Hmmmmm... train riding is certainly up these days. This morning, on the train into the City, we had standing room only for a good portion of the ride, with a bunch of people exiting at Millbrae. When I boarded at the 7:23 train at Mountain View, there were only three rows unoccupied. I wisely sat at the window seat sensing the train was going to fill.

It did, and by Menlo Park, the car had no seats left. Interesting. I wonder how many people sleep and how many people actually get work done.

I also wonder what the guy sitting next to me in thinking, as I take pictures of the car. Maybe I should take a picture of him and really freak him out.

Nah.

Gah, his breath stinks.

Kris comes home from work each day with a different story to tell from lunch or some adventure during the day, whether dodgeball, ultimate, cards, games or management related. For the longest time, I was mildly envious of his stories. He'd come home and talk about the energy of his work group and all these great conversations and his day. I'd tell him about my day, which usually consisted of conversations what went something like "No, Bella, no. No. No! NO!" or maybe "Annie! No lick. No! No lick!"

Intellectually fascinating, eh?

Fortunately, working in the office three days a week has helped my evening story telling abilities immensely by providing good material (think "Project Strap-On"). Kris' stories are still better, though. I need to either take these guys out to lunch, head out drinking with them, or go mountain bike riding with them. Of course, the latter would provide THEM with more material that me.

Last night, Kris observed that the Republican agenda of instilling fear and cowardice in the American public has succeeded in permeating everyone's unconscious thoughts. His work group was at lunch at a good, local Chinese restaurant. The restaurant is known for a tasty fish dish, of which everyone (but Kris, who knew better) wanted to have.

So, one of Kris' coworkers, the Chinese guy, orders for the group when the waiter comes around. He has a hard time ordering four of the same dish, one for each guy but Kris, as the Chinese culture is one of community dinner: each person orders a separate dish and everyone shares the dishes, family style.

When the coworker ordered four orders of the same dish sheepishly, another coworker piped up, "This is America, man. We have to have our own dishes. If we don't, terrorists win."

I watch various terms in Google's index via their Alerts program. One of the termis I watch is "kitt," mostly to see if what I write here actually ends up indexed for the term kitt. I'd say 29 of 30 times, it doesn't.

However, other Kitts have managed a better "kitt" showing. In particular, Kittbo's daily posts make Google Alerts for "kitt" daily. Oh, I wish I cared about my search engine ranking enough to figure out what to change on my site so that I have such similar success.

That Kitt's post today included an announcement of this being National Blog Writing Month, or NaBloWriMo, which I keep reading as na-BLOW-ree-moh when I see it written in all lowercase letters: nablowrimo.

Regardless, it's an inspirational "post every day this month" event. Given how much the month of July burned me out with its 117 posts (giving me more posts this year so far than all of last year), despite August and September having huge gaps in my daily memory, I think I could use the motivation.

So, here goes. One a day for the next 30 (hey, this counts as one!).

Last night, I managed to use three of the four standard modes of transportation to travel home. Doyle drove me from work to Stanford, where I sauntered to the train station until I realized that the noise I just heard was the southbound train arriving, not the north bound train departing. One heft of the backpark and two red-light dodges, and I was running for the train, 10-ride ticket validation be damned.

Little did I realize as I was launching myself into the nearest car door, was that the train was going to wait for another two minutes for the not-express train in front of it to accumulate a little more space. Of course, the puzzled, yet humoured looks of the seated passengers around me let me known that the crazy lady who launched herself into the their quiet car had better be quiet, too.

I didn't care, I had to pee.

Eventually I did find the Caltrain conductor and asked him to validate my ticket. He looked at me, then looked down at my ticket. Not only had he NOT asked for the ticket (meaning I could have ridden for free), but I was handing him a ticket from zone 2 to zone 3, when we were already in zone 3. I held my breath, wondering how long before he realized the ticket had expired four months before.

He said nothing, validated it, handed it back to me, then walked back out of the car.

15 seconds later, the train stopped in Mountain View. Sigh.

I then walked again, hoofing my way over to Chookie's place, which is about half was home from the train station. We talked for a while, before Kris called to see where I was. He was done with his lesson and on his way back home, too. Since Kris didn't know where Chookie lived exactly, I gave him directions to "close enough," as Chookie readied himself to leave also.

He was going out to run the track workout, not especially motivated to run by himself. I was concerned about his running in the dark, worried about ankle sprain potential. I offered to pick him up tomorrow morning and loan him my car after class, if he wanted to try out Velocity.

He said yes, and joined us this morning. Turns out, he knew someone at Planet Granite that Breanne knew, too, so they bonded instantly. Well, that and Chookie was "with them" where the "with them" from Sandy included a nod towards Kris and me.

Today's workout was four rounds of

20 swiss ball passes
20 back extensions
2 lengths of sled pushing
1 length of med ball walking

The swiss ball passes were similar to previous ones, but done solo. Lying on my back, I started with the swiss ball in my hands. Sitting up into a V position, lifting my legs up, I passed the ball to my feet, then dropped back down from the V up to lying back down, the ball between my feet. Next, back into a V position, passing the back back to my hands, then lowering it over my head as I dropped back from the V up position back down to a lying position.

I managed one of those before I couldn't actually do a V-up properly. I ended up lifting my shoulders and upper body off the ground, but not my full back, when passing the ball. Not fully correct, but sufficient.

The back extensions were as normal.

I ran the first sled push with just a 50 pound plate on the sled. The run was harder than I was expecting it to be, especially at the end. However, "harder than I was expecting" is not the same as "too hard," and I bumped up the weight to the 50 pound plate and a 25 pound plate on the sled for the last two runs. Breanne was amused by the weight increase and declared to Kris, "She's showing you up!" Kris, who had also been pushing the 75 pounds on the sled, looked and me and smiled. "She's tough!"

The med ball walking was the same as the plank walks of before.

After four rounds, we had time left over, so we did more abs (plank position on swiss balls, with Breanne kicking the ball).

At the end of it all, I asked Chookie what he thought. Was it tough enough for him?

A smile, a nod, and a "Yeah." in response.

At any given time, I have four books going. There's my non-fiction book (currently the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan). And the fiction book I'm reading (currently The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie, but previously the Septimus Heap series). And the iPod book I'm listening to (currently, Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan). And finally, the books on CD that I listen to in the car.

Yeah, those.

I just finished reading Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer, the third book in the Twilight Saga, which focuses around Bella Swan, a worthless, clumsy, awkward, ugly teenager (her own words) who has caught the eye of the perfect, gorgeous, perfect, good smelling, perfect (except for the (spoiler alert) vampire part) guy in her new school. Did I mention the perfect part? The perfect hair. The perfect teeth. The perfect skin. The perfect smile. The perfect smell. Annoyed yet? Yeah, me, too.

There are currently four books in the series, with my having read the first three. I enjoyed the first part of the first book where Bella and that perfect guy Edward (the vampire natch) actually start the falling in love process. Yeah, that part where he brushes the hair from her face, where he rests his hand on the back of her neck and leans in close for the first touch of his lips on hers, okay, yeah, when an author gets that part right, oh, I can forgive a lot of other crap in a book.

Which is pretty much what these books are. 95% crap with 5% plot. The plots of these books could be very good, if only there actually WAS a plot. Most of the books made me want to find the fast forward button, wondering how much I could skip of the "He's so perfect, I'm so worthless" crap that filled most of the book.

That was the first book. Very much the second book.

There might have been more of a plot on the third book, if only I could have gotten over the "long second" and "quick moment" and "short pause" and "infinite second" and "minute that dragged on" and other impossible time dialation phrases. Every third sentence included some time reference that just droned on and on and on. I was incredibly inspired to get Who Writes This Crap? up and going just so that I could list all of the time references in the single track (that's 4 minutes of listening pleasure) I was listening to.

Yeargh.

The end of the third book switched perspective, from a purely Bella Swan first person perspective to a Bella Swan first person and Jacob Black first person perspective. I find the switch disengenious mid-series, and think of Meyer as a lesser author for the need. Not that I particularly thought of her as any sort of good author to begin with.

Kris has listened to the fourth book, though mostly out of desperation for listening material rather than any sincere desire to complete the books. After this third book, I couldn't believe I had tortured him so much. He said that, since I've read the first three, I might as well read the fourth book. It does, he said, have 12% more plot than the previous book.

Great. 6% plot and only 94% crap. Such an improvement.