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.