June 5

Hi!

I’m writing this from the balcony of the Houston House of Blues, waiting for one of my favorite bands to take the stage.  I’m here alone because it’s hard to explain to my friends how much I like this band without getting one of those looks.

“Toad the Wet Sprocket?”

“Yeah. They did ‘Walk on the Ocean.’ You’d know it if you heard it. No? ‘Fall Down’? ‘All I Want’? No?”

“What, do they perform in frog outfits? Are they some kind of art collective? Toad… the Wet Sprocket?”

Sigh. Even my wife begged off. Sometimes it feels like being Joe Schlabotnik’s only fan.

Anyway, what I feared at the beginning of this quest has come to pass - it’s now HOT. 

The additional complication now is that about a week ago, I had my face peeled off with a dermatological procedure called photodynamic therapy. It was to clear a bunch of pre-cancerous keratoses from my face, in lieu of freezing a bunch of individual spots.

I was told to be much more careful being out in the sun while my face heals. So, I have been - lots of sunscreen and couch-lounging, waiting for the danger to pass.

So when Art asked me why I hadn’t made any new entries in a while, I told him that I was following doctor’s orders.

He arched an eyebrow.

“Don’t you have a treadmill?”

“Yes, but it’s out of order. I need someone to tighten the belt and lube its joints,” I said.

“You know, you can get a new treadmill,” he said, arching the other eyebrow.

“I could,” I said, “but I won’t.”

Here’s what I know about treadmills: you buy one with the best intentions, and then they eventually (and inevitably) become a really expensive laundry rack. It’s why my old treadmill is in the garage - Lisa challenged me to tell her when I’d used it last, and I couldn’t remember.  And when I turned it on, the belt was sliding under my feet (a very vertiginous feeling, kind of like that scene in the opening credits to “The Jetsons”):

It also started making a funny smell as it ran, which could have been friction, or the accumulation of sweaty bacterial sweat from when I used to use it.

But all it needs is a tune-up, and after my son’s move-out last month, we have room upstairs to store it. It may take some spousal convincing, however, since she has a Plan for the upstairs that probably does not include featuring a decrepit treadmill in the middle of one of the rooms.

Anyway.

I am still committed to getting into half-marathon shape by next January, so this morning, I took the bull by the horns (brief aside: Who takes a bull by the horns? That is an idiotic idiom, and should really denote someone who wants a painful death, which now that I think about it, is kind of appropriate when talking about getting into half-marathon shape in June.  End of aside.) and I took a 4.5 mile walk at a clean 16 minute pace. Aside from some chafing, which I should have prepared for, it wasn’t so bad after a long layoff. And then an hour later, an hour with Art, doing arm exercises at the gym.

Tomorrow, the same, except that I will be working out at the gym with my daughter! So great - except that tomorrow will be working out the quads, which is kind of the worst for a first gym workout with a trainer.  Lots of squats. I hope Art will be kind to her.

The next couple of months will be pretty important to how the rest of the year goes. I play in the Main Event of the WSOP in July, I’m still working on my ethics book, and I need to start laying the foundation for 13.1 miles in January.  No more procrastinating.

Last thing: we have a new family member. We adopted a 12-year-old dog whose owner is in hospice care. He is every single day of his twelve years, with an apparently benign mass in his chest, a leaky eye, some patchy fur, and long claws that click on the floor. But how can you not love this old man, especially the way his paws splay out?

Onward.