"It's time to bring this ship into the shore, And throw away the oars, forever."

Title from Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore by REO Speedwagon.

I have started rowing lessons recently. We, by we I mean Lovely Wife and me, have been doing it for about two weeks now and I am going to come right out and admit that it might be my favorite sport I have ever participated in. It has everything I love in sports; outdoors, teamwork, the ability to be a part of something bigger than you can be on your own and pain like you have never experienced in the recovery process.

Holy crap! I am sore in places I think I forgot I had and am really relishing it. I think I posted back about nine or so months ago that I was going to try and go to the gym more since I was paying for a membership and it was going to waste more or less.

But I have been negligent in that desire and I know why now. I fucking hate gyms. I hate being cooped up in a stinky, gym smelling place while I have to watch people around me grimace and sweat or worse sit and talk about their day; dirty laundry, shopping lists, infidelity, boredom. Just shut up and work out for crying out loud. But out on the river you don't have the idiotic drone of the morning political pundits to power you through the work out. You have only the sound of slide, and the deafening swoosh as you heave your body back to power your oars through the water. This is my kind of work out.

To top it all off I got to witness the sunrise and the moonset in the same hour today. That is pretty special. I got back to my house at 7:30 am knowing that I did more in the first two hours of my day than I probably will in the last eight.

On a similar note, I really like my grammar class and can already notice a difference, more conscientious technique to my writing. Now I am looking at matching the number of my pronouns and nouns and making sure that the verb tense gives the sentence the exact feel that I want. This week we are going over adjectives and adverbs.

Last thing I will say today. I am a Mac user. Most of these posts come from my black MacBook. When I bought it I purchased the extended hoity-toity warranty and I am thankful for it today. I discovered a small crack on the top of the computer near the keyboard and I took it to the Apple store at the Providence Place Mall and the manager there, a guy named Eric Mills, was great and today at 12:20 I am going to dash my computer in for a little facelift. The point of that whole paragraph is to say that Apple beats out PCs in my book if for no other reason than their customer service help. Wow! Seriously I wish I could file a claim against both Dell and Microsoft to reclaim all the time I have spent on the phone talking to one of their "technical repair specialists."

That's it for me right now.

Here is a blog you should check out. Madame Z is one of my favorite contributers to Six Sentences and somehow I never knew she had a blog. It is fun reading if you keep up with her 6S posts.

"Conjunction Junction what's your function?"

Hey a little school house rocks never hurt anybody, right?

Anyway I am finally off my high horse and back in internet college. I am taking an online writer's workshop through Writer's Digest. It is a class in the basics of grammar, because I am really interested it being better at it but I feel like I write and talk like a carny sometimes; outside of my use of who and whom which was, miraculously, the only thing I took from my high school grammar classes.

So far it is going swimmingly. We are on the third lecture, which is the lecture on verbs, and I have to say I really like it. But I have trouble with some of the examples from time to time.

Anyway more later.

"i was only watching, yes i love you more undressed"

Title provided by Lloyd Cole from the song Undressed



Okay. I am off to the races on this one. No one has ever accused me of being a feminist, I have been accused of being a chauvinist tons, but never a feminist; and despite that fact I am absolutely revolted by this poster that I saw floating around town over the last week.

I have nothing to say except to say that if this is appropriate advertising we are fucking DOOMED!

There are so many things that are wrong with this that I hardly know where to begin; so here is a little list, in no particular order.

1. A girl with her panties coming off? Is that a message that we want to send to our young woman? Our daughters, our sisters, our nieces, and cousins; I sure fucking hope not.
   
2. Girls 18, Guys 19? Its like descriminating for all the wrong reasons. Shit, I feel like I am taking crazy pills here. GIRLS, YOU KNOW WHY THEY LET YOU IN YOUNG RIGHT? Jesus Christ help us all we are fucking DOOMED!
   
3. "Proper Dress Required." That is what it says right down there on the bottom of the poster, right after the phone number for the place. When I was in college, proper dress meant Khakis, a button down shirt, a blazer and maybe a tie. Tennis shoes were also not allowed. You had to look like you stepped out of a Brooks Brother Catalog. Proper dress at this place seems to involve underwear and not much else. Seriously folks. If I was a father and my daughter went out dressed like the girls that go to this place dress: I would ground her until she was 35. But the guys aren't any better. Proper dress for the guys means putting on your $300 ripped jeans and your nice layered-popped-collar-combo. Jeez I just threw up in my mouth.
   

The saddest part of this whole thing is that I feel like a fucking fuddy duddy. An old windbag. Yuck. We are doomed. DOOMED!

I don't know where the silver lining is so today I am going to go kayacking with a friend of mine and hope to G-d that I find something that makes me believe in the redemption of humanity.

Proper dress... pssh.

"It's time to bring this ship into the shore, And throw away the oars, forever."

Title provided by REO Speedwagon's Can't Fight This Feeling Anymore

CNN.com is featuring a video of a plane crash in Poland where two pilots died.

Folks this is wrong. We shouldn't be watching videos where planes crash and people die.

I don't want to get on a big diatribe about it but I will say this. We are doomed, as a species I mean, if this is news worthy material.

I am not a person who usually says we should pray about things, but I will certainly keep the families of those two pilots today.

I wish there was a way to globally boycott news when they do this.

On a not morally outraged note:

I took a free rowing lesson yesterday morning. It was about the most fun I think I have had in a while. I have been thinking about Oxford Blues for about two days non-stop. One of those classic 80's Americana movies. Something that is kind of interesting is that shortly after the movie came out--well within three years at any rate--there was a mutiny caused by some unpleasantries involving Americans on the Oxford Crew. For some strange reason I have read about this particular event a lot lately (I assume in part because this would be the 20th anniverary of the event. Long and short the Americans were given a bit of a bad wrap, they were spectacular oarsmen and when it came time to actually race a British Oarsman was taken from his preferred side of the boat to make way for a the President of the club; blah blah blah chaos ensued and the Oxford team beat Cambridge by making some pretty stunning, and illogical, decisions.

Back to the moral outrage.

I can't find Oxford Blues on DVD. Drats.