It's Not Tundra

Holy Christ! See my March 19th post but I just saw ANOTHER Chistmas tree out at the curb. It's almost April. But, truth to tell, the real thing is that I'm just jealous because it was still so green! Maybe it was one of those "Lost" time shift things? Maybe it was really a Dharma Christmas Tree from 1974? In California, that sucker would have been burning by now.

I worked out at World Gym in Woodland Hills, CA for years until the Spinning Class -- which seemed like it was run by Moonies -- drove me away. It wasn't the spinning, it was that the class' music was so loud and they shouted so much that it seemed more like some kind of indoctrination than cardiovascular exercise. There were a lot of people who trained with partners, but at World Gym in Williamsville, I've noticed the partner phenom has become more of a pack mentality. It's not just 2 people working out together to egg each other on, there are groups of 3, 4 and 5 working out together and egging each other on. At what point does it stop being a training partnership and become a training cult? I'm not too worried. I've also noticed that the bigger the group, the bigger the waistlines. Perhaps they're not egging each other on. Maybe it more of a support group. "Yeah, we can be fat and workout, too! We can have our cake and eat it, too! And eat it. And ea...

seen at the grocery store: Three fat guys, each buying a six pack of hard lemonaide/sweet vodka drink, a bag of chips and a pack of cookies. All laughing. Could only guess they were talking about why they were still single.

I just found out another way this area differs from L.A. Coming home from the gym this AM I saw two Christmas trees by the curb, waiting to be taken away. One was a lovely crisp brown and the other was a fresh, lush green. So Christmas lasts longer in WNY.

If you like what I've been doing here, you can check out my new work of fiction: http://www.amazon.com/Cheapjack-Shakespeare-Chapter-1-ebook/dp/B003AZY5ZS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1268320497&sr=8-2-spell

While most Targets are SORT OF laid out the same, Targets in California don’t sell a LOT of snow shovels, so I had to go looking. When I saw what I thought were them down an aisle, I walked down there and went past a woman with a baby in a shopping basket. As I walked by I thought: “Hm. That looks like Stephanie and Fiona. But they live in Amherst so it can’t be…” And then I stopped. Oh. Yeah. Reality check. This was going to take awhile. Right. We had moved. Check. Luckily, Stephanie, who we had seen just a few weeks before when we were looking for a rental, was just as surprised to see us. We chatted for a bit and then chose our snow weapons. They had a snow shovel with a cooked handle that they called “ergonomic”. Now I’ve looked it up since and I guess it means that it’s easier to shovel because it has a crooked handle. It’s also designed as a “pusher” [1] , but I’d been taken in by that before. Still, it looked like the best bargain and we got two of those and one sm...

Saturday morning I got up, put on my snappy all-cotton genuine Japanese kimono and walked downstairs. I turned at the bottom of the stairs, heading for the kitchen and then stopped, thought for a second and walked back to the front door. Did I really see what I thought I saw? Why, yes. I did see what I thought I saw. There was a dead deer on my front lawn. Now that was something I never saw in L.A. Dead cats once in awhile, yes, usually with their innards chewed out by a coyote who went only for the tasty parts. Perhaps by a raccoon. I'm not Daniel frikkin ' Boone. But not a deer. You'd see them sometimes in the Hollywood Hills, very occasionally. A few times I'd seen them at the corner of Coldwater and Mulhullond and they WERE near Dead Man's Curve, but the deer were alive. Once during a heavy rain I'd seen a family of deer on the 405. Well, actually I'd seen them on the side of the 405. Traffic moves slow but still not slow enough for deer. But even thos...