Retraining the Gluteus Max

Rickie the Running Specialist is working hard to cure me of my running woes. She has me on an eight-exercise-and-stretch routine, and I have been a very good patient so far (meaning I've actually done the exercises every day since the beginning of our relationship). I can tell that the program is going well for two reasons: 1) the exercises that at first promised to kill me are now getting easier and 2) the karma gods placed me next to Rondell White during my session today. He doesn't seem so big on the baseball field, but in person he's quite impressive. We exchanged a pleasant "Hey. How's it going?" and then I stared at him and eavesdropped stealthily for the next twenty minutes. I wanted to dazzle him with some Twins trivia, but I figured that recognizing him was pushing my luck with sports knowledge already.

The Wrong Way Rubber

Today it was my group's turn to give instructions for the class session we are leading next week. Like the professor does every week, we wrote our instructions on the bored and offered further explanation for the upcoming reading. One class member -- who has sort of been rubbing me the wrong way for a while -- followed up my explanation with, "My brain is really full right now with all you've said. Could you send the instructions in an e-mail?"

As I looked around at the rest of the class writing down our instructions LIKE THEY DO EVERY WEEK, I pointed to the bored and said, "No. They are right there."

"Yes. But I'll probably lose them."

WTF? You are getting your PhD and you can't hang on to the instructions that we are asking you to write down right now?

Luckily, Adam, a groupmate jumped in. "Yeah. Well. Don't lose them," he offered.

Very logical to me.

Unfortunately another, kinder groupmate offered to send the same instructions (that everyone else had already finished writing down) through e-mail.

Sometimes I think the problem with the wrong-way-rubber lies with me. That I'm just not kind enough or that I'm too self-centered to realize that she just sees things differently.

But seriously. "I'll probably lose them." Call me cruel and narcissistic, but that's bullshit if ever I heard it.

Herons, Beavers, and Turtles . . .

With only a couple of weeks left in the semester and four large projects to complete, naturally I took Dave up on his offer to spend the weekend at the cabin. There's a state park and visitor center not too far from the lake, so we spent part of our Saturday afternoon with Rod the Park Ranger. He quizzed me on the skull display, offered up bear hunting regulation pamphlets, and directed us to the Circle Trail Hike where we'd be able to see a heron rookery. We impressed Rod with our 2 and a 1/2 hour Circle Trail return rate and assured him that we had spent at least ten minutes observing the herons. Dave wanted to tell Rod that there were a couple of spots on the trail that needed a bit of trimming or restoration, but Rod had turned his attention to a handful of young boys who needed to know how to identify a poisonous snake. I dropped a dollar in the donation box, but the afternoon was certainly worth a lot more.

. . .

Been thinking hard about what to write in the blog so that I can avoid the paper I'm working on for a little while. But, I'm drawing a large blank. Just been reading and writing and reading and writing and then sleeping sometimes. Not very exciting at all.

Irony

Last night Dave and I were both pretty tired. We fell into bed practically asleep already, but my doze was interrupted by sniffling from the other side.

Me: "What's wrong?"

D: "I'm really stuffed up. I think I might snore a lot tonight."

Me: "That's okay. My stomach is grumbling and I think I might fart a lot tonight."

D: Bolting upright and staring at me (it was dark, but I could tell) -- "Those things are not compatible."

Me: Hearty laughter.

D: "At all."

Me: Continued laughter.

D: "Seriously. Not. The. Same."

Me: Faded laughter.

D: "Completely different."

Me: Halted laughter.

I didn't have the heart to tell him this morning that only one of us snored last night. And only one of us had gas. And they happened to be the same person. I won't say who, but I think we can all guess.