Category: obviously

The terrorists stole my plot line!

Was sitting at my desk at work, drumming my fingers on the faux wood surface wondering, “What on earth can I post about in my blog today”…and not finding many answers.

That’s when nature (and two cups of hot tea) called and I was forced to rise from my desk and use the facilities. I walked along thinking, “I need a topic, I need a topic, I need a topic”.

I went over to the other half of the building since the loo near me was being serviced by the faboo janitorial team.

When I went into the “other side” I noticed that the door to what I thought was a janitorial closet (and is always tightly closed) was slightly open. It’s NEVER open. Being the nosy Nellie that I am, I peeked in there.

Little did I know that there’s a shower and a small set of lockers in this building! I looked over the lockers and noticed that all you gotta do is slap a lock on the locker of your choice.

Nice.

So *immediately* my fiction writer brain thought “god…what a great place to stash something…”

Remember when airports and bus stations used to have lockers where, for the fee of one quarter, you could stash your suitcase or whatever for a bit while you did something else?

Whatever happened to those? They made for GREAT plot points in MANY a mystery story.

How the bad guy would stash the murder weapon there and thought he got away with it but no, he couldn’t resist going BACK to the locker and by now the police were tailing him and he gets flat *busted* there in the Greyhound station, red handed, red faced, red wristed when the cuffs get slapped on.

It was fun. It was convenient! It was a great hiding place.

Why don’t we have them anymore? 9-freaking-eleven, that’s why.

Ok, so no more in bus station and airports, but now THIS find. I bet they don’t check these lockers here at work all that often. I could put damning evidence like receipts from surreptitious wire transfers and plots to take over the world with my fleet of robot drones!

Ah hahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Oh, @#$%…..I guess I can’t do it now. I just published my idea on the interwebs.

*sigh*

Back to work.

Feel the burn

You don’t have to know me very well to know that I’m less of the track shoes and elevated heart rate kind of girl and more of the cake following by a generous portion of cake kind of girl.

Exercise and I are acquaintances, but not really friends.

Oh sure, I exercise occasionally. I walk to the train station to commute to work. I walk to the nearby grocery store sometimes. But as a structured activity, no.

A few years back when I was working hard to lose weight, a fit and fanatical friend of mine got me to participate in a 5k. She ran and liked doing 5k’s as a way to keep on track.

Let me be frank, my friend is one of those spin class in the morning, yoga at lunch and windsurfing for dinner kind of people.

So when she suggested I 5k with her, I resisted…hard.

But all 90 lbs of her is charming and a good negotiator, so she won me over.

I signed up to 5k. Needless to say, she ran, I walked.

That first 5k I did, I came in just under an hour on time, but dammit, I finished!

Since then, I’ve sort of gotten into doing the occasional 5k. Ever since The Good Man started hanging out with me, he’ll come along too.

TGM is 6’2″ with a MUCH longer stride than mine. So 5k’ing with him is all about me almost jogging to keep up. But he paces me, and that’s good…I think.

Yesterday we did a really fun 5k, the highlight was that part of the race route took you onto the field at AT&T Park, around the warning track and across home plate.

“That’s the same home plate Barry crossed,” exclaimed one of the breathless vendors at the race.

That was definitely the fun part. The hard part was that the race started at 9:00 and you HAD to be across home plate by 10:00.

Now, think back. My first 5k was just under an hour. I haven’t done a 5k in some time. So I was pretty worried I’d miss out on this fun chance to be on the field.

So I went all out on the walk. I was pumping my little arms and legs and huffing and puffing.

And I made it. I stomped on homeplate with some glee.

Sadly, I still came in the lower-middle of the pack with a paltry time of 47 mins…but I did get to scoot across home plate right behind the good man and we saw Giants pitcher Jack Taschner walking on the warning track. He’d gotten “caught in the herd” as he said and couldn’t have been nicer when I said hello. He went on to have a crappy middle-reliever outing in the game that followed, but oh well.

It was a fun day and it was PACKED. People really came out for this even and everyone was fired UP to make it across the plate.

A few lessons I’ve learned:

*There are those who believe they’ll make better time by intermittently jogging along the 5k trail. I find they will usually pass me, then they run out of gas and I pass them, then they see me pass and rev it up, then ten minutes later I pass them again and usually we finish about the same time.

So generally speaking, a nice even pace is probably a better bet.

*The body is less forgiving of random acts of exercise as it ages. I find this not amusing in the least.

*Ballpark nachos taste a heckova lot better when you know you already exercised that day. Hell, they taste good even when I don’t workout first. Ok, to be clear: ballpark nachos are nice. Maybe I already knew that lesson.

And finally:

*Man do I sleep good when I’ve worn myself out.

(yes…THAT homeplate)

Watch where you’re pointin’ that thing, Mister!

Was out running errands at lunch and whippin’ my way back to the office after a successful jaunt.

Was on Highway 280, crusin’, and singing along to, I believe, Nelly, when I came around a blind curve to see a CHP pointing a gun at me.

Disconcerting to say the least.

I took leave of my senses. When I regained them, I realized it was a radar gun. Or actually lidar (uses laser instead of radio waves).

The good news is, that as I was cruisin’ and holding an in-car concert, I was following a mini-van. Meaning when I got clocked I was doing 65 mph, the legal speed limit.

Karen lives to see another day, ticket free.

But it took me a good ten minutes for my heart rate to settle back in.

Image via.

Strategy.

Yes, planning session. Must have.

Approach. Direction. Map out the route. Implement. Execute.

Yup. Vital.

Necessary.

What’s that? Work? No, no, I’m not talking about work.

Food. At the baseball game. Tonight. Yup. The Good Man and I are currently engaged in a lengthy instant message conversation planning this out.

What needs to be consumed. Where it’s located. How to obtain efficiently.

Nice.

BTW, I learned this blitz strategy from my Mom. Attending the NM State Fair.

“Ok, we start out in the Spanish Village for a burrito…then across the way to the Native American Village for fry bread and honey…Mom needs a corndog…Karen wants funnel cake…”

You know the drill.

Hey, I learned from the best.

Dreaming of a Cha-Cha bowl now (bless you Orlando Cepeda!)…

Photo source.