February 10, 2005

I don’t know what my problem is today. I just don’t feel my usually cheery self. I’m trying desperately to get into a good mood, but it’s just not happening. The best I can muster is an “eh”.

I should be happy – Earl is coming home from his business trip tonight, I’m working only half a day tomorrow and then we’re spending the night at the local casino.

This morning at work started a little rough, what with a crazy man walking up the street, purposely blocking my path and taking a swing at me. That was nice. I could hear him babbling as he was walking towards me. I moved left, he moved over into my way as he continued to approached. I moved right, he again moved in front of me, moving closer. I moved left again and he was close enough to yell that he was going to kill me and took a swing. I simply ducked out of the way of his poorly executed haymaker swing and kept walking towards the office. He continued on his way. I love the fact that when they closed the local mental institutions down, they just pushed everybody out on the street. They didn’t try to place them anywhere or give them a headstart. The shooed them away like a stray dog or something. It’s pretty sad when you think about it. Perhaps I’m thinking about it too much and that’s why I’m feeling kind of blah today.

Before the crazy man, I watched a woman who was driving up the main street not move out of the way of the ambulance that was trying to get through. She just kept puttering along, blocking the ambulance’s path. Flashing lights, loud sirens, it didn’t matter. She was the most important thing on the road, fogged up windows, cigarette in left hand, coffee in right, attitude in check. After the ambulance made a turn (still behind her), she proceeded to run two red lights before making a left turn into her assumed place of employment at the State Office building. I wrote down her license plate number. I’m keeping my eye out for her. There’s another driver that I keep my eye out for. She drives a Big Bird Yellow Nissan Xterra. Her license plate says “JANICE”. She has big hair and a lousy attitude. She uses the center turn lane as her private passing lane, ignores traffic lights and frequently double parks in front of the local sub shop during lunch hour. I know I sound snotty, but I hate people like that. I think that’s one of my pet peeves. People that go through life that have absolutely no idea of their surroundings. If people would just keep in mind everything that’s happening outside of their personal space and show a little human decency and respect to others, the world would be a much happier place.

One of my gripes about riding my exercise bike is that I have nothing to do. I look at cinder blocks, cinder blocks and more cinder blocks in the basement, as I sweat away the few calories that manage to fall off my body.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was installing Solaris on an old computer in the basement. I originally intended it to be a file server, to store backups of our files off the notebooks, plus anything we chose to save off of TiVo and maybe some Garage Band stuff.

Well Solaris 10 offers a pretty nifty web browser as well.

While not quite as polished as my PowerBook, I am zipping around the internet while working out at the same time. It gives me something better to do instead of counting cinder blocks. I can even program this puppy to make inspirational bionic noises, instead of making the ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch sound with my mouth as I work off the extra poundage I’m carrying on this body of mine. Hey, whatever it takes to inspire oneself, that’s what I say. You should hear me when I’m on a long distance bike ride, doing the Xena battle cry on the hills. I did that when I was riding with the Ride For Missing Children a couple of years ago. Small wonder I ride alone.

Earl is out of town (again), but this time it’s by car instead of plane. Last night I surprised him and met him the airport, even though he had driven himself there and even though its about an hour from the house. We grabbed a bite to eat at the diner after surprising him outside the security gate. It’s not as fun since the whole airport security thing. You used to be able to sit there at the end of the jetway, tear in your eye, song in your heart, smile on your face. But now your loved one has to make the journey through the gate, up the long hallway and through the security exit before they get their little family reunion. Damn those terrorists for fscking it all up.

I’m finding that I type slower when I ride slower, and I type faster as I increase my cadence. I wonder if I can walk and chew gum at the same time. I don’t know that I’ve ever tried, not being much of a gum chewer.

I’ve been on the bike for five minutes, and on my blog for four. Time to take a look around the internet and not try to spend money on ebay.

Not until I’m down to my goal weight at least.