Chapter 6: Aches and Pains

With the chill that has come this Fall comes pounds of fat which will keep me warm through the snow and the sleet in the next few months. I have not thought much of this growth in girth but at times when I glimpse at my bag of bones, I will stop in a fit of pique and shout out loud that it is time to lose some weight.

In fact, in my dreams I will at times stand in a blank, black space because my legs will not move with so much weight on them.

Oh well, I guess I just need to work out more...

I do not oft have such dreams but I find that they do well to spur me to jog. In fact, one night last week, I ran five miles after one of the dreams made me think that I had lost my might to run. It was a huge load off when I took the last step of my run and was able to prove wrong what I had dreamed.

It was too bad that for the next few days I would groan if I so much as poked my thighs or calves. At least the dreams stopped.

As a side note, is it just me or does it feel nice to feel sore? It might sound weird but it feels great to have your sore flesh punched. Wow. That is weird.

I pray that the five miles were able to cut off at least a small piece of the lard that got stuck to my gut from the feast of the third week of this month.

Were the sore legs worth the run? Yes!

I would do it once more in a heart beat if not for the weight loss then for the chance to pound my sore legs.

Chapter 5: Life Gave Me Lemons

For some reason, this quarter, I managed to rack up some tardy service. It was really surprising that this year my school decided draw upon their resources in the form of Me. Even though I was bitter that some of my teachers secretly tallied my occasional tardiness, I must give credit to this unjust system for introducing me to one of the most enjoyable parts of my day.

At first, tardy service seemed like a burden and I was constantly plotting how I could somehow manage to serve my 5 hours without actually serving my 5 hours. When I was offered choices for how I could waste 5 hours, I was fairly unimpressed:

Cleaning microwaves? No.
Dusting shelves? Nope.
Handling school funds? I wish (just kidding, I wouldn't steal from my precious educators).

But when I noticed the opportunity to write birthday cards to alumni, I was mildly interested. What kind of tardy service was that? It seemed weird and I was immediately discouraged by my overseer because she believed that I would not have even been able to fulfill a single hour with such a petty service. But when I started doing my service, I found it quite entertaining.

The first few birthday cards took me a while because they had to be perfect but as soon as I got into the flow of it, I was cruising. It turns out, tardy service is a great opportunity to reflect upon life and even better, daydream. I mostly spent my time thinking, "Hey, this dude is named Mr. Bird. I wonder if he runs a pet shop that specializes in parrots." Or, "Hey, she has a Ph.D. Maybe if I write an extremely flattering note, she'll seek me out and offer me an internship." Or, "Hey, this guy lives in Japan. Could I get him to invite me over there for a vacation?"

And even though all of these things are improbable, it's still fun to think about the people behind the list of names, making up personae for each of them.

The moral of this story is: tardy service sucks; pick something fun to do.