Friday to Saturday

The weather has been fall-like for the last few days. And the nights have been chilly.

When I got to work Friday, the room temperature was in the 50s. As you'll remember from my many past grumblings, this is the building with the so-called-state-of-the-art heating/cooling system. I think they should close the damn thing down and just give everybody a funeral-parlor fan and a shawl. If it's hot, you can fan faster. If it's cold, you can pull the shawl tighter.

I'm convinced the unruly temps caused by the system are one of the reasons for my continuing upper respiratory problems. By lunch time, I had a cold-induced nagging headache, so I sat in the car to warm up.

Again, I drove off to eat at the Chinese restaurant This time I went up the Interstate which was much faster. But it took almost 15 minutes to drive from the Interstate across to the restaurant. And the trip back was a series of stops and starts so contruction traffic could come and go.

Friday night, I woke up feeling downright cold. I went to the closet and got out a comforter and a blanket, and I still felt chilly. When I got up Saturday morning, I was congested and slightly achy.

Around 10:30 I went off to take mother to lunch. Around 2 hours later when I got back, I had to load the car for a trip to the laundry. Since I didn't go last weekend, I had more than normal for this week.

There is something curiously ageless about doing the laundry. The dynamics are essentially the same. Items have to be selected, gathered, moved, and washed. The locations for the washing are limited. Thousands of years ago, it may have been a sunny spot by a pool or the surf. Now it might be the laundry room or a public facility.

As I was standing by the washer yesterday, it struck me that there was little difference between what I was doing now and what someone might have done outside a cave in prehistoric Asia. Then it might have been clothes pounded on rocks, now it's clothes swirled around a piece of plastic.

Once everything was returned home, I set out to engage in my weekly ritual act of shopping at WalMart. After you've been to a place several times, you create a map in your brain of the best route to take. If I cut through housewares, I'll come out at the cereal aisle. And if I turn left at shampoo, I'll be in the cat food section. There's always congestion by cosmetics, so it's easier to dart by exterior paint.

Later, a friend and I tried a new restaurant. One that I'd noticed in the phone book the other day as I was trying to find the Chinese restaurant. What I'd not realized was that the new site was a Japanese style place.

It was a very bright attractive space with a large sushi bar surrounded by booths at one end and grills surrounded by chairs at the other end. (What is the name for grilling done at your "table"?) There's a splendid fountain-wall at the entrance with water trickling down from the mouths of a horizontal row of ceramic frogs attached to a dark-green slate-like backdrop.

Our server would be a winner in a Jonathan Taylor Thomas look-alike contest. But I found my eye drifting to an Asian worker cleaning the bar area. He had that indefiniable look of someone who could be from anyplace from Jakarta to Sapporo.

We made a final stop at Barnes and Noble where I grazed through the sale books. And bought a $4.98 thriller about a DNA computer.

And here I am home again keyboarding away. Well actually I'm not. It's really 24 hours later, but I'm saying it's Saturday. So if I want to I can make a separate entry for Sunday.

PAX!