Teaching day again today and a book I’ve not read before - assigning it sounded like a good idea in the warm, long days of summer but now in the cold, ever short enwintering time reason reveals this as obviously a mistake - so I needed extra time to prep.
That was the plan. But I diverted myself toward a book prize committee I’m on. I put all the books in a row on the floor and took pictures of them. They turned out shit. I was taking them with my laptop’s camera, I don’t have a spacephone. I think my lil flip phone may have a camera on it but I don’t remember if I know how to use it or if it’s any good. Then I stacked all the books on a chair in two columns with a third on top holding the other two together, again shit pics, so I stacked one column in one chair and another in another and the pics turned out. I mean, not artful, obviously, but legible. I wanted to get pictures to email to the other committee members so we can check if we all have the same books, ideally without having to type the names of them all. So that’s what I did with a lot of my extra prep time. Teaching went fine anyway, but soon I’ll be teaching a second book I’ve not read so I will have to get on top of that ASAP.After teaching I actually managed to make it out for a run, mostly but not entirely before sunset. I saw two full grown deer, a ground hog, and what I think was a possum. It dove out of sight quick so I barely got a glance at it, so I’m not totally sure.
Normally I park in one spot for my run then walk down a hill to the trail, because that makes the most sense coming from my house. Today I was coming from work so I parked in a different spot, at the bottom of the hill, near a playground. It was close to sunset and chilly so the playground was empty, which meant I got to climb on the monkeybars. Almost a decade ago we lived for a year in Bloomington, Indiana and rented a place just a mile from my work and part way through my way was a lovely park with multiple playgrounds and some calisthenic equipment, including parallel bars and monkeybars. I got into those on my walks to and especially from work - used to do pushups up on the parallel bars, you can get a longer range of motion and it feels fun. The best are the monkeybars though. I like to grab on with my hands then kick my feet up then crawl along upside down. This was my first time in many years doing that. Luckily these monkeybars are lower to the ground so I can manage to kick up. I’m in worse shape than I used to be. Part of the fun is that being upside down like that feels dangerous and I have a fear of heights that kicks in at low height which adds to that, so there’s a minor hit of adrenaline or whatever, and it makes for a strong sense of focus while climbing. These monkeybars are in a circle so I was climbing with my left leg and arm on the outside of the circle one way round and right on the outside the other way round. I only got about a quarter way round each time, one climb before my run and one time after. It was a lot of fun and I figure I’ll try to do that more often while the weather permits, and will remember to be careful to increase the workout gradually - I’m feeling it now, am very tired.
On that note I should turn in as it’s late and I have work in the morning, and have to take my car into the shop for the heater being out. (The guy at the shop said over the phone that maybe it’s just the antifreeze being low, fingers crossed that’s all it is.) Also have a book committee meeting. Action packed life, the thrills don’t stop. Might go to a feed store, time permitting - they close at eight. My wife makes hot pads out of corn sewn into a cloth bag and we want more of them. They’re so lovely when microwaved, nice and warm. Objectively woolen, I feel. (Speaking of which, there’s a new season of Shetland just started, I’m excited about seeing more sweaters.) Hoping also to get a couple fifty pound bags of gravel to put in a duffle bag for exercise. I have an eighty pound duffle currently, full of two bags of wood pellets wrapped in contractor bags. I figure going up twenty pounds for some uses would be a good ambition.
I’ve been writing these recollections while listening to Burial. For a while Burial was my main writing music. The opening of the first track off here - https://burial.bandcamp.com/album/burial-south-london-boroughs-hdb001 - makes me feel so good, like hearing from an old friend. Burial also always takes me back to taking the bus in Minneapolis, looking out the window, and that thought sends me to looking out the window on the El in Chicago at night when it had been raining, objectively beautiful and also love snippets of the life of the city, of ordinary people living in a lovely place. Ought to say something negative here or make a joke but I can’t think of anything.
Oh yeah I also picked up our grocery order today and after I left work, while on my run, I remembered I wanted canned tomatoes for soup and shakshuka but I couldn’t add them to the order via the internet so I called, assuming they couldn’t help me, and they were able to add them over the phone. Kind of them, they didn’t have to do that. Ate some scrambled eggs served on top of leftover frozen pizza with sauteed onion added for dinner, by the way. The pizza was a bit shit but topped with onion and a splash of tomato soup and a dollop of egg it was nice. No matter how shit life gets, you can always add egg and onion, that’s what I always say, to the consternation, often annoyance, and sometimes genuine tearful distress of those around me. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
(This is my recollection for wednesday november 1st by the way, I just wrote it after midnight so technically in the very early morning of thursday november 2nd. Time is bullshit made up to disorient us.)
