This picture is from Friday evening

Reading: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night

Moving: NT 30': 3.30 miles, plus crunches and leg lifts

Watching: "That '70s Show"

Listening: Toni Morrison, Paradise (tape 9 of 10)

20 March 2001: Nothing I want to talk about

Today, I knew a sports term. Tex was telling me about his five-year-old starting soccer, playing three-on-three such that wherever the ball is, a twelve-legged, six-headed insect swarms over it, and told me how good Texito is at--what's the word, he asked, when you keep the ball right with your feet as you run? "Dribbling," I responded, without thinking. Then I figured I was wrong, so we asked Io--now, see, despite his name following the pattern of my most of my other coworkers' names it's a female name and he's not an ancient Greek cow--and he said "dribbling."

I knew a sports term. Whoooo-ee.

Perhaps that was because I am turning over a new leaf. Yesterday TDT and I used her Total Gym at lunch. She lives a short walk away, four blocks, but long blocks. We can each use it about 15 minutes, and while one's on it the other does lunges or crunches or what have you. Allegedly what we did affected all the muscles in our backs and arms, but either they didn't or my back can still hold its own because today, as expected, my triceps are shredded. Well, my back's not great; my deltoids are protesting too and shrugging my jacket on and off hurts. And I should have walked in; I feel the lunges--not many, and not walking ones--in my glutes and if I'd walked those kinks might have got worked out.

I went to the 'brary at lunch and I think I should savor these visits: TDT wants us to exercise four lunchhours a week. That, OMFB, is not going to happen. I got the collected stories of Carson McCullers, Ironweed, and Dead Man Walking on audio. I saw Horse Heaven, but I figure I'm almost certain to read Jane Smiley but probably wouldn't read Sister Helen Prejean otherwise. Perhaps she would spare me the fourth day if I walking-lunged all the way to the library.

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Sal Paradise is never satisfied in Denver. He always wants to go go go, to be on either one coast or the other. He gets the Denver Doldrums. I'm so proud. (That's On the Road, not Toni Morrison's Paradise.)

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Wednesday I woke up with a sore throat; Thursday I felt much worse and left at noon intending to sleep but watching television and not-reading instead; Friday I soldiered into work in a suit and contacts because I had my semi-annual performance evaluation, a lunch date with Haitch and TDT, and plans to listen to her conference panel after work and go to dinner. All of that I managed, although the evaluation ran over and rushed the lunch. Saturday was another story. I slouched from one horizontal surface to another--bed, under the dining table, couch--moping, feeling ill, and reading Kerouac. Sunday I was slightly better, though I still didn't walk with Haitch. Yesterday and today I'm sniffly, but getting better.

I knew I had to do the Total Gym thing, and I did, and today despite being excessively sore I Nordic Tracked, for longer and harder than I have for weeks. I'm so proud.

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RDC made haddock for supper and asked me how I liked it.
"Very much, except I feel kind of like a cannibal."
He didn't understand why, so I explained about Tintin's friend Captain Haddock. Then he wanted to know why Tintin is so popular when the books--graphic novels, pardon me--are fifty years old, and I said it's because Snowy is the coolest non-Lab dog ever--he rode in a kerchief around Tintin's neck, went to the moon, put out dynamite fuses.
"How?"
Well, he lifted his leg.
"Dynamite fuses are waterproof," RDC had to point out. Such a literalist.
"They're not Snowy-pee-proof," I offered incontravertible proof.

RDC misses out on so much. Tomorrow I'll tell him how the Thompson Twins got their name.