Two 3.6-mile city rides. Jogged and walked just about (according to what I can calculate with Google maps) three miles.
Encouragingly, when I went outside I only thought it was on the warm side of nice and thought it was my flailings as a non-runner that drained me. But it's 86, I discovered when I returned. (It's 27 September and 86 degrees out!) This encourages me (as a "runner," if not as a terrestial) because I had assumed myself incapable of exertion in temperatures over say, 80 or 82. That's been the sticking point in this whole triathlon scheme, in fact: I'm supposed to run on purpose--without a good reason like being chased by a leopard--in mid-July? But this makes me hope that maybe I can acclimate. Heaven knows I felt a lot more oppressed at sea level last Sunday at a humid 73.
Another nail in the homesickness coffin.
Tuesday night I was awake until five whole minutes after 10.
At noon I jogged, and I ate my lunch at my desk around 2. At 5:30 (5:37, because I did not run fast enough for the bus), I met Trish downtown. I had had to stop for caffeine before I caught a bus, and when I came out of the Starbucks I walked downtown-ward instead of backward to the nearest stop, four blocks away instead of a half a one. But seven minutes might be less late than I have previously been with Trish. So we walked, passing at least two other Starbucks, from one of which I obtained another tea and a maple-oat nut scone, my old favorite, to the Tattered Cover. Once we found the end of the line for the line [sic], there we stood and gossiped, and my weaning myself from the board showed here because I did not bring up TUS first. Well, I did earlier when she showed me her bright red bag with blue dancing elephants on it! and I asked if it was from the place TUS had mentioned (no). Our arrival in the line garnered us spots in the 220s for the Signature of Neil Gaiman, for it was he we had come to see.
The hall holds about 250 people before fire regulations are severely strained, so we sat at the back. Immediately in front of me was a woman with a ~1.5-year-old child, whom she would stand on her lap, from which it could yelp gleefully or screech frustratedly, and whom neither she nor her three companions removed from the room for the length of the 40' reading. My consolation was to roll my eyes at Trish, and this was actually quite consoling. We talked smack about real live people in the room instead of about our invisible internet companions. I'm not sure if that's progress.
Gaiman read from Anansi Boys, which I keep thinking is Anasazi Boys, and it sounded a little Douglas Adams-y. Which is good, because when I heard Douglas Adams read (from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency or Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, I forget which--aha, the first lines of each, as Amazon provides them, suggests the latter), he was funny (as you'd expect); which is bad, as well, because sounds derivative. Or not: maybe I'm conflating two authors with a rabid and strange cult following whom I heard speak Britishly and in an over-crowded room, and because Gaiman wrote an introduction to an omnibus volume of Hitchhiker's, and because he spoke of going to Iceland and how mean the Norse gods are while the scene Adams read was of the woman inconvenienced at Heathrow by a Norse god-human trying to fly without identification. Self-conscious, deliberate humor, that is.
Tangent: when was that Adams reading, anyway? Was I going out with KFC, because I remember my favorite of his acquaintances, whose name I forget but not his morbid obesity, being one to ask a question? ("Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?" A pause, then, "Don't.") It's unlikely mostly because I dated him for what, a month or six weeks during freshling year. It must have been sophomore year, when I still saw some of those Buckley 5N men since NCS lived there too. Besides Adams's response to Whatsisname, I remember his explaining about towels (he kept losing his while on holiday with friends in Greece); and understanding his frustration (or feeling superior, whatever) when a stupid question showed how closely the asker hadn't read the book; and how pleased I was to learn that my favorite line from the book (approximately, "You don't get the same quality of passersby anymore, do you?") was also his; and later, a campus landmark of a geek pointing to his feet and asking if those socks were in the superintelligent shade of the color blue). Oh, and that's right: a UConn engineering professor always set as a project how to design the Nutri-Matic. Which further reminds me of another question--when asked how to make a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster, Adams said that terrestial conditions were impossible but the best approximation was to pour one liquor store into another.
Yeah. So in 17 years will I remember Neil Gaiman as well as I now remember Adams? Probably not. I liked and had read all easily accessible Adams at the time while as of now I have read only the first volume of Sandman and Coraline. Besides the rude parent of the screaming baby and the amusing and probably not as Adams-y as I think bit that he read from Anansi Boys, he said two things I remember as actually funny (which is a small fraction of the things that drew laughter from the slavering crowd): caricaturing a Hollywood executive and imitating Terry Pratchett using their pre-arranged, escape-from this-hellishly-insane-meeting word (which had to do with planes, so Pratchett gestured plane-fully); and saying that, upon his early July, early morning arrival in Reykjavik after leaving Minneapolis in the the evening and not having slept, he decided just to stay up until it got dark. I liked that bit because it was self-deprecating, and also it was interesting since during this sleepless sojourn, the seed of American Gods came to him.
Trish mercifully decided not to wait for the 227 people ahead of her to get her book signed. I was desperate for a pee and for something large and recently dead to eat. This we found at Appaloosa Grill. We started with crab-risotto cakes (me) and chicken satay (her) and both ordered the sirloin sandwich: marinated in lime and chili and with a garlicky mayonnaise. Jared joined us and had crawfish etouffee. At 9:45, after my appetizer, I still was ravenously hungry and wide-eyed awake. Then I ate my sandwich, trying unsuccessfully not to wolf it, and in a pause in conversation looked longingly at the bench seat of the booth and asked the time. 10:05.
I'm the funnest person I know, obviously.