TeamReedBlog.2020

 Seconds after hitting "Publish" on the post below, I headed for the goddamned gym. Where I spent the next 90+ minutes, working between an elliptical stepper, a stationary bike, the treadmill and the water fountain. I stretched a little bit but mostly kept watch on my tracker to hit the magic 10K steps. Wouldn't you know it, the damn thing tapped out and stopped tracking around the 6473 mark. But like that chubby Energizer Bunny, I kept going because I know exercise is my friend and because I'm still hoping to meet an endorphin one day. Afterward, still not having met an endorphin, I decided I'd earned a chicken biscuit from the Keystone Diner .  If you haven't had a chicken biscuit from the Keystone Diner, you haven't lived. I ordered it on a lark one day, hearkening back to a work trip a few years ago. The conference offered breakfast, and in Nashville, Tennessee, that means grits (yum) and chicken biscuits. I remember wondering who in the hell would hav...

Unless my friend Kelsey Taylor is there telling me it's time to call it a day, the gym is not my happy place. I go there, but it's a struggle. And my current gym doesn't even have the Kelsey factor because swimming is what I think could keep me going back, so I need a gym with a pool. Once my hair won't freeze getting back to the car, I'll be in it. It should not surprise you that swimming in the Caribbean (my inspiration) is a lot more fun than swimming anywhere in Indiana in winter. I want to be in shape. I do. I really do. But I also have an active mixologist in the house stirring up all kinds of yummy drinks. And when it's not Jeff at the bar, it's our friend, Bruce, who sends me all kinds of exotic and lovely concoctions that he dreams up or finds in ancient texts. (I don't know that they come from ancient texts, but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of mixers I've never heard of that when comingled will knock your socks off.) It's not th...

Spring had definitely sprung 27 years ago when I told Jeff Reed that I was ready to have a summer fling with him. Nothing serious. No strings. No obligations. Tuesday, we'll celebrate 25 years of marriage. So much for the fling. Or maybe it's still a thing. Whichever the case, we'll cross over the silver anniversary by re-creating our wedding feast and indulging in much better champagne than we had back then. It will be enhance by the presence of a few friends - two who were with us from the beginning and at our wedding. If we'd planned better, or the anniversary wasn't on a Tuesday, we might have re-created the whole shindig. But I'm lazy.

 We've put off a major home improvement project for more years than I want to admit to, but we took the plunge finally. It's super sexy. A new sewer pipe. Now, I know you're green with envy. I mean, who doesn't want a new sewer pipe?  We've had a backhoe in our front yard for a week now. If it hadn't been so cold and if it doesn't get pitch black by 6 pm., I'm sure the Captain would have snuck in to give it a whirl. As far as I know, he hasn't. Our house was built circa 1950 and all of its parts were original when we moved in 25 years ago. That means the massive Oak has had about 70 years to infiltrate all the pipes skittering underneath our yard. There used to a be a Sweet Gum contributing to the damage, and its root system probably got back at us for murdering it by continuing to grow into the pipe. We've replaced the roof, switched out the windows, replaced the driveway, finished half of the basement and added a bathroom and a shed.  The Capta...