Lake Neuron

Well, I slipped away from work a little early, as comp time for a killer schedule of meetings I will have to cover tomorrow night.

I was crossing Madison Street, under a green light, when some woman on a cell phone ran a red light in front of me. I stopped, but just barely, and just inches from what would have been a collision.

From there, I went to the rec center, a place I haven’t seen enough of the past few weeks due to work and holiday commitments. My normal pattern is to do 30 minutes on the elliptical walker and then cool off in the pool. I had been on the walker about 10 minutes when the rec center’s fire alarm went off. We all had to tromp outside. Joyce Adams, the wife of FUMC’s former associate pastor, was in the pool at the time; the rec center personnel, who correctly suspected that this was a false alarm, allowed her and another woman to stand in the little foyer, or whatever you call it, between the inner and outer set of doors rather than go outside in their sopping-wet swimsuits.

The rec center people appeared to suspect that one of the teens had manually pulled a fire alarm switch, but no one was ‘fessing up (or pointing fingers). Eventually, they let us all go back inside. I decided at that point to skip the rest of the elliptical walker and just go straight to the pool.

Next, I went to Wal-Mart, where (FANFARE) I completed my Christmas shopping for 2007.

Then, I went to Kroger, to use the $50 gift card I got today at the company Christmas party. On my way into Kroger, as if to keep me from getting too smug about the woman on the cell phone earlier, I nearly ran into someone in the parking lot (it would have been my fault — I was pulling through parking spaces as a short cut).

On my way home, I passed some sort of catastrophe — not sure if it was a fire or a motor vehicle accident, but there were at least one fire truck and one ambulance, plus another vehicle I couldn’t see through the glare of all the flashing red and blue lights. The scene was just two doors down from a house I used to rent.

I finally made it home, where, for dinner, I made … wait for it … Wick Fowler’s 3-Alarm Chili.