in junior high) and picked a word for herself, too: Gumption. (As an amusing aside, she first chose Change for herself, but changed it to Gumption.)
- I originally chose Change for Kim, but changed it to Autonomy. I chose Vision for Sarah, Ease for Brad, Enrichment for Anna, and Magnetize for Etta, not really for what’s written in the e-book for the word magnetize, but because I find myself so drawn to Etta even though we’ve really only “met” a few times, really.
- What you gain/lose for the price of a bottle of whiskey during a dictatorship” (or “Carlos in uniform: A photo and a story”)
- War stories couched in whiskey, basic training, peeing in a bottle and setting off an alarm, rebellion, and ultimately photographed while standing guard
- A showcase of Master’s final projects and/or Doctoral theses. (60-second elevator pitch only)
- All of us attached some degree of lameness to our projects, but this item lead to a discussion about theory vs. application in general and the applicability of school projects to businesses, specifically. Actually, I think it was during this agenda item that we actually heard the ejaculation: “Lick my thesis!”
- Report from the Hall of Lame
- Let’s just say we segued nicely into this item, and leave it at that 🙂
- Glitter showcase
- All that glitters is not gold; and a lot glitters, such as various and sundry parts of both Anna’s and Kim’s body parts and hair
- My favorite part of the glitter agenda item was how Sarah acquired the stash to bring out tonight
- Award ceremony
- Anna presented a beautiful wooden award with very purposefully selected keyboard keys glued onto it
- It was really beautifully, beautifully done (thanks, J.R.), and it will be a rotating award for our Ning forum discussion that garners the most comments each year
- This year, Kim’s comment-worthy forum discussion was entitled, “Drag queen follow-up…how do they hide it?”
I darted out of there at just after 10:00, since I’d left my house guest all alone for almost four hours, and I didn’t realize until I got home that I totally forgot about paying my tab.
Anna covered for me, so I owe her. It shouldn’t have been too bad, as I only had the Large Greek Salad and coffee, omitting the three our four bourbon and Diet Cokes I usually have.