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Tuesday, February 17, 2009 12:25 am
A collection of unrelated (or seemingly unrelated) thoughts and events that have occurred to me within the past few days:
~ I woke up early this morning to make the weekly trek down to my client’s midtown office only to find that the door was locked and the lights were off. I sat in the waiting area on their floor for twenty minutes before finally giving up and heading back outside. After leaving the building, I noticed that the city seemed unusually quiet. I picked up a paper to see what was going on and saw a advert for a President’s Day Sale. Ah…
~ Unfortunately that didn’t mean I got a holiday. It just meant that I got the opportunity to get back on the subway, head back uptown, and start my workday an hour late (even though I woke up two hours early.)
~ Only employees get holidays.
~ They get health insurance too, which would be nice. Though, dental is more in the forefront of my imagination right now as I have a killer toothache. I’ve been trying to ignore it, but it’s getting worse and worse. I realized today that I’d have to make an appointment even though I can think of about a million other things I’d rather do with my money/time. I also decided that I need to find a new dentist. My old one is on Park Avenue and charges outlandish prices (it was like $700 to get a cavity filled and my teeth cleaned my last visit) and now that I don’t have insurance, that’s not gonna fly.
~ I bought a bottle of Johnny Walker Red today. That gets mention for a few reasons: 1.) I gave up on my whole not-drinking thing after seeing that it did nothing to improve my running ability or keep me from getting sick. (All of January, I only drank twice, both times just a couple glasses of wine with friends and by the end of the month, I felt like crap.) 2.) I really wanted Johnny Walker Black but held back. Apparently, I can control my spending every once in a while. 3.) This was the first time I’ve ever bought a bottle of Johnny Walker. It seemed like a very adult thing to do. When I drink whiskey, it’s almost always Jameson. I’m still not sure what prompted the switch tonight, but I must say that I’m enjoying it. Maybe it was because we were talking about Braveheart the other day… 4.) Johnny Walker Red is a hell of a lot of fun to say. Not as fun as Johnny Walker Black, but still fun. Seriously. Try it.
~I haven’t run on a Monday since the first week in September. I love having the set day off. It gives me a sense of structure.
~ I was sitting in the laundromat tonight, waiting for my sheets to dry when a little girl walked up to me and held out a Hercules action-figure. I looked up from my book, somewhat confused, and shook my head no. She didn’t say anything but instead put the toy down on the table in front of me and walked off.
~ I miss the long pointless rambles like this I used to write to myself all the time when I lived in Boston. I feel like this blog has made me more conservative in my writing. I used to go off on long post-modern binge-writing sprees but now it’s all race reports and watered down, family-friendly accounts of my days. No wonder nobody reads it.
~ I killed three mice last week. That was a horrible experience, but it had to be done. I wish there was some way of just making them leave without having to kill them. But, since there’s not (and they were keeping me from sleeping, not to mention making a huge mess of things), I kept experimenting with trap techniques until finally figuring it out — put the peanut butter on the normal “pad,” but also put some way back at the back of the trap. They get greedy and go for that.
~ In an effort to avoid all the steroids hype that’s saturating SportsCenter lately, I’ve been channel surfing on my lunch break instead of heading straight to ESPN. Today, I found a documentary about the ice rats that live on Mount Kilimanjaro. It was fascinating.
~ I’ve been reading the same book for a month now. Thomas Pynchon’s V. It’s not capturing my attention at all. He introduces approximately eight bizillion characters and I didn’t want to take the time to diagram them out so I’ve been rather lost. I’m just trying to get to the end of it because I’m stubborn and don’t stop reading books until I finish them, even if I don’t like them. I’m very happy to say that I’m almost at the end.
~ Antonio and I had an amazing “recovery” run on Sunday. We did a loop of Central Park in 42:31, a 7:03 pace. We planned to run significantly slower than that and both tried to slow down a couple times, but it just wasn’t happening. The day was just too nice and there was too much positive energy floating around the park to not run fast.
~Tomorrow will be my first solo run in almost two weeks. I’m looking forward to getting a little quiet time out by the East River to collect my thoughts. I love running with other people, but it’s nice to be able to have that extra concentration that comes with being alone every once in a while.
~ I’m sleepy. Good night.