Old Friends

Tuesday, 12 January 1999

Sometimes things happen in clusters. Over the weekend, while Chris and I were away at Arisia, I received email from two old friends: Jeff, my college roommate from my RIT days, who's living in Seattle with his wife and our college dormmate Wendy; and Sherry, whose family lived next door to mine when I was growing up, and who'd been doing web searches to find people she knows.

Then today, I came home to find a long-awaited letter from Mimi in my mailbox -- old-fashioned paper mail, even. I guess the origami worked. This was an item-by-item reply to something I'd sent her a few months back: I'd folded David Brill's simple yet clever origami book pattern (from Brilliant Origami), labelled it "The Little Origami Book of Questions," and filled it with questions about what she was doing, and things I'd asked in email which she hadn't answered.

More neat stuff in the mail: A couple of weeks ago, I'd placed an order through the Tool Shack website for the newest model of multi-purpose tool from Leatherman, the Wave. When I showed it to Patricia at work, she went into faunch mode. It's a seriously slick tool. It has four blades that can be opened out without opening the handles, the edges are rounded for easy grip, and it's got a pair of scissors built in that work pretty well for trimming my moustache. I could have bought it at the Army-Navy store across from Crossover, but it would have cost me about twice as much. The email that the Tool Shack sent when my purchase shipped included a UPS tracking number that I could use to track the parcel as it moved across the country. This was pretty cool. It started out in Las Vegas, went to California, arrived in New Jersey yesterday, and in Manhattan this morning. Meanwhile, I've just placed an order for one of those Sports Walkman armband radio things, so I can listen to the television while running on the treadmill at my gym. See, they've got five sets bolted up on the wall, with the volume off, and they broadcast the sound short range over the FM radio band. I flick my attention between the sets as I run, mostly watching CNN and MTV. I call it the Ozymandias Workout. (You won't get that if you haven't read Watchmen.)

Speaking of working out, I skipped my workout today for the first time. That's 13 consecutive days, not too bad. Tomorrow I'm going to have to talk to a trainer about adjusting my routine -- it's been two weeks, and the weights are starting to get easy. Except for the military press, that's still a bitch.