Week 5: Comings and Goings

That is not the title I intended for this piece. Usually, I write first and headline the piece later, because that's the way it works (or at least worked) in the newspaper business, Occasionally, though, the header for an entry just pops into my head, the idea behind it fully-formed, and I just run with it. So it was around 11 last night, after a Full Rich Day of entertaining and the pre's and post's of the entertainment, but I can't remember that perfect title for love or money.

Yet.

And, roughly ten hours after writing that last word, still not, so I give up.

The "coming" of the temporary title refers to me still coming to the gyms to maintain this effort. My usual pair of workout classes got compressed into the first two days of the past workweek, both of those days surrounded by much stress and even more humidity in the outside world, to the point where on Tuesday, I found myself going through three complete changes of clothes on account of sweat, only two of them involving exercise beyond general business running-about.

The "going" refers to my trainer, who moved that second class up, and postponed this coming week's into next and thereafter, to take a real vacation for over a week for her 20th wedding anniversary. It's perhaps the only area I've discovered so far where I'm actually a little ahead of her, but 20 is close enough to appreciate how hard, and yet how much fun, it was to get there.

After her return, we only have three more scheduled classes, which, for all my kvetching about specific exercises, I am already finding myself getting ready to miss. We may find other times to schedule more stuff in the fall, but it will have to be evenings, with all of life and occasionally work that competes for those hours. While I feel I've made progress in the doing during these few weeks, I can't say I've done as good a job of preparing myself to pick up on my own wherever we leave off. What I don't want to do is just get into a dull routine of the same 15 sets every other day; I did that for years and it got me exactly to where I started a few weeks ago, which is not where I want to be.

No great change in The Number from a week ago- it's been n+1 within the past few days, n-2 at this very moment. Neither is going to win me any contests anytime soon, but at least it's staying in the ballpark where it began and not getting any worse.

Sam and Samantha

That is not a reference to a long-lost Ed Wood movie, but the somewhat backward track of my Netflixage from the past 24 hours.

After our soiree for Cam's family yesterday (Eleanor has documented such with a picture-filled entry here), the three of us settled down with the recently-paroled animals to watch Now and Then- one of those films I'd totally missed when it came round in 1995. Demi Moore did an awesome job playing the then-modern-day Samantha, the narrative voice of the piece, as did her teen-edge self from 1970 being played by a much younger, but just as surprisingly grown-up-by-then, Gaby Hoffman (who we remember mostly as Uncle Buck's precocious niece). The rest of the cast was just as good in both generations, the story was touching, and the soundtrack, I am embarrassed to admit, was exactly what I was listening to on WABC 770 in 1970, Archies and all.

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Despite the missus doing far more of the work than I did to prepare for and serve the company yesterday, I was the one who slept in until 9:55 while she woke up before me and made it to church on time. So I took that hour of quiet time to begin watching the Beeb's version of Life on Mars, a leftover from last month's TV meme in the "show you're planning to watch" category.  This is where Sam comes from- as reprised in the shorter-lived US version, Sam Tyler is the present-day detective who either does, or doesn't, get transported back to roughly his same job in the year 1973, to a brilliant WPC (or "policewoman," I presume ABC called her) named Annie who helps him cope, and to far more questions than answers (even though he is by no means short on solutions in his first hour of episode time).

NOT HERE SPOILER ALERT: Thank you so much, Wikipedia, for putting the Ultimate Answer to Time Travel, the Comatose State, and Everything in the second feckin paragraph of the "plot" section of the series entry. Apparently this just came out a few months ago at the very end of the British A2A sequel, but hey, we're Americans and we don't like to wait for such things, right? So I'll just try concussing myself and see if I can forget that revelation, thanks.

On the other hand, what I wouldn't mind forgetting is how much of 1973 got depicted, frighteningly accurately, in the first ten minutes of Sam's magical appearance within that year. I told Eleanor I almost bailed on it on account of the combination of the clothes, the miscogyny, and the smoking. Only the music was an improvement on Now and Then's roughly contemporary soundtrack. Bowie and the Who beat Vanity Fair and Tony Orlando any day of the week.

Ultimately, though, the good in Sam, in Annie, and even in trace quantities in the rest of his CID, overcame these horrid represssed memories and I found myself enjoying the hour, with the second to follow almost immediately on BBC1.

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Checking other alternatives for "The Great Game." None has yet to appear. Maybe I should hire a consulting detective to help.