After Work with the Crows
I've been listening to Counting Crows and loving their music. This is a band I don't hear anybody talking about these days. I'm guessing most of the hip folk see the Crows as woefully mainstream and tired. Well, whatever. I find their music powerful and inventive, the words lovely and provocative. Listen to "A Murder of One" or "A Long December" or "Recovering the Satellites." See if you don't agree. Do what works for you, by all means, but here's my MO: I get home from work, put the Trader Joe's Turkey Pot Pie in the oven (to be accompanied by a salad -- a bag of baby spinach with homemade honey-mustard dressing), go for my eight-miler, which feels good after having swum hard in the afternoon, get home, shower, take the pot pie out to let it cool, and then crank the music. A glass of wine (trading off with water; gotta rehydrate after the run) finds its way into my hand. Tonight it was a wacky old thing that had been buried in the scary basement of our office, a 99 Sokol Blosser White Reisling. Round and luscious, a little petrol, lots of apricot, kind of funky. Loved it. Anyway, it all went well together, songs about giving up and being given up upon, Turkey Pot Pie, five-year-old Oregon Reisling, the post-run high, the music vibrating through the floor, the anxiety fading, fading, fading into the slightest glimmer of rebirth. (Or was it simply the realization that it is all right and perhaps even proper to be angry, and to let that anger distill and to find its essence, to -- yes -- take oneself off the hook on this one. Completely.)

Workouts this week: Four swims in the 1500-2000 yard range, all just nonstop laps, just getting the stamina back; three runs, 5-8 miles apiece.