Over the weekend there was a charity document shredding drop-off event that provided an incentive to do some cleaning out of paperwork that's been piling up around the house. I dragged the big crate of documents accumulated settling my dad's affairs out of the basement onto the front deck, and started going through it for things I felt safe disposing of now, a couple of years later. It was a painful reminder of that experience, and also a meditation on impermanence once again.

After that we went and picked up the Vanagon, which was even more stressful than I had anticipated. Writing a big check to settle a maintenance/refurbishing bill that represented nine weeks of stupifying cubicle busywork was tough, but having doubts about the results made me wish once again that I had never considered starting the project in the first place.

The following morning I headed for the gym early. It was one of those days when they were blasting 80's screechy rock at high volume, and my little ear buds dispensing NPR couldn't blot it out. This gym has seventeen large screen plasma displays (and dozens of smaller screens on the cardio machines), which are usually displaying an array of disturbing stuff that is worse in the aggregate than the indivual programming. Smarmy infomercials, various pro sports, Nascar, freakish reality shows, crime dramas...there is a scene in Man Who Fell to Earth (check last couple of minutes) that gets sort of close to the effect. I don't understand why the gyms assume that everyone who wants to improve their fitness is interested in sports. My interest in team and indivdual athletic activity is way less than zero, and I find the sight and sound of televised sports coverage extremely irritating. There was one screen with a political talk show, but I guess this was a little too cerebral, so a gym staffer walked over with his remote and changed it to one of those 'sportsmen' shows where people torment and kill things for entertainment.

It's time for me to find a more modest gym that works simply for maintaining fitness, without the cultural effluent.



On the way home from the gym I stopped by the nursery, and bought enough vegetable and ornamental starts to populate most of the remaining planter and garden bed spots I have prepped. Got about half of it planted during the balance of the afternoon, and still have more to do the rest of the week after work.

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