Jump Into the Gym

I woke up late and didn't get to much besides the usual Friday morning gym run and errands. The gym was totally empty when I arrived around noon. There was one other woman on the treadmill, the girl behind the counter, and that was it. By the time I was working on my arms, even the lady on the treadmill had left. It was just too beautiful of a day for people to be exercising indoors.

The Acme wasn't much busier. I didn't need a lot of groceries, either. It was mostly small things or things that I had put off. Eggs was the main things. My brown eggs were on sale. Ran out of maple syrup a while back, but the Acme was out of their cheapest real maple syrup (which is on a par with Super Fresh's best price in a larger bottle) last week. I also needed to replace whole wheat tortillas, fruit concentrate, and parchment paper. Grabbed the Kashi Autumn Wheat cereal, a favorite of mine that's seldom on sale. I took advantage of the last of their back-to-school sales to grab a new pair of scissors for paper. My old pair's cheap and have been around for a while.

I was so late getting in, I had just enough time to run home, put my groceries away, have a quick leftovers lunch, and run to the bank. I still didn't have enough to cover my full rent, even with my Labor Day paycheck. I'll give Andrew 400 tomorrow, then the rest next week after I get my vacation paychecks.

I ran several cast albums with western themes throughout the day. Big River was Roger Miller's 1985 Broadway adaptation of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Tom Sawyer is a film musical version of the novel of that title from the early 70s with songs by the Sherman Brothers. Jodie Foster is Becky Thatcher; the late Celeste Holm is Aunt Polly. Shenendoah was one of the big hit Broadway musicals of the mid-70s, with John Cullum winning a Tony as the head of a Virginia mountain family trying to keep his kinfolk out of the Civil War.

Big River was my favorite of the trio. Miller's music sounds the most like country, and thus, the closest to the hearts of Huck and Jim. Tom Sawyer is the lightest and very Sherman Brothers, with cute numbers for Tom, Huck, and their pals ("Gratification," "Freebootin'") that use the Shermans' fondness for made-up words. Shenandoah is the darkest, and though its sound is more Broadway than western, it does have some really gorgeous music - my favorite was the ballad "Violets and Silverbells." Cullum also has two extended "Meditations" that sound very Rogers-and-Hammerstein.

Work was almost exactly the same as yesterday - busy during rush hour, quiet the moment the traffic on the Black Horse Pike calmed down. My schedule for next week promises pretty much more of the same, thankfully with no hours after 8PM this time and Tuesday and next Saturday off.