Just got back from the Y. Huge facility–the biggest I’ve seen–with three stories and provision for just about any type of athletic activity one could wish to participate in. Very friendly people. They gave me three free passes until I get my “financial assistance” form filled out and turned in to see if I qualify for a discount as a student.<\/p>\n
I got in a workout. It was the first time I had visited the weight room since, oh, fall ’03, and it felt like it. I did a good circuit of just about everything, wobbly arms and all. The activity on which my drop-off was most pronounced were dips… I used to be able to strap a 45-pound weight to a belt on my waist and clock off 12, 15 without thinking about it. But today I struggled to do 8, with no extra weight involved. Oh well. All in good time.<\/p>\n
While rotating my car’s tires yesterday morning, I discovered that the front right outer CV joint split and flung its grease all over the inside of the wheel well. Joy. Guess I’ll be ordering a new boot repair kit soon… I hope I don’t have to disassemble the joint itself to remove the boot. Wishing for a bench vise and a brass hammer and drift set…<\/p>\n
Drove back to Chapel Hill for the first time in three weeks to attend a wedding. It was great to see the family. Paul and I had lunch at Carrburritos and David and Rachel were there too, on the verge of heading to Top of the Hill to celebrate their 6 months of dating (do you call that an anniversary?). At the wedding, the bride’s family are long-time friends of ours, and we have many mutual acquaintances that go back very far, so we saw folks we hadn’t seen in many, many years. They put us together at the same table at the reception, so we all had a chance to catch up with one another. It made the whole group activity more bearable, but nevertheless, I was still conversationally drained after an hour or two. They say the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is the effect group situations have on your social energy–whether they drain you or energize you–and by any measure I am an introvert. Between the wedding reception, social activity before a big class last Friday during which I felt like I was suffocating and countless other conversations with classmates over the past few weeks, I’ve firmly decided that I like people. I even like talking to people–have a conversation with me and I will genuinely care about what you’re talking about and be interested (not just seem<\/i> so)–but there are maybe only 6-7 people with whom I can sustain a conversation and not feel like my social energy level is dipping lower, and lower, and lower… until it hits “E” and I need to be alone for a while. I’ll never understand how some people can walk into a room of strangers and feel excited, alive and alert by the situation. It’s a mindset I greatly admire but don’t think I’ll ever feel, no matter the amount of practice I get.<\/p>\n
Well…I’m off to Barnes & Noble to study for a bit and to find and strike up a conversation with that dazzling but attainable beauty reading Descartes or Locke or Schaeffer across the coffee bar. Cheers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just got back from the Y. Huge facility–the biggest I’ve seen–with three stories and provision for just about any type of athletic activity one could wish to participate in. Very friendly people. They gave me three free passes until I get my “financial assistance” form filled out and turned in to see if I qualify […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/963\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}