Day 48 "If you get into her shit you will get shit on you!"

Day 48 of Challenge Ran 5 miles/ Total so far: 90 miles/ Miles to go: 910.

Sunday was cold and rainy. I really did not mind. I know that in a few short weeks summer will slap me and Dallas with hot dry weather and I will miss the cool, wet spring we have had this year. I had planned to do a lot of work at the house, both personal and for school, but as I sat on the front porch with my coffee, Gym Rat called and asked me to meet him from brunch at Lucky's. I enjoy Sunday brunch and succumbed to the offer. I also assumed that he wanted to talk about putting in an offer on the condo, etc., things we could have discussed and finalized yesterday instead of shopping at the Gap, but I did not bring that up.

As I have written before, even though the food is not as good as it once was, there is an energy and ambiance at Lucky's that brings us back many Sundays. It is always crowded, with lines sometimes outside the door. You serve yourself coffee while you wait and usually see some friends or other regulars that you recognize who also frequent the place. This Sunday was no exception. I worked my way through the crowd to the coffee area at the bar and found it occupied by one of the more annoying species of customers...a gaggle of "pretty girls" too made up in the face for the sports outfits they were wearing. They were either oblivious of the coffee etiquette or just did not care, because after getting their coffee they kept standing there, chatting nonsense and blocking the way for everyone else who wanted coffee. Fortunately the outdoorsy type bartenderess behind the counter noticed my frustration and in a loud voice hollered out "Move on Ladies, people want coffee!" God bless real women in plaid shirts who tell it like it is!

Unfortunately the coffee was very weak and I wondered if that was another casualty of the demise of local ownership of Lucky's like the loss of fresh strawberries. When they called out our name "Oscar" I was happy to get a nice table by the window with our favorite waiter, Jim. Of course, neither Gym Rat or I have the given name, Oscar. We just use it at Lucky's. It was a mistake that David the Host once made and it stuck as a running joke. My brother Cameron, on the other hand, often gives the name Wong when waiting for a table, particularly at a Chinese restaurant, but then, you would have to know Cameron to understand this behavior.

It was past noon and I decided I wanted lunch after a week of cooking eggs and bacon at the house. I ordered grilled salmon which came with a side salad and two other "sides". I tried to pick the healthy ones, broccoli and steamed spinach. When it all arrived I knew this was another mistake. The salmon was overcooked as were the vegetables and the salad was tasteless. I ended up eating half the salmon and a few bits of the rest. I did not feel great for some reason and this was enough. Lucky's was followed by a stop a Luke's Locker, a local running store across the street from Lucky's, where Gym Rat needed to pick up some running shoes he had ordered. As he was fitted I picked up a number of race forms. I think I will try running a lot of races as part of my training and as a motivation.

After lunch, the lure of another nap called my name but I resisted and I have you and this blog to thank. I knew if I went home and napped I would not get back out and run, especially in this weather which is perfect for sleeping. So I went instead to the gym and ran five miles. I was not as fast as Friday. I tried using ear phones attached to the monitors so I could hear the tvs stationed in front of the cardio machines. I did not really like any of my choices. CNN was too depressing and golf was too boring. After just a few minutes, I pulled the earphones out and went back to my mind games of calculating how long I had to run to hit gravy and then double gravy and triple gravy, etc. I guess I need to break down and get an Ipod and join this decade's technology (or was that last decade?)

After the run, my calves were hurting some, even with stretching. I decided to go to the King Spa and reward myself with an acupressure treatment and lots of hot whirlpool and steam. In truth, it does not take much to want to reward myself with a trip there. It had been a couple of weeks since my last visit. I was lucky when I checked in that the Phillip, my favorite therapist, was available for a 90 minute treatment in about 30 minutes. I went to the sauna and steam and whirlpool and then to my massage, which Phillip refuses to let me call a massage. "It is acupressure, not massagee!" He tells me in his heavy Korean accent. "Massagee, like Swedish, it ok, but not like this....I have special training and this is acupressure...get rid of all toxins and treat all of body...not just rub up and rub down like Swedish!" And he is right, after pounding and pulling and pushing and stretching and even walking on my feet and legs with his feet, I felt like a piece of overcooked spaghetti, but it was wonderful.

After the massage, and on strict orders from Phillip, I went to the wet area again in the Men's locker room for more whirlpool and sauna. That is where I met another strange cast of characters. Usually about two thirds of the patrons of King Spa are Asian. Sunday night was no exception. In the sauna there were four older Asian men and when two younger ones entered, there was the proverbial introductions and bowing. While I did not understand the language, I gathered from the body language that one of the newcomers was the son of one of the other men.

The ritual in the wet area is to go from sauna to steam to whirlpools (three with slightly higher temperatures) showering in between and then to plunge into the cold pool and do it over again. My second trip to the steam was where I encountered the first of my memorable characters Sunday. When I entered there were three older large Caucasian men and two younger fit men in the steam room. One of the fit men, I shall call Blondie, was explaining to the older guys how they could stay in the steam for 15 minutes if they first went to the cold pool. He had that "truck driver from the country" accent. "Yeah, I looked it up and I learned all about the technique of this place" he explained. The older guys said that they did not think they could make 15 minutes. Just then, one of the spa workers, a Mexican cleaning boy, opened the steam room door and asked if Kevin was there. "Yeah, I'm Kevin." Blondie remarked. The worker continued "Some girls are outside. They said they are ready to leave and want you to come out." Kevin just sat there and the worker left. "Shit" he explained. "If my girlfriend thinks I am leaving now she is really dumb. I spent over 70 bucks for us all to come here and I will be damned if I am going to leave until I am ready to leave. She can just wait....she is probably not comfortable with being naked and all of that, this being her first time here and all, but hell, men don't give a shit. She was in a car accident and it was pretty bad but she and walk and shit...."

At this point I had to use all of my willpower not to laugh. My perverse mind was wondering so many things. First, how he had the self confidence to just do what he wanted and piss her off and not care. I have always been too nice. It was refreshing, in a weird sort of way, to see someone totally content to just do what they were going to do and let the rest of the world adjust or not. I knew that in the world of Cosmopolitan Magazine or Oprah, he would be considered a world class asshole. But there was something strangely liberating about listening to a man who was not "sensitive" in these politically correct days. And then there was the entire speculation about how we use words today when they can have so many meanings. Like shit...when he said his girlfriend could "walk and shit" what did he mean? Was he using shit as a verb or a noun? I know, gross and way too much information, but after the acupressure and steam, I was tripping. It was at least another 45 minutes and two more urgent messages from the spa worker before Blondie finally left. I wish I could have heard his encounter with his girlfriend. But I will just have to speculate.

I also saw what I have always assumed a Sumo wrestler must resemble without the little cloth. This black man opened the sauna door and promptly slipped on the wet wood floor coming withing an inch of crashing to the floor. He somehow caught himself and I was glad because I do not know what I would have done if he had fallen down and blocked the door. No way I could have moved him. He did not even stay. He was just opening the door so he could hang a large towel (his own, as they do not supply these at the spa and instead give you mountains of small ones about the size of a large dish towels). I am sure you are not supposed to use the dry sauna for a dryer. I told him to be careful and he left. Later as I was leaving I saw him again and what was definitely the most creative use of belly fat. I wish I could have recorded it for America's Funniest Home Videos. He was walking around with one of the small towels that they furnish covering his privates, but the way he attached it was amazing. He simply slid one side of the towel up under his belly fat roll and the weight of the fat hanging down against his belly held the towel in place so he could walk around and comb his hair, brush his teeth, etc. Amazing and creative.

The final character I encountered at King Spa was a Dear Abby kind of a guy sitting in the locker room area in his towel and pontificating to someone on the phone about how to handle some drama in their life. I could not help but overhear his conversation (as I am sure everyone else in the locker room could considering the volume, including the strange eastern European man speaking to another in a language I did not understand...this man having tied a towel around his head in some manner I cannot explain other than to say that there were round towel buns on both sides of his head so that he looked like a Scandinavian girl who has twisted her braids into buns on the side of her head...twilight zone) Mr Abby told his mentee "Listen, She gots lots of pressure now...you gots to let her blow or it will blow up on you man, you get it?...You can listen to her shit, but don't go trying to solve anything or get messed up in her shit or your gonna get shit all over you...you understand man?" Shit was flying everywhere it seems at King Spa tonight.

I returned home to eat the rest of my bar b cue chicken from yesterday's Kroger experience. I opened a bottle of Zinfandel left over from the Easter party to wash down the chicken and went to bed. Life is Good!