Raspberry Beret (not by Prince)

I went to post my scintillating prose yesterday, but blogger was having major issues and I had to get home. I have this problem that I know if I get home past a certain time, I'll NOT go to the gym as I think it's too crowded and I won't get an elliptical machine. So, I had to bail.

You'll find yesterday's post at the end of this one.

I did go to the gym and attacked the Trail Blazer program on the elliptical machine for 45 minutes. Or should I say the Trail Blazer program attacked me. My face was beet red for a couple of hours after I was done, and my t-shirt was sweat soaked within minutes which makes me wonder about people who can exercise w/o sweating! Last year when I was going to the gym religiously, I would see these two women wearing full-on cotton sweatsuits a la the 1970s & 80s on the cross-country skiing machines moving so slowly that even in full sweats they did not sweat a bit. They'd do the same on the treadmills, basically taking up a machine that someone who really wanted to work out could have used.

Tonight I have to go to my nephew's high school graduation ceremony. The OS had sent out an e-mail last week asking who wanted to go as they had extra tickets. I have been to enough commencement exercises in the past year so I didn't respond, but Bug (my nickname for my nephew since he was a baby) called me on Tuesday evening to ask if I were going. DAMN!!! I could be passive-aggressive and ignore the e-mail from the sis, but there's no way I could say No directly to him. He promised it would be a short event (in ten years the longest one was 62 minutes and that's with 300+ kids), so how could I say no? And I was so looking forward to the possibility of not seeing my mother for almost two solid weeks. Yes, I know, I'm a bad daughter, but I need breaks from her.

I think I've kvetched a bit here about how my church has been having 2 hour masses, and if you're Catholic or know any Catholics you know Mass is generally an hour (usually less than). So, two Sundays ago I kept track of all the singing and announcements. (I thought briefly about my stopwatches at home, but they beep every time you start and stop them, so that wouldn't be cool at church.) Just the singing and the announcements alone had us at 54 minutes, well, no wonder we're up to 2 hours for Mass!!! I'm thinking of having a chat with Fr. on Sunday. I mean, really! There is no reason to sing every friggin' verse of the processional hymn or the offertory hymn and there's no reason to wait until everybody is done going to Communion to start singing whatever new song they're doing that week. JUST NOT NECESSARY!!! I don't even care if the sermon is 20 minutes (it was only 7 minutes that day), at least it's usually worthwhile. And no offense to the choir, but they aren't that good. I’m just glad that the Easter season is officially over, and I'm hoping against hope that means we go back to our normal Alleluia before the Gospel. The one the choir's been singing sucked so badly it wasn't funny. I mean, really, is it necessary to use the word omnipotent in a song???? Talk about unwieldy!!! And it lasted 4 minutes. Ridiculous.

This weekend is the Detroit Festival of Arts and I'm hoping to get there Sunday to hear the DSO's free concert. The schedule looks like a good one.

Festival Overture (Shostakovich)
Hungarian March from La Damnation de Foust (Berlioz)
Overture to The Barber of Seville (Rossini)
Hungarian Dance No. 6 (Brahms)
Morning Mood from Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 (Grieg)
Thunder and Lightening Polka (Strauss)
Blue Tango (Anderson)
Franz von Suppe (von Suppe) and the Finale from Symphony No.4 by Tchaikovsky
Of course, I'm a little biased toward Russian composers, so pretty much I just need to see the names Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky and I'm there.

I emailed Ursamajor to see if she were interested in going since we went last year and had a lot of fun, but she hasn't responded. Ursamajor is a riot to hang with and she's very good at people watching. The friend with whom I go to most of my races, HRH, is terrible at people watching. She doesn't understand the joy of a "good" mullet or anything like that. She did appreciate the pink flowered elastic waistband shorts on the middle-aged man, though, so she's showing improvement.

HRH, Roadrunner and I are discussing going to Europe next summer for the 24 Hour Race at Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium (D.R.E.A.M.) which would include a two week vacation in Europe (but not Sweden, DAMMIT!). I'm pretty damn excited. The F1 circuit races there and it's every driver's favourite race track, but F1 races are too damned expensive and packed, so we decided to do the smart thing and get the most racing possible (this year's tickets are 60 Euros for the whole shebang, so that's doable). To this end, I've asked The Libertarian to teach me how to drive a stick shift. I have had a number of people over the years try to teach me, but I'm so uncoordinated it's not funny. He thinks he can do it, and told me that he has more patience than I do. I told him that wasn't hard as I have zero patience, but he's willing, so there ya go. I'll keep you posted on my progress (getting out of first gear will be incredible progress).

Wednesday, 7 June 2006

I'm back and refreshed! You would have thought I was a five year old on Monday. I went to bed at 7:19 (I know the exact time because someone called me right then) and was asleep by 7:45 (had to play a few games of electronic solitaire, even though the brain was already gone and didn't really need relaxing). Yes, I do live an exciting life here in the Motor City. It was practically broad daylight when I crawled into my fabulously comfortable bed (unlike the hard-as-a-rock-hotel-bed).

I woke up yesterday when the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., and although I wouldn't say I popped right out of bed, I did NOT snooze at all and rolled out of bed. This is a huge accomplishment for the Alarm Clock Snooze Queen. I snoozed for two hours one day last week. First alarm went off at 4:00 and I was completely unable to drag my sorry butt out of bed until 6:00.

Do you know the best part about making your own mixed CDs? At least, for me? Every single song elicits an "Oh, I love this song." from me when it starts up. Stupid, isn't it? Of course, I love every song. I made the damn CD! Why am I so surprised? Because I'm a goofball, that's why.

I was too darn tired on Monday to go to the gym, but I did not let myself talk me out of going yesterday. I did 45 minutes on the elliptical machine (Fat Burner program) and I didn't once have that issue of being bored and wondering the time was ever going to be up, because I'm loving my Alex Zanardi book. When he describes each race, I'm reliving it in my head from when I watched it on TV. I'm such a racing geek, that I’m tempted to go into my closet and pull out the old videos and watch those races all over again.

And on that note, it's time to get to the gym. I'm such a slacker, if I let myself not go today, I'll find a reason not to go tomorrow.