Blindsided

I won't forget these vertical blinds. I've stared at them for hours over the control console of a treadmill in my corporate gym over the course of ten months. When I first started running on the treadmill, I would focus on patterns in the blinds, trying to keep my mind off the distance, the pace. I would see faces, as easily as people see Jesus in burnt toast...only for me: giraffes and trolls. Just to the right of these dirty, cracked blinds are floor to ceiling mirrors. Didn't spend too much time looking at myself. But over time, a reluctant sideways glance would reveal that minor miracles were happening to my body, all the result of dedication and movement. All those miles over all this time, and I really wasn't thinking about how fast or how far I went. I was focused on these blinds.

Drunk Mockingbirds

The guava tree next door is overgrown.
Out of control, really.
Fruit has been ripening on the tree and falling for weeks.
Fermenting on the ground, over the stone wall.
Untended.
Except by birds.
They've forgotten how to fly.
Unrecognizable songs, too.

Cheese Mongering

Overheard conversation today: “I’ve got two newbies working the cheese counter today, and we are running low on slices of blue. They’re gonna need some help cutting the cheese over there. Keep your eye out for the cheese guy from Venus.”

Times are hard in my fair city. Security cameras are focused on the cheese counter at my local big box organo-store. Wheels of Idiazabal have gone missing.

Several months ago, some guy started coming into the store, extolling all the virtues of a raw sheep’s milk cheese from the Spanish Pyrenees region. Some of his random (paraphrased) thoughts:

“How pure the rainwater is that falls on the rounded hills, giving this cheese a mountain perfume and inescapable butter quality”

“The smoked aspect of idiazabal harkens back to a tradition started by Basque shepherds, when they would store the cheese in the stone chimneys of their seasonal alpine huts”

“My diet consists only of cheese”

I’m sure it started out innocently enough. A free sample, in line with the store’s policy, was probably all Cheese Man from Venus wanted. Soon thereafter, he was already feeling his addiction and asking to buy entire wheels of idiazabal (taking advantage of another generous store policy: 10% off all wheels). But he would bring back the wheels after a few days, saying that he made a mistake in purchasing so much cheese. So, the cheese counter cut him off. Now inventories are out of whack and numbers can’t be justified.

Film is rolling.

Security is on alert.

Cheese doesn't walk.

Better go vegan and stick to the bulk legume aisle, Cheese Man!

The Difference Between Home Depot and Bev Mo

A couple of weeks back I was buying crown moulding at Home Depot and was horrified to see all the Christmas junk already on display.

I was pretty happy tonight shopping at Bev Mo.

Lost and Found

Tried to get an early start to work this morning, in need of a market stop for lunch. On the way, I saw a wiry blond terrier wandering the sidewalk. She seemed happy when I approached her and wore no collar. She yelped a little when I picked her up gently, but jumped right in the car. I stopped a guy walking his dogs and asked him if he knew the dogs in his neighborhood. "You stopped the right guy," he said as he looked at the terrier in my back seat. But, he had never seen the dog.

I took her to my vet and she scanned her for an implantable chip. No luck. I then took her to my fair city's animal shelter, filled out a few forms swearing that she wasn't mine and that "to my knowledge" she hadn't bitten an animal (human or otherwise) in the last two weeks. How could I know that? Based on my experience, I didn't think she had it in her to bite, so I signed.

All this before eight o'clock.

I checked back with the shelter in the afternoon and that little terrier I vouched for had been reunited with her family.

Feeling My Pace

Well, tonight was the part of my training program I dread: the tempo run. Usually I like to run this type of workout on a treadmill, where I can control and verify my speed instantaneously. But the treadmill I used to start my running journey is busted and I have no fancy GPS based monitoring system (yet!) to tell me how fast I'm going; tonight the pace was up to whatever my body could do.

So I just ran. Ran harder than usual with the goal of a warm-up mile, 5 miles at a 8:35 pace, and finally, a cool-down mile. I figured in order to shave about a half minute off my usual mile pace, I should pay attention to each stride, focus on a bit more spring in my step. It was still hot and dry this evening, so I made frequent fountain stops to stay hydrated. My watch does have a stopwatch feature, and at the end of the run I determined I had run the 5 miles at a 8:36 pace.

For years my body had been trying to tell me things, but I wasn't listening. Now I'm starting to talk back and, at least tonight, we started communicating a bit better. The dialogue continues...

wtf iz ^

I'm still trying to get txt msging. My nieces text me every day, with abbreviations I just can't understand. I'm guessing that they pay for their service by the letter, or they just don't have the time to type out the whole word. Isn't your uncle worth a few extra keystrokes, girls?

In order to interpret these enigmatic blasts (text that!), I did something I'm a little more comfortable with: I googled a website (transl8it) for translation services.

In an effort to keep pace with my tech savvy nieces, I translated various quotes I like into @10tion grabbers and preprogammed them into my phone.

So, this afternoon, when my 13-year old niece sent me a "wotz ^ unc jon?" I smugly shot back with a bit of Henry David Thoreau:

"2 b awake iz 2 b alive - hdt."

In about 20 seconds, surely without the use of transl8it, Emily replied:

"Does that mean that if ur asleep ur dead?"

It was at that point that I dialed her number and actually talked to her.