If you go to the same gym I go to, your only avenues for mental stimulation while treadmilling or fake bicycling or whatever are:

1) Watch CNN with the sound off.

2) Flip through month(s)-old copies of People Magazine, Better Homes and Gardens, Rolling Stone, and/or Martha Stewart Living.

As watching CNN without sound is only marginally more interesting than watching CNN with sound, naturally I generally gravitate towards Option 2, so I can catch up on all the latest news like how heavily favored Senator Clinton is in next year's Democratic Primaries. Basically, she has a lock on the nomination, and will face Mitt Romney in the general election. Well so anyway that's why I was reading an article about the long-defunct snooze-rock band Luna, and learned that it was the band members' firmly-held belief that you could tell how people at their shows make love by watching how they dance.

"Whaa?" I thought. "Preposterous! Who could possibly believe that malarkey? People dancing at a Luna show???"

But it got me to musing about how people dance at shows. You always have the Hippy Girl doing the Hippy Twirl, of course, and the pogo-ers, the hip-shakers, fist-shakers, toe-tappers and knee-slappers, the headbangers and their more sedate cousins the headbobbers. You get those creepy dudes who pretend to be dancing but really are just trying to cop a surrepticious feel. There are tons of people who just stand around like so many catatonic frogs, way too cool and/or sober to do something gauche like dance. There's always people talking on cel phones at concerts: I do not know what the deal is with THOSE people. If you're at a show worth dancing at, you dance. You don't call someone and tell them about it. Myself, I'm partial to the school of thought where you throw yourself into the music and dance with wild abandon. If you don't rock out from time to time, YOU MAY ALREADY BE DEAD. When I bust a move, it stays busted. Now, I'll admit that I'm not the most co-ordinated gent in the world. Especially after a cocktail or two, you know, to loosen up. In fact, it generally wouldn't be inaccurate to describe my show-time dance technique as "Awkward, clumsy thrashing about, no discernable rhythm, singing/hollering off-key and loudly. Sweaty. Usually drunk." Moreover, I---

Hey, wait! th- that EXACTLY describes my love-making style!

I-I probably shouldn't have just said that!


(bonus points for readers who were thinking that when I'm dancing at concerts: a.) I'm not wearing any pants or b.) I'm dancing by myself)

Up and down the dock, they all shook their fists at us... "Fools!" they cried... "Lunatics!... Don't you know its the middle of November???... " They predicted horrible deaths for us... each prediction more grisly than the last... Gales! Sleet! washing up blue faced and bloated next spring by the East 155th Street pier!... Except for Steve... he wanted to come with us... he's retired now, you know.

Well, Saturday was truly grand... One reef in the main... plenty of wind, all right... we got to Kelleys in only about four and a half hours... that's not too bad... Loads of sunshine... why, this was better than we'd of had a right to expect even back in October. Bunch of fools on the dock!... what do they know anyways!... we were the only boat on the lake.

Sunday morning we awoke to an ominous howling in the rigging. It was disconcertingly breezy. We stop by the ferry terminal, its the only place in town still open this time of year to get some breakfast... we ask the lady there if she knows the forecast. "Well" she says, "I don't know what its like out there right now, but they're callin' for 50 mph winds."

50 mph? It was with a thoughtful fork we pronged our omelets. Silence descended upon the table and we became conscious of a sense of impending doom.

Its perfectly true the radio's calling for winds up to 45 knots... waves building 6 to 9 feet in the open water!... that's pretty rough!.. really, its only fools or lunatics would go out in weather like that... we start getting the boat ready for departure.

We never even got out the marina... as soon as we cast off our lines, the wind takes us and smacks us straight into the dock opposite... good thing there aren't any other boats around... we're spinning like a top... George's eyes are popping out of his head.-even more so than usual!... after all, its his boat... we're completely out of control... its all we can do to not get pounded to pieces... oh, its howling out there now... we finally get the boat tied up... I got seagull poop all over my jeans... why haven't those damn filthy birds flown south or something?... go shit on those Florida docks... hell, its the middle of November after all, Christ! its practically winter. At the dock, the boat's heeling 15 degrees from the pressure of the wind... and that's with no sails up at all. It's no good. We're completely windbound. And hereabouts the bars don't even open till one on Sundays!

Monday we had to motor home all the way. There wasn't the least breeze at all.

Well, I was really going to go to the gym today, I was really meaning to, but when I got home it turns out I just didn't feel like it. Oddly enough, the VERY SAME THING happened to me yesterday! I didn't feel like going then, either! So I'm going tomorrow. Definitely. Unless I don't feel like it.

Well, it snowed like all hell last night, I mean not like it snowed like all hell, but it was forecast to snow like all hell, and that alone was enough to totally freak out Allison at work. Depending on who you listened to, we were going to receive either six, eight or maybe even ten inches of snow! Fabulous! I don't know why this should freak Allison out, as everybody knows that Central Ohio never gets the full quota of snowfall we are promised. Nobody except Allison even pays attention to the forecasts anymore.

Needless to say, we didn't get the promised six, eight or ten inches. We did get maybe three or so, so I trekked on over to the folks to shovel off their driveway. You got to get over there pretty quick, because otherwise they'll get it into their head to go off and shovel their drive themselves, sooner or later. Nobody wants that.

Well, it didn't take long to clear off their snow. Not least was because the snow changed to rain. It's been a steady dreary drizzle since, so I'm pretty sure that even had I not sweated away with the snow-shovel, the rain would have melted away all the parental snow regardless. Lesson learned? Trying to help = Pointless

Anyway, I did get to spend some time with my folks, and I haven't been able to do that for, I don't know, at least a good couple days. Mum's looking pretty good, she's had her drainage device removed. Fucking thing always creeped me out. From what I understand, she won't have to do the chemo thing or the radio thing, and that is pretty damn cool. She'll probably have to do this hormone therapy thing, which is kind of a drag I guess, but doesn't seem to be all that odious.

I'm starting to think that the only things I ever bother to write about are my parents and their medical issues. BOO TO THAT!. Seriously, why don't they get their own blog THEREBY SAVING ME THE BOTHER?

Today's the Big Game, the Super Bowl I guess.

Turns out that it's the Giants v. the Patriots this year. I don't imagine I'll be watching it.

As a foreign national of unremarkable stature, I can't say I feel any particular natural affinity to either team in tonight's contest.

So instead I've been gathering up all my assorted W-2 forms and things. Yes, once again, it's Tax Time, baby! That means, of course, it's time to take a cold hard look at the old financial data! I love to do that so much that sometimes I look at dollar bills just to memorize their serial numbers! That's the kind of hard-core financial dude I am, and you never know, that kind of info might come in handy someday. Well anyway, this year I can't honestly say I much like what I'm seeing. See now I was looking at my mutual funds here. They got all kinds of charts and stuff, and obviously I'm all in favour of shit like that, but the thing is, they got some stupid graph bragging about how well they're doing against - get this - something called the "Standard and Poor 500"! Well I should certainly hope they can beat it, I mean, come on now! Standard? Poor?

Now, I'll admit I'm no Donald Trump here but on the other hand it's not like I'm a complete retard either! Who the hell cares about this standard and poor crap anyhow? I tell you what, I ain't bustin' my ass like this just to wind up "standard and poor"! "First-class and Wealthy" all the way for me, baby! And five hundred? Uh-uh, no way, Jose, a cool million, that's where I'm headed!

Now I know its only about noon or so now, and I'd hate to think that my day has already peaked in terms of excitement, but I should mention that I mopped the floors today! Plus, I DID THE DISHES!