Some progress

    Following on yesterday's post, when I think about it, I do notice a good deal of progress in my never-ending battle against stick-up-the-butt disease. For instance, I no longer look up every symptom I have every ten seconds. I don't know what the Mayo Clinic and Merck Manual websites are doing without me. Wait! Not looking up symptoms might be a symptom of something! I'd better go look it up! But how?!!!!
    Further, working out with dumbbells seems to me to be a more rational and reasonable approach to improving my back pain than believing everything anyone ever said on the Internet on the subject, or indeed on any subject. And it may be working. Or it may be that my back just quit hurting by itself. Anyway, I shall persevere; having arm muscles for a change is kind of neat, too.
    (Note: "symptom" is one funny looking word!)

Got to get out of this prison

    Not that it's a bad place, mind you. But I just can't shake off the autism. My life seems to be more, rather than less, constrained by invisible rules and regulations. It may be of course that I'm just paying better attention and noticing things more, and in fact am making progress at throwing off the shackles. It's mainly silly stuff such as: the blender plug MUST go in the top outlet. Lately I've been putting it in the lower one; the world has not yet quit spinning. Yet. But YOU NEVER KNOW!
    What worries me is that there may be other invisible rules and regulations that I am living by and not even noticing. Like the ones that make me rabidly defend against anyone ever getting close to me. Really, I like people. (John D. MacDonald suggested that you can always tell a sociopath when they insist that they like people. Nobody else has to mention it.) I think that I made a lot of progress against autism when I cut the goitrogens (thyroid-inhibiting foods) from my diet. As such, all I need to do (having added them back I mean) is ramp up my iodine consumption. I'm still leery of such a move, but I'm pretty miserable as is. Maybe I will.

7 Mares

    When Alice and I lived in Oak Grove, our most convenient Mexican restaurant was in the Piggly Wiggly strip mall at Oak and Augusta Roads. Alice was particularly fond of their chilaquiles. If we called them chilli-killies, well, don't sue us.
    Shortly after Alice and I went out of business, the restaurant did, too. Now a new Mexican restaurant has opened in the same space. Specializing in seafood, it's called 7 Mares. Now I don't know Spanish, but I know enough Latin to know what this means. (Or I hope I do; I'm bettin' 7 seas.) But I have to feel that just about any name would have been a better one than this one. Even writing out "siete" would have been an improvement, I think (as in "Hey, folks! This is SPANISH!")
    Hopefully, they'll thrive and get a lot of laughs out of it. But the previous place was great, with friendly service and wonderful food, and didn't have a name that suggested you would be eating horse, and didn't succeed. On the other hand, I'll probably go there. Mexican seafood seems right up my alley.

Lawn chairs

    However much it might appear to be the case, I am not being eccentric just to be eccentric, or at least I don't think I am. But well might one wonder. For some time now, I've been seeing these lawn chairs in assorted discount stores called stackable slingback chairs. Eventually, I decided that a couple might fit in with my needs (ie, something people can sit on that the cat would have difficulty destroying). But everywhere, the price was somewhere around $25 each, which seemed a little steep for something I was planning to sit in a corner until that distant day when I might have guests.
    Finally Aldi had stackable slingback chairs, and they were $15 each. So I went for them. Problem came in when it turned out that they're bigger than they look. First, it was a challenge getting them home in the Camry. Then it turned out that they were higher than the window sill. (I wanted them next to the window so Amelia could climb to the sill on them, but I'm not sure it would be comfortable for her.) So just for a lark, I tried them out as dining chairs. I love 'em! So in a completely not self-consciously eccentric move, I'm using lawn chairs as my dining chairs. Amelia claws at them a bit, but so far hasn't done any damage. If she does, though, what do I care; they were $15!

The Rascals and The Raspberries

    Maybe I'll stick with playing jazz all night. Last night, I had some very odd dreams indeed without it. I was at a very, very, very crowded youth hostel with friend Robert (apparently in some kind of pre-Gail pre-Orion flashback) and one or more fictitious and little-defined companions. This very attractive young woman perked up at my approach, suggested that we had met at another youth hostel, and expressed her very great attraction to me. Then she vanished in the crowd. (In real life, that's what they do without expressing great attraction to me.) Later, she magically reappeared, and asked me if I, like her, also liked the Rascals and The Raspberries. I said, rather like I would have in real life, "How old ARE you?!" Then she commented on some imaginary novelist with straight gibberish. Again as I probably would in real life, I tried to look interested and not bewildered. That's about as far as that one went; I just thought that it was funny that my subconscious is apparently arranging defunct bands in alphabetical order.

Oh wait-- that really happened

    When I wake during the night, I will sometimes review my dreams to see if there was anything particularly wacky. (Shows, doesn't it?) Last night was also one of the times that I decided to play jazz softly all night; I just had the sense that I was going to have a rough night, and sometimes jazz helps. Over the years, when I've done that, I often have cool dreams about times past in jazz clubs. So when I was having my dream review, I thought that it was weird that I dreamed that I was at DL at Thirsty Fellow and suddenly "Sing Sing Sing (With A Swing)" came on. Then I realized that that was no dream; it really happened yesterday evening. It was very cool, too!
    My weird freaky dream last night was only slightly so. A friend of mine was working in an office and needed to clean up for a colleague for some reason. Old newspapers and magazines, mainly. I pitched in to help. The weird freaky aspect was that sometimes it was an office and sometimes it was hiking trail cum Flintstones-type terrain. Which is indeed the kind of office I'd like to work in.

Failure to thrive

    The University of Chicago has a celiac disease research center. I follow them on Facebook. They say a lot of reassuring stuff, indicating that maybe I could relax my hoodoo on gluten a little bit. But then, they also say that they're going to find a cure to celiac disease and that the way to diagnose it is STILL to keep eating gluten and then get a biopsy. This is STILL like a doctor in the 1950s saying, "That's an ugly cough you've got there, but we can't say for sure what's causing it, so why don't you keep smoking until we're sure?"
    A common indicator for spotting celiac disease in children is "failure to thrive." I like to think that there are additional guidelines to make this less vague, but if there aren't, here's a suggestion. My brother Frank and I used to work out with free weights a lot. (Hey! It was the '70s!) We never developed any muscles that anyone could notice. We got wiry strong, but not muscular. My dad and my oldest brother are quite muscular; the rest of us not at all. Lately, I've been working out very lightly with dumbbells in hopes of making my back stronger. In spite of how very lightly I'm going, I'm noticing muscles developing on my arms. Hmmmmmm. Maybe one aspect of "failure to thrive" that folks should be looking into is "ability to develop muscles after extended exercise." Maybe.

Turnips

    My new food obsession is putting turnips in everything. Or turnip. One, cut up and steamed, seems to add a little hotness to anything without being obnoxious. Every time I've bought turnips so far, the checker asks what they are. I appreciate that turnips and rutabagas look alike and they might want to be sure which is which. Still, I find it depressing. What do you people eat?
    Apparently, it's the '60s all over again, because I went out and got some radishes, too. We used to like to eat them raw, rubbing them into salt. Still works.

Driving at night

    Other night I wasn't falling asleep. I wasn't tossing and turning either, but I wasn't falling asleep. Just for the heck of it, I tried to visualize going for a drive. As I'm probably the least visual person living (not counting people born blind), it took up a lot of my mind and was still very hard. Possibly because it took up so much of my mind, pretty shortly I was asleep. I don't know if this is because I'm very weird or very normal. I guess it isn't so much different than the traditional approach of counting sheep. That never worked for me, possibly because I never tried to visualize them. Maybe I'll try that next time. Anyway, if you can't sleep, try taking a drive in your head; maybe it'll put you to sleep, too. Gotta go; I'm sleepy!

Best health scare ever

    The nurses at dialysis were concerned about dark places between Dad's toes, since diabetics often have problems with their feet. So they recommended very strongly that he see a podiatrist, and he did. It turned out to be just dirt. He said he never washed between his toes. Dad and especially Margaret thought it was very funny; I have to agree. But it certainly was nice to have a health question resolved so simply.
    You may be asking why if the dialysis nurses were so concerned, why didn't they just investigate and find out it was just dirt? That's a good question.

Probably not the finest blog entry ever

    Got up at 5 this morning. Picked up Paul by 6, and headed down the road. Made it to the ferry landing in plenty of time, ignoring the sprinkles of rain we hit here and there. Bull Island was very nice under the clouds, and very soon even nicer without them. It was one of the truly glorious days ever. We just walked up up up the beach, and then down it a while, too. Pictures were tooken in great profusion. I prevailed on Paul to buy and use sunblock, but didn't have the sense to use it myself. I thought I could rely on the hat; was mistaken. Nose, neck, hands are burnt; nothing too bad, though. We went to Whole Foods for supper, because I wanted to get their gluten-free cookies. They changed the recipe, though, adding dairy. So I couldn't get them. But the red curry chicken was stupendous, so I wasn't too disappointed.
    Sorry this wasn't more fluent, but I'm cooked well-done and seriously exhausted. Fun fun fun, though for sure!

Ford Granada

    Back in the '70s, Ford introduced a new car, the Granada, with an ad campaign to the effect that valet parkers and such couldn't distinguish it from a Mercedes-Benz. This struck me at least as wildly funny because the car didn't look anything at all like a Mercedes from any angle. I liked them, mind you, but they didn't have the advertised resemblance at all. Then I went to France and saw the European car called the Ford Granada. Which looked exactly like a Mercedes-Benz. So I can only assume that there had been a plan to market the European model in the States, it fell through, but they stuck with the ad campaign anyway. It was only a few years later when they started the World Car program with the Escort. Maybe the Granada would have been a trial run. I could look it up of course, but my only point was how weird that ad campaign was, and how ironic that it could have just as easily been totally accurate.

Rock n roll music

    A million years ago, John Lennon put out an album called "Rock n Roll Music." A few years later, friends of mine at Penn put a song from it on a tape for me. "Sweet Little Sixteen" was the song. I liked it OK, but it always struck me as too slow. John was an incredible rock singer, maybe the best. Just think of what he did on "Twist and Shout." So yesterday, I thought of that album again and how good it might be if he captured half of that early Beatles energy. I looked up tunes on YouTube, but all I could find was him doing "Peggy Sue." While it was fun and interesting to hear John sing like Buddy Holly, it would have been even more fun and interesting to hear him do it as John Lennon. So still a disappointment.
    Anyway, I looked up some reviews (which were retroactively enthusiastic) and got the story on the record. Apparently, Chuck Berry's management felt that "Come Together" was too close a copy of a Chuck Berry song, and John agreed. So he further agreed to make an album with a bunch of Chuck Berry songs on it. (There are some cool side angles involving Phil Spector and Berry's management putting out an early version of the Lennon record via TV ads; you could look it up.) But what made me laugh was what got me there in the first place: "Sweet Little Sixteen" the song that the Beach Boys ripped off to make "Surfing USA" and which Chuck had to sue over to get writing credit on (and royalties from). I suspect John put it on the record for that reason, but what do I know?

No lectures

    Or anyway, no lectures while I was there. Nobody at dialysis had anything to say about Daddy missing Saturday's session, and my worries that we'd have to sit there for hours enduring the silent treatment were completely unfounded. The technician took him back immediately, even saying that she had been waiting for him, which was peculiar inasmuch as we were in fact early. But I am certainly in no way complaining. Totally thrilled more describes how I feel about it.
    Dad seems none the worse for his fall yesterday, and if anything only very slightly weaker for having missed dialysis. So it was a lovely wedding and everything turned out well. I've got to learn to avoid worrying until AFTER bad stuff happens.

Not the best idea ever

    So I've been reacquainting myself with longer distance hiking, taking advantage of the mild Spring weather. I especially wanted to cover as much ground as possible at Congaree National Park, partly because of the coming intense heat, but mostly because of the hatching intense flies. So today I took on the River Trail, one of the longest. Being a genius in my own right, I brought along: one 0.5 litre bottle of water. (Note from your friendly old neighborhood old hiking book author (who is old): don't do this.)
    I also brought along two cell phones, neither of which were a lot of help as Congaree NP is a dead area for cell service. This comes up because when I finally hit the river, one of them came alive. I had three voicemail messages. My dad fell down this morning and Margaret couldn't get him up, nor could she reach me or brother William. Fortunately, the last message was to the effect that she got him up and he was fine. If not, I would have been in a fine kettle of fish, more than an hour's walk and a half-hour's drive away. I phoned and she assured me that everything was fine, so I was a little bit relieved.
    So I continued taking the long way around, rather than the short way back. It was another situation where it's a good thing that I really, really, really like hiking in the woods, because the trail isn't outstandingly scenic. There are two spur trails to the river, and those offer nice views. Also, I had the iPod playing really outstanding old time radio shows. Not just everybody gets to listen to a show about werewolves in lonely dark woods while walking through lonely dark woods. BOO! Exactly. Also Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds." Personally, I still can't believe they pre-empted Ramon Raquello and his orchestra for that crap.:)
    There was one section that was insanely beautiful, but it just wouldn't photograph that well. Butterflies were legion and gorgeous, but they, too, declined to pose. The herd of feral hogs that I met early in the hike ran away from me, which was very much OK with me. Lizards were also very numerous, but equally camera-shy. And the kayakers I saw in a creek looked like they were having enough trouble with snags without having somebody take a picture of them, so I left them alone, too.
    In the end I was out hiking for three and a half hours. If I hadn't started in the morning, I probably would have been in all kind of trouble. As it was, I got a bit dehydrated and didn't get lunch until almost two hours late. But I think I'll live. Will I go back? Sure! This Fall.

I'd like to talk with you

    I am generally sympathetic to panhandlers, and have a history of being generous to them. So I was surprised myself how annoyed I got with the one who tried the "Excuse me, sir, I'd like to talk to you" approach on me yesterday. (Annoyed, but not belligerent; I replied, as politely as I could, "I'm just taking a walk.") I think it's the dishonesty. No, you don't want to talk to me; you want to ask me for money. I think I would advise them just to cut to the chase. Nine out of ten people would turn them down, but I seriously doubt that "I'd like to talk to you" is getting them a better result. Also, if a person has earbuds in, there is very, very little probability that he wants to talk to anybody. Nothing personal.
    Of course, they might wonder why I would expect common sense or polite behavior from someone who has had it beaten out of them by life. As have I. As have I.

Sometimes my subconscious makes me feel better

    Not about life necessarily (though that happens, too) but about me. Or my larger mind. Last night I dreamed (also dreamt) that I was taking care of a relative's baby. Granted, I don't have any relatives likely to have a baby, but hey, it was a dream. He was a very good baby, very quiet. But I gradually noticed that he had a very faint strawberry birthmark covering his face. In real life, this would be somewhat alarming. In the dream, I was very accepting, and very confident that everything would work out. Either it would fade or the kid would get by. These ideas aren't very consistent with reality, but they were nice in the dream.
    My other dream wasn't so nice. I had earned a whole lot of money. I did so legally, or at least the dream didn't specify otherwise, but I was keeping it in cash in a gigantic clear plastic bag which, other than being full of cash, looked like a very large square pillow case. A friend of mine from long ago in real life turned up with two totally fictitious employees. He and I were quite friendly but the employees clearly had designs on my plastic bag. They all went away but the employees came back. My dreams are often a bit bifurcated, such that, say, in this case in one fork I fight them and in another I talk them out of their larcenous intentions. I think my sleeping mind chose the latter eventually. And this also makes me feel better about my subconscious, and my mind in general.
    I also feel better about the mockingbird, who finally shut up and let me sleep without tunage, which in turn probably is what allowed all these vivid dreams. Long may he wave, so long as he's quiet at night!

What was THAT all about?

    So for a couple of days there, everybody in the world (give or take six or seven billion) was surfing in on my blog. It was particularly odd because of the number of countries they were from. It wasn't quite every country on the planet, but it was getting there. Also, there were very few referers shown, as if they all just happened to surf in at random at appoximately the same time. I certainly don't mind; everybody's welcome here (Hi!). It was just more than a little weird. I wonder if I was Blogger's blog of the day or something similar. I guess I'll never know. Regardless, the influx seems to have ended. Thanks for dropping by, everybody!

Good evening

    I'm always more than a little non-plussed when someone wishes me a good evening and it isn't in fact evening. I was especially so this morning before ten when the bagger at Publix did so. I wish I could have come up with some clever, witty riposte that might have, you know, underlined what time of day it in fact was. The best I could come up with, a few minutes too late, was, "I'm still working on the morning, but I'll try to have a good evening, too." Still, I dunno; might come across as snotty. The guy meant well. I guess the best is still the traditional: "Thanks. You, too!"
    Meanwhile at dialysis, zippiness did not last. We had an hour's wait in reality. Even allowing for the fact that we arrived early and that they expect a fifteen-minute grace period, it was still a half hour. I didn't jump up and down or foam at the mouth or anything, but I was not terribly well-pleased. (Well, actually I was, having awakened for some reason in a surprisingly good mood, but not well-pleased about the situation at hand.) Ah well, there will be better days.

Smudge

    Dang kitty had a smudge on her head yesterday. Or a flea. I about drove myself crazy trying to figure out which it was. Amelia tends to flee (har de har) whenever I come at her with the flea comb, but I eventually got her calmed down and was able to check her head pretty closely. I don't have the kind of eye-hand coordination that would allow me to pluck a flea off her, but I would definitely be able to see it move. I didn't. Today, the smudge, or flea, is gone. She hasn't been scratching herself any more than usual, so I figure she just got dirty. Maybe another one of her chimney forays. I'm still thinking about getting her some Feline Advantage regardless. Better safe than sorry.

Zippy!

    The dialysis facility got Dad in back immediately today! So fast, in fact, that I couldn't get the car moved out of the unloading area and his pillows and blankets inside to him before he was gone. (A staffer was waiting on them, though.) And it was a busy morning for them, too. So maybe the "Sure he's a big wheel, too, but he ought to have priority because he's 91" argument carried the day. Or maybe it was sheer luck, who knows? We'll see as time goes on. But for today I'm very, very pleased.
    Meanwhile in Margaretville, she and Dad seem to be adjusting to one another better all the time. Hope that keeps up, too. Yay all around!

Nano nano

    OK, maybe I'm a trifle anal-retentive. I was reloading the iPod Nano with old-time radio shows, like I mentioned the other day that I would. It holds 8 Gb, but I had learned the first time that eight doesn't really equal eight. So I tried to put on about seven and a half. This was too much; iTunes put on what it could. So I looked and found that 8Gb is really 7.35 Gb. So I cut my choices down to 7.34 Gb. Same thing happens, and again at 7.24. Finally, I got it cut down to where I could get all my data files on there. It was much more effort than was needed for a result where I'll never be able to tell the difference anyway. But hey; I am in CONTROL! Also deliriously happy to have my Nano the way I want it.

Scritches

    Six years with this kitty and I call her dumb. Often, she scratches the top of her head furiously with her back foot. She often does this when I've just been giving her scritches. I worried that she might have some extremely slick fleas that left no other proof of their presence, or maybe mites or something. The other day, though, it finally occurred to me that what she was saying was, "Scritch here, stupid!" Just on the inside edge of either ear. Given the worshipful looks that she gives me when I do so, I think I'm finally reading her right. Smart girl. Dumb John.
    In other kitty-related matters, living with a cat and with no person has me mostly talking baby talk. It hasn't affected my brain though, not at all. That's a GOOD brain! It's a sweetie-sweet-sweet brain! It's the best brain in the whole darn world! No, hasn't affected me a bit.

Beep boop

    So I was driving down the road, oblivious, when this douche in a pickup passes me on the right (on a wide portion of a two-lane street), stops at the subsequent Stop sign, and starts yelling back at me. He's yelling at me about not stopping for stop signs and cutting him off. I have literally no idea what he's talking about. My best guess is that when I turned onto the road we were on, I stopped a little briefly and pulled onto the road he was already occupying (but at least 100 feet away). Which might not be the best way to drive, but is certainly legal and certainly not the worst cutting off he's going to experience in Columbia. He was threatening to crack me in the head and I pulled out my cell and told him to get in his truck and go or he'd be talking to a police officer in a matter of minutes. He did so, spinning his wheels of course. The odd thing is that I was never afraid. I guess when you stare down Death for long enough, other stuff isn't so frightening.
    Dreams have been wacky lately. Last night, there was some business about a car dealership where four guys were painting everything green. Thing is, they started with themselves. They looked sleek! Then I had to wake up at four in the morning to take my friend Evans to work. (He's been dead five years now.) Then the real alarm went off. The other day I dreamed that my brother was going to get my blog published. (Not this one; a fictitious, interesting one.) He said that it was up for some awards and he wanted to get those cleared away first. For example, there was this joke that was up for an award. He told me the joke and I said that I didn't write it; I didn't even know it. That didn't seem to be a problem.
    I bet you're wondering what the deal with "beep boop" is. I've been making ready to change out my first 8 Gb of old-time radio on the iPod Nano for a second 8 Gb. This has required a good deal of copying files from my OTR CDs to my hard drive, which has in turn required a great deal of listening to beeps and boops. I think the CD/DVD drive on this poor old ill-used laptop is failing. Anyway, I'm done a-ripping and will very shortly be able to make the changeover. You could hardly believe how excited I am about this. Well, you probably could, but I'm fairly surprised about it.
    Meanwhile, I threw my back out this morning and barely anything happened. It may be that my somewhat halting efforts to improve my upper-body strength are actually paying off. Or maybe I was just lucky. Happy about it regardless.

Kmart of my dreams

    So the Kmart of my childhood, which creeps entirely too often into my dreams, bites the dust momentarily. As I've noted elsewhere, I'm not at all sure which is worse: losing the Kmart of my childhood, or just having to admit that I had a Kmart of my childhood. I still have some 45s with the 68 cent Key 1 sticker on them. Their efforts ten-odd years ago to turn the store into an imitation Super Walmart never quite panned out. I would go there from time to time, but service varied from miserable all the way up to very poor. So it's hard to miss them very much. But it's always hard to lose a link to younger days, even if those weren't all that stellar either. Now if they'd only close the one in my dreams.
    Dad will get to go to Brittany's wedding after all. He just skips dialysis. The official word is that although they can't recommend him doing so, there are no adverse consequences. (Assuming his kidneys can do the job for two extra days, that is.) We cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Birdies

    I love Spring. Really. But when the world's greatest mockingbird goes off at 4 in the morning, I love it maybe a trifle less. At the moment, some blessed creature is chirping so as to be audible even over slightly loud music. The latter isn't much of a problem, but the 4 am concerts are. At one point a freight train went by (also a problem, but at least I knew the tracks were there when I moved here) and I could still hear the dang mockingbird.
    I play music low in hopes of sleeping the night through, but birdy easily overwhelms it. If I played it loud enough to drown out the bird, it would also be too loud to let me sleep. Maybe I should get CDs of birds singing. I think it's the randomness and intermittentness that wakes me. If the bird song were constant, maybe I could sleep. Maybe.
    I got to talk to the social worker at the dialysis facility and voiced my concerns. They got him in a lot quicker this time. I did convey that although I wasn't asking for priority because he's a big wheel, I thought that being 91 did give him a certain priority. Hopefully the message was received.

Missed it

    When I was 17, I had the good fortune to tour France all summer with a group (mostly) from my high school. I also had the good fortune to miss "Ring My Bell" by Anita Ward. On the other hand, I also missed "My Sharona" and, I think, "Roxanne." You pays your money and you makes your choices.
    Three years later (or I guess it must have been four since I was a junior both times), I was even more fortunate to spend a year abroad in Canterbury. It was a tremendous hoot in almost every way, but my bad song dodging karma definitely deserted me. I got to experience "Come On Eileen" as a monster hit in Britain. Then I got home and it became a monster hit stateside. Tura lura indeed.

That again

    We had another instance of a lovely almost one-hour wait to get Dad into the dialysis area. I again used the "Can we get him a chair time when there's an actual chair available?" strategy, which at least got him in fairly quickly. But even better would be not having to use any strategy.
    Meanwhile, my brilliant idea of having him come in Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday instead of Monday, Wednesday and Friday has yet to pay dividends, as they haven't gone dancing on a Friday night yet. But it's already imposed a cost, as Margaret's great-granddaughter is getting married a couple of Saturdays from now and the only way dad can miss dialysis is to go on both the preceding Thursday and Friday. He's not too bummed, but I suspect that Margaret will be. Dang it.
     (Not to suggest in any way that he doesn't want to go to the wedding. It's just that with the walker, going anywhere is kind of a pain in the butt.)

Drum circle

    Somewhere along the line, some time in the last 20 years or so, there was a bestselling book called "Iron John" and a men's movement that grew out of it, complete with men going off into the woods to beat on drums. And then the next trend came along and that was it for the mighty drum circle movement. I don't know if anyone got their consciousness noticeably raised or not.
    I was thinking that a better kind of drum circle would be to have one as an exercise class. Of course, I'm largely thinking of really kinetic drummers like Keith Moon or Mick Fleetwood; a lot of drummers move about as much as an accountant. And even Moonie had gained a lot of weight at the end. Still, moving all four limbs at the same time is more exercise than most of us get most of the time, and it would be crazy mad fun.
    I rely of course on technical advances that I'm not absolutely sure have happened. You would need drum kits that are largely synthesized and channel most of the sound into headsets you could wear. (Or it would be a REALLY loud exercise class.) But I think it would be a tremendous blast. There's no need to limit it to men, though most of the people I know who like generating random noise at great volume are from my gender. I want to do it. Even if I'm not Iron John.

The Great White, Black and Brown Hunter

    As I may have mentioned here and there, my small four-legged sidekick has a tendency to pounce my foot now and again when I'm sleeping. Now that I'm down to one blanket, this can be painful. (Ditto her need to knead my shoulder, now less likely to be blanket-insulated. Ouch.) I noticed that this mainly happens between 6 and 7 in the a.m.. When the birds start twittering. I guess they just wind her up. So I'm considering getting a clock radio, not to get me up (the wristwatch alarm is adequate for that) but to drown out the birds. 'Cause wearing steel-toed boots to bed probably wouldn't be all that comfortable.