Assorted Bloggable Whatnots and Things
Hello.
I've not been blogging very much of late. Been busy living real life. Snippets of that real life are available for viewing below.
Many lunches with many people
Anybody who is my Facebook friend can tell you how busy I've been, based on the number of places I've been using Swarm to check in on. (It's a new app from the Foursquare people, but I digress.) I'm all over the place, all the time, especially at lunch. I have a zillion lunches with people these days, and I'm LOVING it! Lunch with friends two days a week, at least. Allyn, Moses, Pam, Carrie, Krista, Sherry, and one time with Kevin and Enjoli. Everybody.
If you're a friend of mine that I've seen this summer, you can pick out one of these and say, "That one was ME!"
Other fun social things
In addition to my many, many lunch dates with friends, I've found groups of people to meet up with via Meetup.com. I've joined quite a number of groups, but have only meeting with two regularly. The other groups have few meetings, far between.
GROUP #1 - San Antonio Board Gamers, who meet for board games Mondays and Thursdays at Dragon's Lair. I've been going on most Mondays. I think I'll try to keep it up once the school year starts back up again. (Schedule and workload permitting.)
GROUP #2 - San Antonio Writers' Guild, who meet every Wednesday. It's mostly a rotating critique session, except for official guild meetings once a month. I remember creative writing and critiques as the most interesting parts of my middle and high school English classes. I have more fun at these gatherings than I expected to.
Gyms and stuff
The downside of eating lots of lunches out and is that without physical activity to balance the "Calories In" with "Calories Out," you put on a little weight.
And I did. Boo.
But I've been hitting the gym again like I should. I used to be a member of Bally's, until the company went under and the local locations got bought out by Blast! Fitness. With the facilities came the memberships attached thereto. The problem, though, is that Blast! is a piece of crap gym chain, especially when it comes to sanitation. They are seriously filthy. Plus, the location I used to use got shut down and sold to Freedom Fitness, whoever they are, making travel to one of Blast!'s existing locations inconvenient.
Also, one of their gyms got shot up.
Needless to say, I cancelled my Blast! membership and signed up for Planet Fitness. They gave me a T-shirt, and I would move Heaven and Earth for a free T-shirt. (That's why I keep donating blood and platelets.)
Of dreams and plumbing
Sunday morning, I broke a shut-off device that I attached to my shower head in the interest of saving water. Sunday afternoon, I bought a replacement at Lowe's. Got lazy afterwards and decided to install it the next day.
Curiously, I had a dream Sunday night about installing the shut-off. I dreamed that I was all set to do it, but I couldn't find the Teflon plumber's tape used to seal the threads of pipes. I looked everywhere, tools in hand, and could not locate it at all.
The next morning, I installed the shut-off with ease. The tape was very easy to locate.
In my old age, my dreams have become very, very dull.
Elsewhere, in the world of plumbing problems...
Speaking of plumbing, a friend of mine recently bought a house. I visited her there, and we noticed a leak in her kitchen sink. Using the tools I always keep in the trunk of my car, I was able to tighten one of her knobs, temporarily stopping the leak.
I told her how to make a more permanent fix: Replace the rubber washer that is inside the valve. This would involve turning off the water to the house (likely using a curb key), removing the valve with a wrench, and taking the washer (or maybe the whole valve) to a hardware store to find a replacement part.
"I think I'll get my dad to do that," she said. "That sounds like kind of a 'guy thing'."
She's a woman who take pride in being able to accomplish things, so hearing her say this was something of a surprise to me. How could I respond to that? How could I offer assurances, in Rosie the Riveter fashion, that she CAN do it?
"It doesn't have to be a 'guy thing.' At the Lowe's on [LOCATION], there's a very nice butch lesbian lady whom I find very knowledgeable and helpful."
If that isn't the pro-feminist thing to say, I don't know what is. (And it probably isn't.)
It's true, though. She's very helpful, and knows where to find all the plumbing stuff.
(And here come the angry emails...)