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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

this one's for my padre back home

Today is October 15 which signifies absolutely nothing. On second thought:
Today will be the best day of someone’s life and for someone it will be the worst. Where's the entertainment in this? There's none. Welcome to October 15.

The office in which I work is being renovated. At any given moment of the day there is a crew of 10 plus diligently pounding, pulling, and scurrying up and down the halls. The foreigners, most legal citizens, are a hard working bunch and smiley to boot. The upside to the ear piercing hammering and headache inducing paint smell is I am learning Spanish.

Today at 103 pounds, quickly losing the muscle I worked hard to gain, and sans any real training to speak of for weeks I crave exercise and all the wonderful benefits that are connected to pumping blood and breathing oxygen. With the weather tempting me to play outside I have an itch to run the mountain, the mountain being my workout of choice, alas my exercise of preference has been put on temporary hiatus after my experience on the trail Friday. As I set to defeat the mountain I was intercepted by a perfect stranger within 2 minutes of my run [sidenote: remember the television hit Perfect Strangers starring Balki Bartokomous - I miss it]. The man informs me that his eyes were drawn to not one but several cottonmouth snakes during his mountain climb. Readers I am petrified of God's worst creature made of the reptile famile. I didn't wait for the guy to get into his car before I jumped in mine. If I were training for an Olympic sport this guy would be called a medal blocker. My opponents' dirty rotten scoundral, if you will. For now I will refer to him as Slugwart. In the meantime I am sad that I have been swayed from a once highly enjoyable and rewarding workout.













It's better to be safe than sorry so just in case I find myself at the mountain anytime soon I want to know what those disgusting creatures of death look like. After a few clickity clicks of the keyboard the google search generated a FAQ about the venomous beasts that included the following words: Aggressive, Alligator mouth, Deadly, PMS (dare me to prove you wrong) and "will find you and attack." No way Jose. Speaking of Jose, one of the renovators is barely pushing cinco feet tall. The tall one is wearing an Extreme Makeover Home Edition t-shirt and this impresses me quite a bit. I have learned by eavesdropping (I'm curious) that one goes by the name Pablo. Duh. You should have heard the ringtone his cell just blasted. My guess is it was Mexico's National Anthem.

In other news, I’ve acquired a Kenyan penpal, Kanai, and to be quite honest the steps taken to manufacture this friendship have escaped my mind. Breaking the urge to be subtle aside I came right out and questioned my African friend to what did I owe such honor. Apparently Kanai and I met several years ago through a friend of mine he went to grad school with in the states. Kanai writes me on a regular basis. He is fascinated with American politics and all the other glorious, highly publicized matters born and raised here in the U.S. of A. Here is an excerpt from Kanai’s email today:

“So how has your week been so far? How is the economy doing? They've had the bank crisis on CNN and in the newspapers international section. America is a resilient society so things will get better after everything hits bottom."

I like how Kanai asks me how the economy is doing as if inquiring about the weather. “Oh, it's half past shitty."

By the way, have you noticed that some people are victims of their own stereotypes? Why not skip the taco bell and grab a six inch sub? Don't become a casualty to cliche' Pablo. Run!

In closing I compare my day to a Benetton commercial, minus the cool stripes in a variety of colors. I plan to make a trip to the gym where the stair machine (readers not to be confused with stair stepper) will inevitably kick my ass followed by draining my bod of every last drop of agua via the steam room. For the record, I didn't learn the word agua today - I knew that one.

I miss crabapple.

~ Jl

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