2004-01-22

I love late-evening shopping at the downtown grocery. Past seven o�clock, it�s filled with a spare assortment of independent urban professionals, zipping efficiently up and down the aisles with their tiny baskets � dinner for one, please! � and breezing through the checkout with a minimum of conversation, impatient to get to their Pilates classes. These are my people, my kindred shopping spirits, namely because they are easy to ignore. Here you will not find harried mothers, pushing a squealing troupe of children balanced like a Chinese circus act on a teetering shopping cart. You will not find old ladies thrusting a crumpled bouquet of coupons at the cashier, putting up a tremulous fuss because they can�t redeem the promised $0.05 savings on a box of digestive biscuits. Nowhere to be seen is the ponderous bulk of the addle-brained middle-aged woman, blocking the entire aisle with her cart as she indolently weighs the merits of salted vs. unsalted rice cakes.

It is the downtown core, however, and you do get a modest contingent of weirdos, especially late at night. I love these guys! It�s fun to ponder the timeless koan of �What the fuck?� as you wait in line behind a squirrelly crackhead buying a tin of pumpkin pie filling, a set of insoles and a single banana. Meh?

Tonight I gain my final admission into the aforementioned yuppie demographic: I�m going to a spinning class. Much to my disappointment, I�ve learned that so-called �spinning� has nothing to do with carding wool or transforming straw into gold. Inexplicably, I�ve agreed to ride a stationary bicycle for an hour while someone yells at me. Why they don�t call it �stationary bike-riding with yelling� class I simply don�t know. At any rate, I fear for my ass, which hasn�t graced a bicycle seat in many a moon (no pun intended). More on the morrow, assuming my heart hasn�t exploded.

Also, I almost forgot: Have you had Twelve Beer yet today? It's link-mania day!