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The Monday Morning Epistle |
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21 Jan 2008 |
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The male ego may be a fragile thing of wonder, but it can also be mind-bogglingly stupid. It took me years to realize that as a middle-aged, slightly-squishy civilian, I was never going to be able to physically compete with the hard-bodied, twenty-something soldiers I usually share the gym with. Nonetheless, this didn't stop me from noticing the cute young thing on the next treadmill during my Monday workout. Being full of energy following a weekend of sloth, I enthusiastically set the treadmill to a 9:15/mile rate—about 15 seconds per mile faster than usual—and proceeded to try and impress everyone within range. By the two mile mark, I decided that everyone could be impressed at 9:30/mile, and by the three mile mark I had reached the conclusion that everyone would be satisfied with a 9:45 mile; meanwhile, the attractive lass on the next treadmill was still lost in her music and pounding out distance with barely a hint of exertion. By coincidence, we both started our cool down within seconds of each other, and my male pride was thankful that I had at least reached my goal of four miles without collapsing or leaving a trail of body parts behind. When my neighbor pulled her hand towel off the digital readout on the treadmill, I couldn't help but sneak a peak at her ‘stats’, whereupon I discovered that she had been running for exactly 60 minutes at 8:00/mile…and had covered just over 7½ miles! (I picked up the shattered pieces of my fragile male ego and slunk off to the locker room in middle-aged, slightly-squishy disgrace.) Warning: gross bits ahead… It may have taken us nearly a year, but we finally figured out a way to stop the dog from indulging herself in one of the most disgusting habits we've ever seen: using the litter box as a snack bar. We first tried a covered cat box, but Liesl isn't much bigger than Heather or Zoë, so she still managed to worm her way inside; we then tried heavily scented cat litter, but all that did is make the debris on the carpet more obvious. So this weekend I bought some lumber and built a small platform—kind of a rough hewn end table—that puts the cat box about 2 feet up off the floor. The jump is nothing for a cat that can make it to the top of the refrigerator in one leap, but late last night I spied Liesl standing forlornly in front of the (now hopelessly out of reach) litter box as one of the girls enthusiastically went about her business inside. Hopefully, this should signal the end of ‘drive through dining’ for the dog. End of gross bits. It seems that letter jackets are experiencing a comeback in local high schools, and after the winter holidays Alex started pleading with us for a Palmer letter jacket of his own. He was visibly disappointed when Mary pointed out that students normally earned a letter jacket through academic or athletic achievement, and that Alex had accomplished neither. His envy wasn't helped by the fact that years ago, I inherited my grandfather's University of Delaware letter jacket, which I've worn off and on ever since. It has the rather cryptic slogan The Friendly Provost: A Renaissance Jock emblazoned on the back, and has held up remarkably well considering it's at least 30 years old by now. (I actually earned a letter jacket of my own at Shawnee High School—with an NCAA-awarded letter and captain's pin for Chess of all things—but it was ruined years ago in a trans-Atlantic move.) Now that I'm wearing the elegant Porsche jacket that Santa brought me for Christmas, Alex casually asked one morning if he could wear ‘Grandpa’s jacket'…and has worn it to school almost every day since then. It's nice to see letter jackets becoming fashionable again, but I'm betting that Alex is the only kid in his school wearing his great-grandfather's! KidBit:While we were out and about running errands, Mary gave Jacob permission to make popcorn in an old-fashioned popcorn popper I gave her for Christmas. Obviously he had never used or seen one of these—and consequently had no idea of how many popcorn kernels to put in it—because when I returned home, he was hastily scooping handfuls of hot popcorn into a second large mixing bowl, as the dog busily snacked on the popcorn overflowing onto the floor. 
PotW: A Christmas card runner-up: the Gleeful Threeful feeding tropical birds at Busch Gardens, Tampa. Their enthusiasm for the brightly colored birds was only slightly diminished when one of them splattered Alex's shirt with…ummmm…stuff.
2008.01.21-21:35 |