Reading: E. Nesbit, The Enchanted Castle

Moving: 30' at level 15 "fat burner," averaging 95-100 strides per minute, average heartrate 160 bpm (80%), 50 crunches, a full weight circuit.

Listening: Santana

4 February 2000: Columbus

Today one of our constituents asked via email for us to review his office's web redesign, and at the bottom of the message was a personal note including, among other things, the recent purchase of a house. The original email wasn't addressed to me but my coworker forwarded it to me, who does all my department's web pages, asking for my thoughts.

My thoughts? Someone, anyone, somewhere, anywhere in the country just bought a house for $75,000? I'm flabbergasted, is what I am. In Denver you can't spit in the air for $75K.

Okay, I know he meant my thoughts about the site, but JHC, $75K?

Well, said Coworker, do you want to live in Columbus?

So. I think my heartrate was so high today because I was lazy and tired and yesterday's tomato-cheese panini wasn't exactly packed with chocolatey goodness or dark leafy greens. But I did go. I saw Beth again, that's the third time. We congratulated each other for being there on a Friday, since that means a guilt-free weekend. And going on Monday means you start the week out right. I told her what a good day of skiing I had and how I hoped leg extensions and leg curls had made me more confident of my knees. She herself recently became a snowboarder--no boots! Or at least no funny boots. I told her I was afraid to snowboard and thereby inescapably start sitting in the middle of the slope, preferably just on the other side of a rise invisible to anyone descending. She grinned. She herself finds beginning skiers much more annoying.

Fortunately, no penguins were hurt.

Okay, that one was a reach even for me. Years ago I pointed out to CLH that whenever there's a tragedy somewhere in the globe, a newscaster often says, "Out of the 500 killed, only 3 were Americans," as if the other 497 humans didn't matter at all. She hadn't noticed that herself, but a while later I got a comic strip in the mail from her, of a penguin newscaster sitting in front of the camera, behind a newsdesk, holding papers, with a screen behind him showing an igloo going up in smoke or being ripped apart by polar bears, whatever, implying mayhem (certainly geographic havoc). The penguin is saying, "Luckily, no penguins were hurt."

My point is that I as a skier only see the perfidies of snowboarders and she as a snowboarder now notices those of skiers.

You probably figured that last paragraph out by yourself.

And that's exactly the kind of personal aside I said I wouldn't explain.

So.

For years I have barely run an errand on the weekend. RDC grocery shops and fetches the dry-cleaning (which is mostly his) and I go to the post office and bank on my lunch, or window-shop, or spend an hour at the library. Tomorrow I have to go to the post office and I want to go to the library. That's what I should have done with my forced day off yesterday, but then I didn't have the presents in hand yesterday that I have today.

Did I always say "So" so very much or did I only ever say it quite a bit and then start saying and writing it a lot more after reading Far Afield?

Speaking of Susanna Kaysen, do I want to see "Girl, Interrupted"?

I belong to a book discussion group in which someone just today ranked on Corelli's Mandolin. Fool. Of course, I'd like to rebut her critique but since it's not a children's book about the best I can come up with is ad hominen remarks like "Fool."