Sunday

The sun has returned.

I did 20+ in the rain yesterday afternoon. I just couldn't justify sitting inside all day, so in one of the interludes from the showers, I took off knowing that I would get wet. It wasn't that bad. My goal today is 25+.

There was an obituary in the national press this week for Jerry Falwell, founder of a Christian fundamentalist college in Virginia in the '70's, now called Liberty University. He was perhaps best known for his leadership of an essentially political group described as the Moral Majority. I always thought he was a bit of a nut, but conservatives tended to cater to this bloc of voters because of their perceived ability to deliver at the polls. Their pro-life, pro-prayer and general bible-toting beliefs helped create the liberal/conservative wedge that still exists in today's political environment. Conservatives have to deal with the likes of Falwell and Newt Gingrich. Liberals are burdened with Rosie O'Donnell and Ted Kennedy. Who wins there?

And now, another off-the-wall item. I stopped at the Kimberly Road SB's this AM. I was sitting on one end of a three-person couch with a coffee table in front. I had been through most of my paper and had placed part of it beside me and part of it on the coffee table. An older gentleman came over, and without comment or greeting, sat on the other end of the couch, and proceeded to pick up the parts of the paper that were beside me. In my world, that was a breech of two protocols; first, you don't sit down on a possibly-shared sofa without first asking if anyone else is sitting there; and second, you certainly don't pick up from a paper pile in front of or next to someone who is obviously reading from the same paper.

A tertiary element of this little morality play is the question of, "Who's being cheap in this situation?" The guy who wants to sponge another person's paper, or the guy who is not all that anxious to share the fishwrap (that he will be leaving on the coffee table when he leaves anyway)? This is slightly different than a similar scenario at the Hy Vee deli where coffee costs a quarter. There, the guy snarffing another's paper is definitely cheap. Then again, at the new Hy Vee, the price of coffee probably doubled. And the snarffer has seen his economic equation go south.

(That Hy Vee example really goes out the window next month when a SB counter opens up inside the grocery store. The dynamics of Hy Vee coffee versus SB's coffee will really complicate this analysis.)

The conclusion to this little episode was anticlimatic. I consciously chose not to say anything to the guy because I think it is equally small of people to make an issue of such an insignificant transgression. But when I see the guy come in again, I'm picking up all of my paper and stuffing it in the cushion on my other side and forcing him to scavenger elsewhere for his reading material. And when I leave, I'm dumping it on a table across the room next to some other paper-hungry souls.

Blogger spellcheck has a problem with "snarffer". We'll just call it a family colloquialism.

Big day for Indy and NASCAR. A racing fanatic could watch left turns for 7-8 hours. I'll pass. Indy has made itself insignificant and the NASCAR race is 600 miles of tedium.

So y'all have a great day.

Be careful out there.