I got a call from Anna Frazelle today.  She wanted to know if I’d be home around 2:00 because she had something to bring by, which ended up being an early birthday cake for me!  She said she didn’t think Amanda and I would have time to eat it before I left for Costa Rica if she brought it on Wednesday.  Anna’s chocolate chocolate cake is literally the best chocolate cake there is in the world, and it was still warm when it got to the house, so of course I had to get a scoop of ice cream and eat a piece right after she left.

Backing up, I got up early today and went to Barry Frazelle’s office today to work out on the Vasa Trainer, which is a machine that simulates swimming strokes.  On the way there I saw what could generously be described as a snow flurry.  The rest of the state, and much of the country for that matter, had a ton of snow dumped on it but all we got were snowflakes you had to strain to see that didn’t accumulate whatsoever.

Anyway, back to the Vasa Trainer.  I’d been there for almost a full 15 minutes before Barry saw me and pointed out the way I was supposed to do it.  I’d been doing the double handed power stroke motion, which is well and good, but he showed me that you were supposed to use the straps for that and the handles I was using were for paddling practice.  When he first showed me that I told him I wasn’t feeling it at all.  He said to try it for two minutes and see what I thought.  Once I got the actual motion down, it certainly didn’t take two minutes.

I got back home, worked, the usual stuff.  After work Nick Warkentien invited me and Amanda over for pizza and a movie.  We watched Traitor, starring Don Cheadle.  Amanda and I took Bruce with us and Andrew, Andrew’s friend, really seemed to like him.  We took the cake with us, because even if Amanda and I ate a piece of cake a day from now to the end of the week, I still doubt we’d finish it all.  The Warkentiens and their guests helped us put a nice dent in it.

I’d meant to do it earlier, but when we got home I looked through my comic books to try to find all my issues of Watchmen so I could read it before we go see it on Thursday.  I found about half the issues.  I’ve got so many comics, and they’re so unorganized.  I mean, I’ve got most of them in sections, like X-Men and X-Men related titles, then Spider-Man and all the Spider-Man titles, then DC stuff, Image stuff, general Marvel stuff, etc.  But I’ve also got a lot of things that were randomly thrown in the boxes at some point, and I’m assuming the rest of the Watchmen issues are in there somewhere.

Oh, I’m also trying not to get sick.  Yesterday morning my nose was a little stuffy and this morning my nose was even a little stuffier.  I took some vitamin C and some Dayquil along with some green tea, which seemed to do the trick for me for the day, but I can feel the stuffiness returning now.  What an inopportune time to get sick.  I’ve got my birthday in a couple days then I’m heading off to Costa Rica for a week after that with the intent to do a lot of surfing, which will be hard to do if I’ve got a head cold.  I heard people at church referring to other people who had what they were affectionately calling “the Death” which sounds like it involved some degree of puking buckets.  The good news is that I felt a little sick before church yesterday, so hopefully if I do have something that will stick with me it won’t be that.

Zach Dotsey