"I feel strange going out without my iPod."

"Why?"

"Because I count to four when I go to work: phone, wallet, keys, iPod. That's how I know I have everything."

"You count to four?"

"Yeah."

"That's it? Four?"

"What do you count to?"

"Wallet. Car keys. House keys. Office keys. Two phones. Two iPods. Two cameras."

"What?"

"Wait, I'm not done. Pack of kleenexes. Computer. Bag of wires. Airport Express..."

"Bag of wires? Why do you have a bag of wires?"

"Uh, two headsets, one phone-headset, USB cable, ethernet cable."

"You carry an ethernet cable with you to work?"

"Well, yeah. And an emergency supply of food, too. And lip balm. And vitamins. Oh, and a magazine. Maybe a book."

"To work. Every day?"

...

"Maybe I should take only one camera."

"Yeah."

No, it wasn't the first drink each of us had at 21. It wasn't moving in together. It wasn't the car we bought together, or even the house he mostly bought, er, we bought together. It wasn't getting married. No, none of these officially made us adults.

Now, buying a bed. THAT has made us adults.

On paper, it sounds like a fairly easy workout. One round into the four round set, we realized it wasn't an easy workout. By the end, my legs were shot.

Each round was:

20 single armed overhead weighted squats
10 turkish sit ups
10 weighted V ups
10 burpees
20 box jumps

For the single armed, overhead weighted squats, we held a weight above our head and, keeping the arm straight and weight up as high as we could, did a squat. The squats were off-center, which made them more challenging. My shoulder has been bothering me since the layout, so I managed fairly little weight on this task.

The turkish sit ups continued the straight arm overhead weight, but for this we went from standing straight up to lying down, all with the weight as high as we could make it vertically (which put it perpendicular to our body once we were lying down). We could go from a standing position to a squat, roll backwards to sit, put our feet out straight, then lie down, or we could go from a standing position to a lunge, put our unused hand down, pull the back leg forward and lie down. After the first exercise of squats, the lunges were the easier way to go.

The weighter V ups were with the same weight, starting lying down with both hands on the weight, which was overhead on the ground. Lifting both legs and shoulders into a V was one situp.

Burpees were the same.

Box jumps were either landing two feet on the box (gently!) or step ups. I did twenty each leg of one legged jump-ups onto the box, mostly to work on my vertical jump form.

Not sure if I'll go Friday or not. Breanne won't be teaching those classes.

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher expressed extreme disdain for the word got. Her dislike for the word was so intense, we spent an entire afternoon one day thinking of alternative words to use instead of got. As eleven year olds, we produced a large list. That list, however, was nowhere near as large as the one I've managed to compile in the subsequent two decades.

Why, just today, I received an email with the sentence,

"We just got a bunch of invoices, and need to match them up."

I read it as, "We just received a bunch of invoices, and need to match them to their requests."

Note the lack of "got" in that sentence. And the comma. I added the comma. And the dangling preposition? Gone.

I do that with just about every instance of "got" I come across. Although there are a lot floating around here, fewer than 40 of the 90 instances are actually from me. The rest are quotes from other people. Given how common "got" is in conversation, that's pretty good.

I wonder if I should start another section of gots, to go along with my license plates and letters, listing all my got replacements.

Hmmmm, you know, that might be too OC.

Even for me.

Annie's off on her normal Tuesday hike today, so Bella turned on the charm and gave me the big, big doe eyes. I tried to resist. I tried really hard. I woke up late, making our usual hike uncertain. I wasn't sure if we'd be back at the house in time for a call I had in the morning, so neither Bella, nor Shadow (who was at home with Blue), nor I went for our hike this morning.

Since Doyle said he'd be late into work, I didn't think he'd notice initially that there was a little tan doggie wandering under the desks. Bella spoiled my surprise by greeting him at the door, tail wagging and mouth grinning.

Unlike for previous visits, I managed to keep Bella from making lots of noise. She still clicked as her nails tapped on the ground when we walked down the halls. She didn't howl when I went to the bathroom, as she had done last visit, as I took her into the bathroom with me each time I went. Keeping her from going into the other stall when I was doing my business, however, was much more difficult. I can just imagine how scandalized another woman in the bathroom would be seeing a dog slide under the stall wall and come greet her.

Yeah, that would make friends and influence people.