How cold is too cold to ride the scooter to work?  Well, however cold it was this morning, I’d say that’s about how cold.  Whew.  I hope I can feel my fingers in time to eat my lunch.  The 15 mph headwind didn’t help any either.  Brisk.

I finally made it back to the gym yesterday,  for the first time in several months.  It really bothers me to spend all that money on our membership all winter and then never go.  Apparently I’m not bothered enough to leave the couch and head out into the cold though.  And then after a while you think, “Well, it’s been a month now, what’s another week.”  And then another, and then another…   Plus, it’s always a disappointing workout the first several times back.  I take several pounds off the stack, you know, ’cause it’s been a while.  Then I give it a shove and nothing budges.  So I take off more, and more, until it’s at the point you have to make sure nobody is looking out of sheer embarrassment.  This definitely was the scenario yesterday.  I finally gave up in sheer frustration and just called it a “cardio day.”  Of course the word “cardio” hasn’t ever really played into my so-called workouts either.  Heck, I get winded walking up the stairs from the locker room.  Oh well.  It’s a new year, and it’s my annual routine, so why change it now.  They’ve upgraded the gym considerably since I was last there, so it was nice to see all my dues at work.  I didn’t mention it to anybody though, for fear they would respond “Uh, yeah, we did that last November, glad you like it.”

Wow I totally forgot to update this today.  I was on such a roll, too.  Sorry Carl, nearly broke my streak.

Part of the reason for my near-omission might be that we didn’t do much last night.  We did head down to the Flying Saucer for a bit.  Great place.  They had the music turned up rather loud for some odd reason though.  If it would have been good music maybe I wouldn’t have noticed;  Alas, such was not the case.  They tend to play a rather eclectic mix, perhaps in an attempt to please everybody.  More likely it ends up annoying everybody though.  Anyway…  We hung out and yelled at each other over a delicious dinner of soft pretzels, then headed home and watched the entertaining Kansas State game.  Such went Monday.

OK let’s try this again;  I think maybe if I can get through the cold today, warmer weather might be upon us.  It was light out today when I got to work too, which is an encouraging sign.  Granted, it looks like rain for the next week or so, but I’ll take that over whatever snow-ice-hail crap that was last week.

After a slow start, the weekend shaped up nicely.  Can’t say I accomplished a great deal, but I had fun, which is more important in the grand scheme.  Friday I headed down to the Brooksider and met up with Martin & Brice.  We sat around discussing our strategy for the upcoming BBQ season for several hours.  If we came up with anything revolutionary I’ve long since forgotten what it was.

Saturday I met up with the same rough crowd as Friday, and we set out on a tour of the Waldo area.  Kind of crummy weather again, so it was the best idea we could come up with.  We started off the afternoon at the Corner, where we found out there was some crazy Pub Crawl going on.  Yep, we’d inadvertently run into the annual “Barstool Open,” which is some fundraiser where a big group of rowdies go around playing miniature golf and causing a general disturbance in the balance of things.  Wow, they were loud.  We hung out and watched them until the crowd got unbearably large, then moved up the street to Patrick’s.  I’d actually never been there, and it was a nice place.  They had some dart boards for a little diversion, but before we could play a game the same crowd from the last place started filtering in.  So, driven out again, we headed further north still, and landed at Finn’s.  (I don’t think it’s named that any more, but I still call it that.)  We found refuge from the crawlers at that place, they weren’t on the list for whatever reason.  Plus, they have a pool table so that gave us something to do other than talk about BBQ and…  BBQ.  After countless horribly frustrating games of billiards, we wrapped up the evening over at Kennedy’s.  While I was out touring the southlands, Donette was down at the Main Street AMC with a bunch of girls watching movies.  They were showing all the Oscar-nominated shows back-to-back over a 24 hour period for one ticket price.  Not something that would interest me, but a pretty cool idea.

Sunday I turned it down quite a bit.  Frankly two days in a row with the Martin/Brice combo had taken a toll on me, I needed a day on the couch.  After going downtown to pick up the girls from their movie extravaganza, I indeed retired to the futon for an endless stretch of Word Twist games.  I played so many rounds that I still can’t read anything without my eyes starting to scramble up all the letters into different words.  Meanwhile, Donette spent the day sleeping off her movie-fest, then got up at the crack of 5:00 and headed out to an Oscar’s party.  I finally gave up on the Word Twist about the same time, and watched a few movies myself.  I popped in Psych:9 first, which I found remarkably entertaining despite making no sense at all.  After that I found some back-to-back Dirty Harry’s playing;  Always a safe bet.

What’s with the snow?  This interferes with my declaration of the start of bicycle season.  Doesn’t make scooterin’ too convenient either.  Nope, looks like it is back to the bus for a while.  I didn’t chance the bus last night though, and from reading the paper this morning it looks like that was a wise choice.  Instead, Donette met me down at the Phoenix and we listened to some piano music for a while and let the rush hour traffic die down.  This plot worked out well for us;  Got a little dinner out of the deal and the drive home was just fine.

Today I have the day off, which would actually thrill me if not for the high probability that, due to the inclement weather, I will sit on the couch all day.  I do have high aspirations of taking out the trash, but that’s about it.

I read this letter to the editor last week and got a good laugh out of it:

“KC mass transit lacking

This city has the worst public transportation in the universe.  The Max ridiculously meanders through downtown barely keeping schedule in nice weather.

Rain makes it late.  Snow makes it disappear.  You can outrun the thing on a Hoveround.

Kansas City, with its earnings tax, offers no service to Kauffman Stadium, even though it is miles from the urban core.”

That’s pretty funny stuff right there, I guess mostly because I ride the Max every day and the comments are so accurate.  There is probably no slower means of traveling downtown than the “Max.”  I guarantee I could beat it on my bicycle.  Granted, it’s probably not entirely the fault of the KCATA, except for the part about the wandering route.  The riders don’t really help either, waiting until they get on the bus to start sorting through their nickels for fare, oblivious to the fact that an entire bus-load of people are waiting on them.  The route is a good part of the slowness though.  It doesn’t just “meander through downtown;”  It meanders through the Plaza and Crown Center too.  Why??!!!  Just go straight down Main and it would cut off ten minutes.  Now, granted, I occasionally like to hop off at the Plaza and go to Diebel’s.  So, maybe it would fix things if they just went through the Plaza on Fridays, or better yet just when it suits me.  The part about downtown is easily fixed though, and not by the bus service.  I long ago gave up that part of the route, electing instead to just get off on the far south edge and walk the rest of the way.  I’m surprised more people don’t, it’s much quicker than criss-crossing the entire area, stopping at every single corner.  Plus, a brisk stroll across downtown always affords the opportunity to interact with all sorts of interesting people, what a bonus.

Ahhhh, I like the bus.  I sure ain’t gonna walk seven miles each way, nor am I going to take any of my myriad two-wheel transportation options when it’s raining or freezing.  So, it serves a purpose, and does so quite economically.  With a little tweaking it could be a lot better though.  I’m sure they are still pondering what action to take over the last email I sent them, and they will address this writer’s concerns after they finish with mine.