What I Watch at 5 A.M.

Don't you sometimes wish your car were
headed to the Waffle House instead?
--Downtown YMCA desk clerk who checks me in each morning

So the call of the gym at 5 a.m. just isn't that strong but it is enough to beacon me to the YMCA and go running on a treadmill. The downtown Y has a plug-in option on each treadmill so a bum like me can watch television while I run. Occasionally I'll plug into a discussion on BookTV .

To discuss my BookTV habit, even in cyberspace, leaves me conflicted. Here I am, committed to run x number of miles, and I have this opportunity to listen to smart people talk about books. What could be wrong with that? What's wrong with that is I haven't read the book itself and I feel somewhat like an interloper for listening in. Ultimately I've resolved that listening to an intelligent conversation can only leave me better off. Its not like I plagiarize the book, pose as an expert, or even pretend I've read the text. I like smart people. I've been lucky enough to befriend lots of smart people. Why not listen to smart people who happen to have written books?

This blog is a strange, rambling way for me to recommend the following BookTV discussions. In an era of iphones I don't generally make digital recommendations. I have, however, come back to the thoughts expressed in each of the following shows:

Starbucked: A Double Tall Tale of Caffeine, Commerce, and Culture
Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America
The Next American Century
In Defense of Food

Days, sometimes weeks, later I find myself glad for my 5 a.m. treadmill date. What kind of sick talk is that, you ask? Occasionally the treadmill brings me smart discussions that challenge me to think new thoughts and that's good stuff. Its not good stuff like hot maple syrup or a side of bacon from the Waffle House would be good stuff -- but its good stuff nonetheless.

Thrown To The Dogs

It's okay to love your pets, just don't looooove your pets.
--Janeane Garofalo, The Truth About Cats And Dogs

Brent's latest Mother Jones magazine arrived in our mailbox last week. From it he quoted a somewhat disturbing statistic. Evidently women were posed the scenario of their dog suddenly becoming human. The question asked for a true/false response to the statement "If my dog were to suddenly become human he would be my boyfriend".

Well over a third of the women answered in the affirmative.

Nearly Thirty-Five

I thought of a friend of mine from college named MacGreggor who was in a lot of my classes at CSU. The fact that I passed Dendrology is entirely attributable to MacGreggor (Mac)'s willingness to be my study partner. I lost touch with him years ago. A casualty of graduating college and both of us scattering from Fort Collins for entry level jobs. In the daily crush of “to-do” items in my planner and the ten years of time between my feet and the CSU campus I don’t think of MacGreggor often but I did think of him this morning.

Actually I thought of one moment with MacGreggor when I was twenty-two-ish and I bumped into him at the (no lie) Déjà vu coffee shop. His textbooks laid open, he invited me to join him. We talked about classes or roommates or some such and Mac mentioned a woman he was dating.

The female inquisitor in me fired off a bunch of questions to learn more about this new girlfriend. He answered my questions but all the while fidgeted with his coffee cup, re-arranged his highlighter pens on the table. I must have asked something along the lines of whether he really liked her when (and this is the moment that came to me) he stopped fidgeting, squared his shoulders and looked at me to say “Melissa, she makes me shiver.” MacGreggor didn’t throw around words or make romantic gestures for sport. Using a word like shiver could never have been inspired by its poetic value or because he'd rehearsed it for affect. He said it because it was true.

My thirty-fifth birthday is this week. Any birthday where my age ends in a 5 or a 0 inspires the pensive mood thinking about old friends, wondering what the future holds. The pensive moment overtook me this morning, I suppose. The smell of fresh coffee rising from downstairs, Naomi bemoaning how early it was, how sleepy she felt. I caught a glimpse of my wrinkled face in the mirror as I brushed my teeth and MacGreggor came to mind. I suddenly wished we had a coffee date at the Déjà vu so I could tell him that at nearly thirty-five life is good. He could buy me a cup of coffee and I could fail to elaborate about myself but brag about my kid. I have stumbled around to find or fix up a pretty good life. The sweetness of that realization made me shiver.