A Little Squirrely

I just remembered that at the beginning of my run yesterday, I was heading down the sidewalk when I saw a squirrel noshing on some grub at the edge of the sidewalk. As with most squirrels that have been semi-domesticated by living in housing developments, this little fella didn't seem to care that I was barreling down the sidewalk at him, but I figured that he would bolt long before it got awkward or uncomfortable. Animals generally get the hell out of the way at a pretty consistent distance. For instance, a deer will leap into the woods anywhere between one hundred yards and twenty yards. The smaller the mammal, the closer you can get, while blackbird or a robin will fly away at around ten to fifteen yards; a dumb-ass turtle dove, however, will let you get within twenty feet, and an asshole pigeon stays just long enough until you think it's not going to fly away. Squirrels are usually somewhere between a bird and a pigeon...usually. As I approached the squirrel, it didn't seem to pay much mind, and as I got even closer, I started to worry that it was going to do that frantic, unpredictable squirrel-spasm dance where it darts in front of the car changing direction sporadically until it ends up passing underneath your car unscathed or sometimes not. It's a little scarier when you're not surrounded by tons of steel, especially when you get so close to the squirrel that you can see its cataracts, and at the last second it looks up with smokey gray, glazed-over eyes and resorts to the aforementioned, panic dance. Am I afraid of a squirrel? On the record, no! Off the record, I started juking and high stepping into the grass for what would have been a spectacular five-yard touchdown run but was actually an embarrassing, shameful tantrum that required me to quickly regain my composure and run the remaining 3.9 miles like a normal human being that wasn't scared by a cute little rodent with a fluffy tail...and demonic eyes.

The Last Leg?

I know it has been a while since my last post, and I accept full responsibility for shirking my duties as a blogmaster. I haven't really been up to much, but I have been doing a lot of grading, and I feel this post getting more boring as I sit here typing it. Is this the end of my blog? Have I run out of things to say? Maybe. You don't really know something like that for sure until it actually happens. In the past week, I have made raisin bread and focaccia with my bare hands, I made chili on a grill, and I ran four miles in 28:28; however, I don't have an orginal, quirky way of describing any of it. I think school is frying my brain and tapping my creativity, but I promise you (all three of you) that I will give it the old college try--whatever that means.

Squid Pro Quo

A headline today read, "US scientists net giant squid in Gulf of Mexico." Well, anyone who knows anything about the fabled architeuthis knows that there are some really giant squid out there, the largest having yet to be seen. When a headline hits the papers like the aforementioned, you click and await to be amazed, impressed, and maybe a little emotional. Sure, I have never done anything to advance the studies of giant cephalopods or their discovery, but I have watched people on TV work very hard, and according to the narrator, they have been working for years. As a result, I too have been waiting for this discovery for years, albeit years condensed into an hour on cable. So when I get to the article and the squid is only nineteen feet long, I scoff. Come back when you catch something that can take down a large sailing vessel or at least leave giant scars in the leathery hide of a sperm whale. Ask yourself this: Can each suction cup rip the face off of a dolphin? If not, I don't want to see a headline; chum the local taverns with your fishtales. We (the researchers and I[through cable])have found some really large specimens in the past few years, and nineteen feet is bait fish. I hate being an elitist, but this is my life for an hour(including commercials) every few years. Come back when you have something to offer.

Grin and Barefoot

I'm not saying I have completely bought into the whole barefoot running craze, but that is only because I am only half way through Born to Run. Have I jumped on this bandwagon? No. Absolutely not. But I am running next to it barefoot. Or at least in sandals, and I am thinking of jumping on. I will never be a Caballo Blanco, white horse, and I will probably never run more than six miles, but I do have a heavy, heal pounding stride that will probably smash my knees and ankles. If this works, it just means I will run more naturally and efficiently. It seems primal though, running barefoot, and since I can't live in a jungle, this is as close as I get to primal. I will never be Caballo Blanco, and I may look silly running down the road in my sandals, but it does feel pretty good, and I think I will stick with it. And maybe one day the locals will refer to me as the white monkey, El Mono Blanco.

Sometimes when you arrive at your destination in the middle of a great song, you don't want to get out of your car. Especially when that song is November Rain. It was right before Slash's third guitar solo when the song takes that dark turn and then they start repeating, "Don't you think that you need somebody..." so I told myself that I would go into work, and the end of the day, it would be my treat/surprise when I finished work for the day. I forgot about it during the course of the day, and when I turned my car on to Axl and Slash, I was surprised and happy with myself because, much like Axl and Slash, I rock!

Born and Bread

Lib says that when you make bread from scratch it comes to life; I'm inclined to believe her. You don't really experience the bread when you make it in a mixer. Not that I have ever made bread in a mixer, but I have tried twice by hand. The first time, it died, but this time it was perfect. After I mixed everything together by hand, I kneaded it on the counter, and it became elastic and firm, and oddly enough, the dough rolled up felt like a little baby butt. It grew in the bowl covered by a towel that bulged like a belly, and after being worked into another little roll, I placed it in a bread pan and put in the oven...just like a baby.

Coupleganger

After the movie 9, Lib and I were leaving the theater when she pointed out that our doppelganger couple was right behind us, so when we had to turn around because we were going out the wrong theater exit, I got a good view of the bald guy and his girlfriend with red-brown hair as she was heading out of the wrong exit and also had to turn around, and when we got the the car, Lib said we should have talked to them but mused that maybe they too had to get home to their crockpot while I wondered to myself if the guy had to take a big shit.

Truly an Honor

I gave my American Lit. Honors class the Meyers-Briggs personality test, and they had to research their character profiles last night and write a response. One student who found out that he was an ESTJ came in and blurted to another, "I found out one of the famous people who had the same personality as me!" which prompted the other student to ask, "who?" and when the ESTJ said, with much enthusiasm, "Andrew Jackson!" the other kid, disappointed and jealous, muttered, "Lucky."

The Root of Evil

Normally, I don't use my blog as a forum for talking about a movie--unless that movie is as strange as Little Otik, the story of a barren couple who has their hearts set on having a baby. The husband, in a twisted gesture after digging an eerily human stump out of the ground at their weekend cottage, fashions a creepy baby for his wife, who should have been appalled and insulted by it, but immediately reacts by treating it as if it were a real child by clothing it with the outfits she had bought her unconceived child, much to the surprise of her shocked and disturbed husband...but what did he expect? It is the best Czech movie I have ever seen, and even though I have never seen a Czech movie before, that should not detract from my admiration of it. Normally, when I'm watching a movie and I say aloud repeatedly, "that's messed up!" it means I don't like the movie, but a giant, rooty, flesh-eating infant, it turns out, has wrapped his little tendrils around my heart.

Someone once asked my grandfather if he was a Catholic because he had eight children, and he replied, "No, I'm just a good-looking protestant."

It Takes Two

On our way to the restaurant for the rehersal dinner, Lib and I parked in a parking garage in Newport, Kentucky and decided to take the stairs up to the ground level instead of the elevator, and as I was about to press the bar on the door, Lib made an indistinct warning noise because she thought the door was an emergency exit; I was startled and annoyed, but the door did say, "Push for 15 seconds. Alarm will sound. Door will open," which made no sense, but we assumed that, for some reason, maybe security concerns, they did not leave the doors unlocked, but must unlock them for people coming in and out, which still didn't make sense, but by this time we were just confused. We pushed the door, it buzzed, and we waited fifteen seconds...nothing. We were more confused. Lib held down the bar for about ten seconds, a little red light started flashing faster, and Lib let go, but the buzzing noise continued, and the door unlocked. To the left of the door was a sign that read, "Emergency Exit" with a little picture of a person escalating a stairwell, and realizing we had just set off the alarm, we opened the door and bolted up the stairwell with the emergency alarm resonating through the parking garage, but halfway, Lib's conscience got the best of her, and she decided, much to my further annoyance, that we should tell someone, so we decended the staircase and walked all the way back to the booth by the gate and told the attendant, who broke out in wild laughter and told us she would take care of it. We took the elevator after that.