Pretty Good Day of Unexpected Events

A lot happened today that I really did not expect but it all came together to form a pretty good day. The first thing I remember from today is waking up at around 5:20 AM and assuming that it was indeed 6:20 AM, the time for which I had set my alarm. As I start to get up I realized that it was not my alarm that had woken me up but instead it had been the torrential downpour and wicked thunder that was going on outside that had done the dirty deed. But it turned out to be pretty nice because I ended up being able to sleep for another whole hour. When my alarm finally did go off I got up and did my normal routine of eating breakfast, getting ready, and then heading off to work. The drive to work was pretty intense because Oklahoma seems to have a serious lack of storm drains so in addition to the random lakes that appear out of nowhere and the tidal waves thrown up by the Chevy Road-Boats driving beside you, the lane lines were impossible to see. Then to top it all off, the traffic lights at a major intersection went out just as I rolled up. This intersection needs help when it is running properly but the lights going out was like running over a squirrel that has already been hit, it was just wrong. But traffic rants aside, I got to work safely, waited in the normal 20 minute queue outside the gate, and rolled into the parking lot.

I immediately noticed something was askew, namely, the fact that there were perhaps a total of ten cars in the parking lot. I walked into the office only to find out that our flight was the only flight that had come to work today. Being as we are the support flight, our job is somewhat difficult to do when there is no one around to support. So we did a little work, ate bagels that someone had brought in, played along with a small exercise and then left right around lunch time. While all this was happening, we were yelling at each other, not because we were angry but because when you are in a double-wide and it is raining cats and dogs it sounds like a train is about to blast our building. So from work I headed home to relax. On the way I stopped by a camera shop to see how much DSLRs cost and what kind I might want to get. They were nice and helpful but somehow did not get the concept of, "I have no clue what I am looking for, so nothing you tell me means anything, please just tell me how to compare cameras."

I should have worked out during this extra time off but I had planned on going back to the CrossFit gym this afternoon until my wife reminded me, again, that I had to volunteer tonight. So once I was reminded of this pretty fact, I was already mostly home so I decided to relax for a while and then go to the climbing gym later. I had a snack right when I came home then I though Animal House into the Xbox 360, and laid back to enjoy the hilarity. Animal House was a decent movie, I definitely laughed quite a bit, but I could tell that when the movie came out, it must have been the funniest movie ever. Afterwards I talked with my wife and my buddy for a little while before falling asleep on the couch. I was awoken from my nap to the Skype ring on the computer which in my tired stupor sounded like the tornado sirens were going off. Needless to say, I woke up with a little start. I talked to my buddy a little longer and then headed out to pay my rent and go to the climbing gym.

The drive across town this afternoon was infinitely more enjoyable than this morning. I got to the gym and the parking lot looked pretty crowded which is sometimes a good thing and a bad thing. Lots of people can mean more people to climb with and talk to but at the same time, lots of people also means less area to climb on. When there are a lot of kids there you can pretty much count on not climbing at all. I do like kids but when they climb they have so much energy that they never stop climbing and therefore never give you a chance to get on the wall, but I digress. I walked in and headed back to the bouldering room which was prominently adorned with yellow construction tape and a lovely little sign stating that the room was closed until further notice. I immediately felt the need to tell myself out loud how upset I was that I had come to boulder and could not, to which some random girl felt the need to tell me I had failed. I went back to the front desk to ask what the deal was. Apparently the door in the bouldering room had not help up as well as anyone expected and had leaked rain water all over the floor. The inability of the door to fulfill its one task in life effectively ended my climbing adventure for today. At this point it was too late to head back home and way to early to go to the Humane Society so I decided to head back to base to get a quick workout in.

I got to the gym and decided on doing 40, 30, 20, 10 of wall ball shots, back extensions, and sit ups. As I started my workout BC came in so we chatted for a few minutes and then I got to work. The workout was pretty tough especially since I am pretty sore from yesterday in my back on my hamstrings. The back extensions were the hardest part because I did them the way that Stacy showed me to do them yesterday. When coming up from the back extension, you roll your back instead of keeping your back straight like a board. Doing the workout that way really works all the muscles in your back instead of just the lower ones. That workout took me exactly 15:30. I still had some time left so I grabbed a jump rope to practice double unders. The only place with enough space to do double unders was in the multi-purpose gym which was already mostly occupied by the aerobics ladies. So when I started to do the double unders, the "woosh" noise of the rope was pretty loud and they all stared at me. Due to this I decided the prudent move would be to do normal jump ropes and be a little quieter. I ended up just doing 3 sets of 100 jumps. After that, I headed back to the locker room to change out of my sweaty workout clothes into some clean ones to head on up to the Humane Society to volunteer.

On my way to humane society I talked to my mom for a little bit which was pretty nice. I made a dinner pit stop at Panera and had a tasty sandwich and salad. Then I finally got to the Humane Society and started doing some work. Mostly I just cleaned up and mopped. In a typical instance of cosmic irony, I walked in and there were three gorgeous puppies. Interestingly enough I had just told my wife earlier in the day we could not have a puppy yet but of course I see three cute lab puppies and thats all I can think about. They were the kind of puppies that I normally associate with the word puppy. There were also some cute kittens there tonight. There were two other dogs there, one who whined quite a bit and I felt bad and wanted to play with him but did not get to. The other was a huge 200 lb dog that seemed very nice but also very huge. After finishing all the cleaning, which went really fast due to the obscene number of volunteers, I filed paperwork for about half an hour. After that I headed home. I had hoped all day that the cool lady would be working tonight and oddly enough she was but she was working with the not so cool lady. This provided me with a best of both world scenario where I did a lot of work but still go out of there at a decent time.

After volunteering I headed home and talked to my wife along the way. During our phone call, my BlueBerry fell out of my ear and went under the seat. I was very nervous because I was afraid my wife might think that I got in a wreck. I had to wait till I got home to find my hands free device before I could call her back. I also checked my mail, that is real paper mail, and my mailbox contained a wonderful Halloween card from my wife that certainly brightened my evening. After that, I sat down at the computer and began writing this and here I am 45 minutes later. Today while talking to my wife I realized that I too want a puppy but we will have to wait until we will be around enough to take care of one.

Once again this has gotten quite long so I am going to quit typing and go make my lunch for tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow will be a good day as it is a Friday and a bad day would be hard to come by. One random thought today concerned the reasoning behind not putting reflective stuff in the roads to make the lane lines easier to see. They do put that stuff down on about 1/3 of the roads so why not all of them? Silly I think. Until tomorrow this is all you get.