The perils of forgetting your sunglasses

It's dark and cloudy.  I didn't pop my contacts in this morning after a day of staring, unblinking I would imagine, at my computer screen had left me with irritated eyes.  So I ran out to the bus stop not remembering to switch into my sunglasses.  As I was getting my audiobook fired up along comes our neighborhood 7th Day Adventist, trying to get people to take a copy of  "The Watchtower".  She's got quite a little racket.  She lives in a highrise building across the street from mine - it's a retirement place.  In the mornings she walks up an down both sides of the street, loitering at the bus stops and asking people if they need something to read on the bus.  I spotted her game immediately when I started riding the bus.  Thanked her and declined and that's about the time I started making sure I had my armor on before going to the bus stop.  Ah but this morning ..... as she was approaching me I realized I had my regular glasses on.  I did have my ear buds in my ears but it's the eyes.  I waved her off and switched out the glasses.  You'd think after all these months that she'd know better than to approach me but I guess not.  Funny thing -- a few months after I met her and would see her around the neighborhood as I was walking Tinkerbell I had a dream.  In the dream I was passing the bus shelter and I looked in.  Sitting on the bench was a woman, her back to me, smoking a cigarette and drinking something from a paper bag.  As I got closer she turned and it was the little Watchtower lady, only she looked devilish.  Every time I see her now I think of that and have to suppress a smile.

I am sore today!  My run yesterday was awesome and I've been doing my half hour at home as well.  These workouts I do at home rely on the Wii platform and rubber tubing for some upper body work.  The tubing I had was too weak so I got a package with 3 different levels.  I was doing an upper body workout yesterday, alternating sets of push-ups with shoulder presses.  I am really feeling it this morning in my back and shoulders - in fact my shoulders were so sore last night I had a hard time dropping off.  Plus on the last set I was really working hard to do that last lift and the band slipped and smacked me HARD in the back.  I didn't even bother to take a look.  I am sure I've got a huge bruise.  Luckily I won't be wearing anything with a bare back for a while.  It could cause a few questions.  Or raised eyebrows at the least.

I know it's a few weeks away, but I've been exploring different jet lag reduction options.  After a few nights I have decided that the Chinese herbs are not an effective sleep aid.  They work great for my friend Monika but don't work at all for me.  In fact I think they make me sleep lighter.  I had another of those nights when I was awake four times from noise that I would normally sleep right through.  Basically I want to sleep on the plane and sleeping sitting up is very difficult.  I don't want to get a really strong pill from my doctor because they just make me too groggy and I need to change planes in Reykjavik.  If I could stretch out on the plane then that wouldn't be a problem because six hours reclining works.  But sitting up, six hours of snoozing is less than optimal.  If I start getting up earlier the week before I leave - by 30 minutes each day - then when I leave my body clock would be closer to where I'm going.  It will be a good experiment any way.  I'll be arriving on a Sunday afternoon so if I'm exhausted I can always go to bed early.  It's just that I've only got two weeks and I don't want to waste any time sleeping when I could be doing ... well, just about anything else with my friends.