~Labor Day Monday~ Oh glorious holiday! I slept in.
Kevin (av8rdude) took my car to spend a few hours with some Raleigh friends of his, and I took advantage of the time at home to devise my Sunday blog entry; load dirty—and then unload clean—dishes from the dishwasher; and wash, dry, and fold a load of laundry. Nasty workout clothes in. Nice fresh stuff out.
Kevin returned home at around 2:30, and shortly after that I was off to the gym. My nemesis from yesterday was there again today, and I’m not quite sure why that had to happen with all the possible hours in the day for each of us to be there separately. The good news is that I now have a name for him, Snowflake, thanks to my friend Dan (an0penletterto) and his comments on yesterday’s entry. I’m sure that’s a much kinder name than I would have given him, so thanks for that, Dan.
I took my place on my usual elliptical machine, which is the one closest to the fenced-off area just to my right, where all the guys are lifting free weights and using various exercise machines. Of those machines, the closest one is one of these:
So, there was Snowflake on said machine, only he’s a man not a woman, and of course, he was not exercising—he was standing on the ground with his arms on the armrests, leaning against its back.
I started my elliptical machine, selecting 30—instead of 60—minutes today, and bumping up my level from 4 to 5. At about three minutes into it, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, and Snowflake stepped away from his machine, walked to the nearest paper towel and disinfectant station, and came back with a wet towel, proceeding to wipe off the machine.
“Oh,” I thought generously, “I must have just missed him exercising.”
He left that area, and he sauntered through the weight area, made a leisurely stop at the water fountain, and then went to an area in the front of the gym that contains a set of about twenty machines, which are set up for an “express workout” at lunch time. He grabbed a paper towel in that area, sprayed some disinfectant on it, walked over to a machine, and wiped it down. I thought, “Oh, he must have germ issues, cleaning the machines both before and after he uses them.” Then he threw away the paper towel and left that area.
He strolled by me, and then behind me, over to the elliptical machine he was on yesterday. But, it was taken today, and instead he got on the treadmill, which was the machine just to the left of that elliptical machine. He turned the belt on to a speed so slow that when he put the heel of his one foot just in front of the toe of his other foot, he eventually got to the front of the belt, in about four steps, and when he did, he just stood still and let the machine slide him all the way to the back of the belt, and then started the whole excruciatingly slow process over again.
Why?
When I got home, Kevin’s friend Brant was visiting, and they left shortly afterwards to go to Cup A Joe Mission Valley for some coffee and then onto The Big Easy downtown for dinner.
While he was gone, I peeled, cut up, and boiled three potatoes that I bought about a week ago, and I made some mashed potatoes, about which I tweeted:
You may remember that last week, at the same time I bought those wrongly priced CDs, I also bought a three-pronged three outlet plug, as it’s been about a month since I’d lost my other one, and I’d checked all the places I thought I might have left it, to no avail.
Well, Joe instant messaged me tonight from Caribou Coffee and said, “Your plug is still in the wall here. It has ‘MARTIN’ written all over it.” Which, indeed, it does. Too funny.
Kevin and I went to Flex for a holiday weekend ending drink, and arriving at about 9:30, I had a $2.25 bourbon and Diet Coke, while he enjoyed an Amstel Light.
There were maybe ten people in the bar, and we left after finishing our one drink, right after David had sung the opening karaoke number and someone had stepped up and started massacring Billy Joel’s Piano Man.