Vampires in Oz, Manatees in the Pool, and Bernie Mac!?

I study nuclear science
I love my classes
I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades

I've got a job waiting for my graduation
Fifty thou a year -- buys a lot of beer
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades

Well I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise
I'm a peeping-tom techie with x-ray eyes
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades

I study nuclear science
I love my classes
I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades
I gotta wear shades, I gotta wear shades
(Timbuk 3, 1989)

Just a tip of the (Life Is Good, 'Lefty' embroidered bucket) hat to the kids in Australia. K-6 schoolers are now required to wear sunglasses while out of doors at school. D@mn, that's a far cry from my school days; I would have sold my stepmother to the gypsies to have a pair of Photo-Grey lenses in my Clark Kent frames to make me look the least bit more cool. Some three decades later, I can't even think of going outside without my Tifosi Slip glasses with High Speed Red Fototec lenses. That's what happens when you work in windowless offices for 25 years, children. Remember that when you interview for your first job: No window, no way.

I love Domino's...but only on Wednesday evenings. Regrettably, the results are beginning to show. Well, it's not only that, but a lack of real strenuous activity for a six-week period following the triathlon/fracture. Every time I step on the scale here in the locker room, I either misuse the subjunctive ('...d@mn, I be fat!') or launch into a full-blown attack of Tourette's Syndrome.

Are there benefits to having a few extra pounds this early in the season? Perhaps when I hit the pool...a little bit o' body fat isn't a bad thing, buoyancy-wise. Unfortunately, it does play havoc on hydrodynamics; lean-looking critters like sharks and dolphins tend to move a bit quicker in the water than chubbier, manatee-like forms. While swimming kicks me squarely in the @$$, I am stoked to be back in the pool again. I get a little tired at 75 yards of a 100 yard piece of work, but the turns are getting better and the shoulder (still a little sore and less than mobile) is a little stronger each morning. Twenty seconds of panting after a 100-yard piece notwithstanding (d@mn that cardiovascular system...but it's improving too), there's nothing like feeling the flow of water over the soles of your feet, especially when you're dragging a pool buoy. And yes, chlorine is addictive.

There ought to be a law, and if one exists, someone should go to jail: Why are stupid television programs played in the early afternoon? Yesterday, in the later half of my 'easy' 8-mile run at the YMCA, I was grooving along to the 1970's Muzak and making like Richard Simmons, yep, I was 'Sweating to the Oldies,' baby, when a young lady came in and HAD to turn on the friggin' television. At that point in the afternoon I might have put up with 25 minutes of Fox News (another oxymoron, just below 'fun run'), but noooooooo, she had the audacity (stupidity?) to put on what looked like The Bernie Mac Show. I'm depriving my brain cells of oxygen over here and you want to put that $#!+ on the television!? What are you thinking? Oops, one too many words in that sentence. Are you thinking?