9 June 1999: Later

I'm going home--well, I'm going on Saturday, but today I booked. United offered a last minute e-fare of $169 to Logan for this weekend and I snapped it up.

This morning I called CLH to see what was doing. It was 11:20 here, but I called my Boston sister still in bed. I thought she was going to Martha's Vineyard this weekend, which is why I didn't leap on the e-fare when I first saw it, but she's not going to the Vineyard until July.

What I've left out here is that my grandfather is dying.

And I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about my conversation with my sister. (See! evasive tactics in action! Hear! lisa avoid the issue! Disbelieve! that anyone could be so wantonly dismissive!)

CLH and I discussed the logistics of the weekend and the family and then suddenly she announced, "'Big Valley's on tv."
Does she have to rub it in? "I loved 'Big Valley' [a fact she knows well] "but I can never remember all three brothers' names. Heath was the Six Million Dollar Man, but which one was Jared and who was the other one?"
"Jared was the lawyer. Heath was the illegitimate son. Nick was the wild one."
(That's an appropriate name for me to forget.) "Heath was illegitimate? Whose illegitimate son was he?!"
"Mr. Barclay's." [A modern-day Wuthering Heights? except there's no implication that Mr. Earnshaw was Heathcliff's father.]
"Mr. Barclay's always been dead though--Mrs. Barclay kept his son around?"
"Well, it was kind of weird at first but she was always such a great lady and all--"
"What was her name in 'The Thorn Birds'?"
"I have no idea." CLH wasn't interested in pursuing that line of thought, and I was at work, so I signed off right quick.
But what was her name? At least one woman at Dot Org has had to have read it.

I closed my eyes, thrust my finger at my phone list, and scampered off to the woman I knew I was going to go to anyway. Had she read it? Oh yes, she loved it. What was Barbara Stanwick's name? Her husband's company's name was Mic(h?)ar, I remembered, and from that my coworker supplied Carson as a surname. But what was the first name?

So my sister, still in bed and watching tv at 1:00 in the afternoon, here was destroying two additional people's productivity as we wracked our brains. Then I went back to my desk and did what I should have done at first (except it was funner to torture someone else with it too) and searched for a fan's site. I called my victim: "Mary. Of all obvious names to forget." Then we could get back to work.

Except that I couldn't because CLH called me back soon after, BJWL having just called her to say that JCW is going into hospice. I had planned not to go home until a funeral, but he didn't want a service and the consensus is that Granny needs me now more than later and here was an affordable fare and CLH with the time off so I'm going.

I think my bike commute is about 13 miles. In addition tonight I went to regular aerobics. I tried on Monday, but it was beautiful and I wanted to swim but mostly I wimped out because the instructor was killer and seemed to have skipped warm-up and further more couldn't give consistent instruction--he would count to five but not stop or do something different. So I rode home and swam short laps here. Tuesday I didn't go to step because it ends too late for me to drive to the downtown library for my book group. Today I went. I went with the woman I cannot call Diane and will call CPR damn it (sorry, Shelley).

I suggested we walk together, but she wanted to drive because rain threatened. I told her I wouldn't ride in her car with a ten-foot pole--not without seatbelts. But they have a different car now. Okay. Three minutes before she was to pick me up, I called her again, mentioning that btw, we'd moved. I know I referred to that briefly before, but why would she remember? And four months later, why would I? But I did. Then I put on my knee brace and discovered that Blake finds it very very scary, and CPR and RDC arrived at about the same time, and off we went.

It wasn't Richard Simmons from Monday but a woman I've had before for step, much easier to follow because she led well as well as being slower. And I realized why I prefer step: regular aerobics bites. The rec center pool opens Monday and I'll miss that (I hope to swim in real water instead) but I can go on Wednesday. CPR invited me to come to Tae-Bo next week and I think I'll try that--after four days with no aerobic work at all, no problem!

The topic I'm pussy-footing around now with all this tedious aerobic detail is not my grandfather's mortal coil nor my exercise program but something that happened during the exercise jaunt. I don't know how CPR or I happened to bring it up--I like to believe it wasn't me since I don't advertise this at all--but CPR commented on the extensiveness of my site (which she found through her colleague RDC's site of course), and I looked at her warily, and she continued, "and you've got this online journal and all..."

HAO knew, of course, but no one else at DU did (that I knew of). The cat's out.

Anyway, I'm going home, so I will see you all later.