Afternoon off = more time for screwing around

Ahhhh, Wednesday. How medium you are. Woke up today pretty rested, so rested in fact that I woke up several times last night. Went to practice, which was fairly unremarkable other than today I was 7 behind Dave Naughton for the first time, the boats were mixed again, and our boat didn't want to pull hard. We were doing reduced slide drills adding pairs, and we'd go ahead for just stroke pair, hold even with 5 & 6, start losing seats real fast with 3 & 4, and lose them slightly less quickly with bow pair. It's not like we had weak guys either; it just seemed like people didn't really care to try and NOT be way behind the other boat. Anyways, that's just rambling. As I said, unremarkable.

After practice I came home and puttered around for a few hours but never fell asleep, which probably accounts for why I'm pretty pooped now. After sitting around I got kind of restless and decided to go into town and maybe find a book to read, or something to do. Just putter around somewhere other than the Nelson's basement. Though the basement was nice and cool... it got up to about 99 this afternoon. Yucky. Just as I was about to go do my town-puttering, Dave and I got a call from Josh Richardson saying some people were going swimming down on the river and that he was in our driveway, and asked if we would like to come. A funny order to do things, but we got ready quickly and hopped in the car. Lots of the rower guys were down on a public dock hanging out in the sun and playing in the water. I accepted the challenge to try and touch the bottom of the river and successfully did so, proving my feat by returning with some mud and a few mussels I found in the muck. My ears/head hurt for a while afterwards; the lifeguards said it's 25 feet... I think more like 20, but either way the pressure did some damage. After that we all left to see Life Free or Die Hard in West Lebanon (apparently the rural Poulsbo/Silverdale/Bremerton of New Hampshire...). It was nice to be in air conditioning through the heat, and the movie was surprisingly entertaining. I hadn't wanted to go and thought of going to another movie, but I'm glad I went. It was one of the more quality action films I'd seen in a while... extreme, but not too much CGI to make it annoying. And Bruce Willis played a great irreverent badass. Being with a bunch of goofball rowers was fun too. After that we returned to the lake for a quick dip just as the lifeguards were closing the public dock due to thunder... so we went to the boathouse and jumped off that dock.

After that we went into town. I split off to go through the bookstore, my original puttering desire getting a little satisfied, and bought a book with "Rashomon" and some other short stories by Akutagawa in them. I've heard the story is great and I think the movie is fantastic, so I thought it would be a good reintroduction to reading for pleasure. I was trying to think of an author that I have some books at home of, that I've really enjoyed... but he's still on the tip of my tongue. I'm going to try and remember and then maybe have my Mom send those books. Villa Incognito! That's one! Now I just have to find his name... going to Google... TOM ROBBINS! Ding dong. I love finding names you've been trying to think of for a long time. Anyways, I want to read more of him.

After leisurely perusing the bookstore, I met up with the guys outside Molly's, a nice-but-reasonable restaurant that reminds me a little of the Pub on Bainbridge. Had a fun dinner with the guys and had some fish & chips, which I haven't had in a while, reminding me more of home, and Coop. Fish & chips always reminds me of Coop. Walked home very full after dinner and am now working my way towards bed. Apparently tomorrow we're doing pieces in the morning, so that should be extremely exciting... or not. Maybe fun, probably pretty tense.

Soundtrack currently:
Feist- The Reminder
Early today was a nice mix of Mickey Avalon, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beach Boys.