I was sore this morning and thinking that I wouldn’t bike today, but as evening came on and I realized I’d been a study slug all day I found myself once again zipping around the park. With a temperature of 88 degrees it wasn’t too bad, especially with only 55% humidity. I think my humidity theory is apt as I had a much easier ride with the lower percentage moisture in the air. I went to pub club last night with John and about eight women who are in this group of friends, and I asked him about how the humidity affected his running. He affirmed that the soup definitely makes a run much harder. (He is also in training for a marathon Jen and did the Chicago marathon last year.) Today’s ride was so much easier that I thought about going around the park twice. I may do that sometime this week.

The pub club met up at The Boathouse in Forest Park. The people at pub club are different from my normal milieu. I was trying to decide how to tactfully note the core differences and I came up with the following observation: none of these women do their own hair, which is in part why they all look alike. Of them I know Bridget and Dan’s S.O. Alisa. And I guess now I know Christy, the rest are a mysterious gaggle of priorities that are generally foreign to me; as foreign, I am sure, as I am to them. Still, I welcome a chance to get to know them beyond the stereotypes that I am only slightly shying away from. We are all so very tribal at times, are we not?

The two best things about The Boathouse were that they had St. Pauli Girl N.A. and the band did a great cover of an Elvis Costello and The Attractions tune, Peace Love and Understanding. If you’re not and Elvis Costello fan then you at least know it from the Karaoke scene in Lost in Translation.

Regular readers - do you remember the bar that I applied to where they thought I might have walked on the freshly poured concrete and they briefly considered killing me? Well, we ended up there and had fabulous fish and chips, the best I’ve had outside of a Wisconsin fish fry. (Maureen, when next in town you must, must go there for the fish if you have the Wisconsinite fish fry addiction. It’s The Scottish Arms).

I’ve spent most of the day studying, but I took a break to go see a movie by myself. I used to do that all the time and I was thinking it was something of a good sign that some of my former lost traits that I like have been resurfacing. Anyway, I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If you’re a film buff at all and are into intertext, the film is both brilliant and hysterical. In an audience of mostly children and their mothers I am sure that my laughter stood out at confusing moments.

When the melting marionette’s eyes were falling out, mine were certainly watering. I don’t want to ruin too much for you, but the overlap of TV Mike with Kubrick’s 2001 was pure pleasure. It’s not a work of genius, but it is charming and much closer to the source text, which I read several times in my childhood. It’s a nice cinematic homage to high and low culture; this is true particularly of the Oompa Loompa’s dance numbers, one of which culminates in a Busby Berkeley style dive line choreographing their way into the chocolate river while taunting Augustus Gloop.

Ah well, Mary and I are crashing the party of some local nare-do-wells (sp?) who have promised to serve us corn dogs and Bush beer (I’m taking my N.A. Beck’s folks, never you fear). Later…