a Fall Day, capital f, capital d, today. i woke up (late) and slogged over to the gym, per my break resolution of an hour a day, soaking my shoes on the way over and staring out at the ripped-up track while i biked 16 miles in place. it looked so desolate, with the wind whipping tiny raindrops horizontally across the gravel that used to be the football field. i was alone in the place but for janet talvacchia, who was somehow managing to grade papers while running on the elliptical trainer thingy. the day, mullan time included, consisted almost solely of reading the corrections, with breaks to re-soak my shoes on the poorly drained soccer field, go target-shopping with paul, and cook dinner at ML with paul and eileen. (and a very nice dinner it was, i must say.)

i've been feeling very lucky this week, kind of awkwardly, uncomfortably fortunate. not least the friends and food and vacation and whatnot. thinking about politics does this to me on a regular basis lately, although so do the little details of everyday life. like this one: blithely answering an "online iq test" question that the stunned ben west receptionist, and two other officers, then told me they'd been staring at for "a while now." at which point one of the officers asked me, point blank, what my SAT score had been. i said something smilingly self deprecating about how it was better than my grades, too bad i didn't have any practical skills to go with it, yada yada. to which the receptionist good-humoredly said, yeah, but you're going to get a lot farther than i'm going to get sitting here. which made me...i dunno...fortunate and sad and a little worried, somehow.

bah...i'm going to watch when harry met sally (don't ask; random recent craving) and go to bed.