Monday, August 6, 2012

started good, then turned slacker

The good start was getting to the pool shortly after it opened. Nobody in it again. Wonderful! The lifeguards told me the synchro girls would be coming in so please swim in the far lanes. Which is fine, since that's where I can see the clock.

Today I wanted to warm up, then push some 50 intervals to see where I was. The answer is not where I'd like to be, that's for sure. My rule was to swim on 1 minute, and keep going till I was slower than 50 seconds. Well, that turned out to be 4. Three was a hot wet mess, I could feel my stroke coming apart, and my body getting all pissy with the water. I made it, just barely, then got it together for 4. By the end of that something was going twinge in my shoulder and I decided not to push it. Did some backstroke to cool down. Then some water core. In the water about an hour.

By then the synchro swimmers had started. There's one drill where three of them hold a rope out of the water and eggbeater kick their way down the pool surprisingly fast. I've never mastered eggbeater at all, probably for the same reason I can't do breast stroke effectively. As I was leaving the pool they had a formation where a group of them form a base and they throw one of the people up and out of the water high enough for several flips. If only the music they were practicing to wasn't so terrible!

The rest of the day was slacker city. Yes, I did some stretching, long slow stretches, breathing into that muscle. My back is feeling pretty good, almost back to normal, but my neck and shoulders are still grumpy. Napped after.

Lets see. Linda had some rack of lamb marinading in a mango chutney so I did that on the BBQ. Wonderful! And I'm sure it will be even better tomorrow for lunch. Sooner or later my office roomies are going to clue in and I'll need an armed guard.

I did some paperwork for a research project I'm involved in. I was planning to pull together all my business tax paperwork, but I didn't. I know I'm not going to do it tonight. I just want to sit and read. The current book is The Alienist, and I'm mostly enjoying it. I'd seen the trailer for Cloud Atlas, and got the book out of the library. Except it's a different book called The Cloud Atlas.

Along the way I read about Curiosity touching down on Mars, and was thoroughly boggled at the whole darned thing. Why is it we can do something so jaw droppingly amazing, and yet can't live in peace with our fellow beings? As a point of comparison, can anyone explain this Chick-Fil-A thing to me? I've read about it a bit, but there's something fundamental I'm not getting. Yes, the owner's views are antediluvian at best, but it's the reaction to them I don't understand. The USA has become a very, very strange place during my adult lifetime.

Cat faces fascinate me. Well, cats in general do. Most people think of cats as being emotionally cold and aloof creatures, but that isn't true at all. Those people just haven't taken the time to pay attention to a cat. They have enormously expressive little faces, especially considering they are covered in fur. Partly it's the eyes and ears, but their whiskers and mouthes tell a story too. Normally it's pretty easy to tell what a cat wants. Here's Curtis sound asleep. Normally he hears me pick up the phone and moves, but not today. I think the heat has made him all sleepy. Me too.






7 comments:

  1. i <3 curtis...so cute. i would ask what the music was they were playing at the pool, but since you thought ace of base was a new band a few years ago i know it is pointless. giggle. teasing!!! kind of.... :)

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  2. It was a rackety screechy percussion thing. There were a few times I thought I recognized parts of what might be called the melody, but then it turned left and went crazy. It was particularly unpleasant listening underwater. I felt sorry for those girls that would have to listen to it probably hundreds of times, maybe more.

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  3. Aww..furry face. I miss having a cat companion.

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  4. 1) Curiosity makes me incredibly, furiously, happy. I only wish they'd drive it over to find out what's wrong with Spirit. 2) Chik-fil-A was a flashpoint, and people seemed to be arguing different things. On the supporter's side, people said the owner could say whatever he wanted, it was a free country, and they were supporting free speech. On the non-supporter side, people finally realized that the company donates millions to known hate groups who want to take away the rights of a segment of the population because it doesn't fit into their definition of marriage, basically criminalizing homosexuality. Like most things that turn political, people were using the same words, and arguing around eachother, instead of having a meaninful discourse, not realizing that a lot of people actually agreed in pricipal, but focused on different parts of the arguments. 3) Cat faces are awesome. 4) I'm still attempting to swim. I don't last much more than 30 minutes, and have to rest at each end. I can't seem to figure out how to breathe. :)

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  5. So did we once Amelia passed on. It took a while to sort things out, and it was the longest this house has been without a cat, major renovations excepted.

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  6. I mourned when they decided Spirt was never going to call home. Until we get there we'll never know if it was simply a power issue, or something froze and broke. What amazing little machines. Thanks for the info about the Chik-fil-a issue. Whatever happened to "mind your own business", "go along to get along"?

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  7. I know, right? People, it's just MSG laced chicken!


    So, with Curiosity being all awesome, I had to dig up my favorite comic about Spirit: http://xkcd.com/695/


    ... and I'm pretty sure Opportunity is still going, 9 years later. I can't stop looking at pictures of Mars. It's another planet!

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