...want to be preached to, politically? Oh of course, I made the mistake of ducking through the political commentary section of Barnes & Noble on my way back to see if they had any violin books. Does that raise the red flag over my head saying "Looney Toons, please talk to me"? Evidently it does!

Apparently Barack Obama is a closet communist, which was a new one for me (I'd heard socialist before, which is less absurd and is cause for a little concern). I'm pretty sure this guy was some sort of fringe libertarian; he didn't come out and say it, but I can sort of pick them out with the guideline "does this person sound like me in college, but crazier?" And at some point he talked about Liberal Fascism being a quote "great book", which sealed the deal for me that there was no credibility or anything to the conversation. I think the UN/World Government conspiracy was brought up at some point. Oh, and I guess socialism is a "form of mental retardation" which I think I remember hearing from some talking head or another.

I got pretty bored and the guy wasn't going away so I steered the conversation to firearms (which I'm pretty sure I know more about) and then somehow to the releasing of wolves out west, with a detour through colonial history (which I'm absolutely sure I know more about), just to see what kind of crazy opinions might lurk there. Unfortunately, they were just run-of-the-mill crazy opinions.

All in all, he was talking at me for like, forty minutes. I should probably feel either bad for not really paying attention, or annoyed that he decided I was a good target for some rambling. Then again, that's forty minutes that he wasn't able to talk to someone who would either react negatively (reinforcing the idea that he's right and persecuted) or positively (reinforcing the idea that he's right and people will agree with him).

"Why don't you get sick?" you ask? Well, I'll tell you why: because I get totally complaintful and grumbly when I do! Being a reasonable type, my body is not at all interested in hearing my bitching, and as a result my immune system is pretty well-trained. It used to be that I'd get sick for about a week every spring, all the various symptoms of the minor ailments happening at once and then nothing for another fifty-one weeks. Those were nice times, things are less predictable now.

Tonight I said "FUCK SICK" and went running anyway, about three and two-thirds miles. Surprised myself by not losing nearly as much speed as I had been expecting to lose.

I've gone all hackneyed and learned Greeensleeves. I know, I know, barf, but it is a pretty song. In my opinion, anyway.

Looks like the vapor canister on my car is cracked. Or one of the hoses around it; I still have to go looking around in the engine compartment and see what the case is. That's the likely culprit for the symptoms, and it's not so bad. Only an $80 part. Found a wrench someone had left sitting on a bracket who knows how long ago though, which was weird. It was semi-hidden so I managed to miss it in the six or eight months since someone's done anything requiring a wrench in there. So, free wrench for me I suppose.

Strange sort of week I've been having. The good kind of strange, though. Maybe it's House of Leaves saying "sorry for badly rattling your cage when you were really sleep-deprived flying home from Utah (note: not Mormon, just visiting some) last year, that was kind of mean." Yes, that was kind of mean, book. Jerk. Book-jerk.

Last night I decided I should teach myself to play "As Time Goes By" on the violin (note: I don't mean to talk about the violin all the time, honest! It's a lot more interesting than talking about running or bank accounts or reading internet things or whatever, though, so you're stuck with it for the moment). Coincidentally, someone played that song, on the violin, at Ingrid Bergman's funeral. So it's not without precedent, heh. It's similar difficulty to the song my instructor has me working on now, so I suppose I timed things pretty well. My only problem is my horrible memory.

We're not talking stoner bad memory here; In fact, smoking would sometimes jar old recollections loose and send them floating to the top of my brain. Right now, I have a hard time remembering what it was like when I started working at my job, in 2004. High school is a blur with occasional clear memories, middle school is gone, and so is elementary school for the most part. It's incredibly frustrating, especially when friends play the "do you remember" game about all the important events of us growing up, and I have to say "I don't remember any of that at all" for most things. You'd think there would be more entries in my LJ to try and record things, but it doesn't really occur to me to do it until I've half-forgotten something.

Anyway. My short-term memory isn't the best, which is what I was going to say before that long digression there. Therefore, it's hard for me to figure out how the song goes if I don't have my violin there so I can take notes (har) note-by-note. I haven't looked for any arrangements to use though, because it's kind of fun figuring it out myself. Frustrating, but fun.

Short running report: I probably would've been over 6mph in the Shamrock Run on Sunday if I hadn't started so far back and had to weave through the walkers. My own fault. I'm happy anyway, since I haven't gotten much above 5mph since I'm more concerned with distance. The Kingston Classic will be interesting.


Edit: Oh, hilarious. Would you believe I wrote the headline before I started my "my terrible memory" description?

The cat loves my violin. Like, needs-to-be-as-close-to-it-as-possible loves it, whenever I'm playing anything that uses a lot of the E-string. She got herself b& from practice for a while after deciding it was acceptable to jump up the front of my body while I was playing; now I have this scratch down my chest. It was much more startling the first time she did it, though, leaping onto my back and climbing to my shoulder (the left one, where the violin is) to give a good listen to the music. When she tried to do it from the front, she just didn't really have anywhere to climb to, so she tried to hold on for dear life.

Ow.

I had a dream and Clint Eastwood was there, the Man With No Name capping zombies at some sort of family reunion or picnic or something. There was much more to it than that, but that would be the headline if dreams had them, so there you go. It was pretty exciting, and I don't think it was a commentary on the place I work at like most of my zombie dreams are, so thank goodness for that. I got pretty bored with those.

There may be too many cats in the house. Skye certainly seems to think so, probably because she misses being Crown Princess of the place. There's her, and two from the guy who moved in upstairs in december, and the two lend-lease kittens (who are not so much a problem for me, but they're kind of a pain for others apparently). Skye spends as much of her time as possible in my room, with a door between her and the invaders, although I think she semi-likes that one of the kittens has decided she's their big-sister-cat.

Hurray a journal entry! So... like... what else? I'm up to running four-five miles now, although I haven't been running much because of the temperature and/or hurting my calf AGAIN (who knew you have to stretch before jumping rope? honestly). Paranoia about injuring myself in that way is probably a very good thing, though. The beer batch I was afraid would turn out horrible actually turned out pretty great, so that's a win. Time to go get this violin fixed up now; lessons start in two weeks, which means I have two weeks to make lots of horrible screeching noises and cause everyone to shun and despise me!

Man, I haven't posted to my lj in more than a year and I'm a fan of lj, almost, now you want me to post crap here?

Ok so I busted my leg up on Sunday, pulled one of the calf muscles pretty bad, and so running is problematic. It's my own fault, I wasn't warming up or doing enough stretching before I went out, ESPECIALLY as I transitioned into outright running instead of jogging. I did a good 2.1 mile run this morning, but it brought the pain back, albeit less pain than Sunday. If I say my prayers like a good boy, maybe I'll be ok by Monday, and can get back into my schedule from there. I'd like to beat my 30 miles of running in November, and

Wow, I was kind of drunk when I wrote all that last night. And apparently forgot to hit "post". Heh. Hurrah for still being coherent when I write drunk.