The Kindness of Strangers

So I had my bunko night tonight. Only we never really play bunko lately. We just eat and talk - two of my favorite things. Oh, and we win things, which is always good. And tonight we were supposed to carve pumpkins but I didn't do that either. (In all fairness, the good girls did.)

When you get 12 women together in the communications field, some interesting conversations begin. My favorite of the night was about charity. And with 12 women in the room, the topic was very divided, of course.

There was the camp of just give all you can to who you can - whether they need it or not or what they do with it is irrelevant. You are the good in the world. They can choose whether they want to be good or evil in return.

I told that camp I tried to have that attitude in my younger years, but after a college girl stopped by my house one night selling magazines, shivering in the cold, and I bought a magazine subscription from her that I never saw AND made her hot chocolate AND gave her one of my favorite cocoa mugs AND a sweatshirt, I just don't agree anymore. I don't mind helping, but I don't want to be a mark, a pansy, ridiculed for my charity.

Then, hands down, the best line of the night, from Caron... "I am charitable all the time. I keep those girls who work on commission at Ann Taylor Loft in great comfort."

Another in the group keeps the Secretary of State's Blue Book by her phone and quotes it to telemarketers who call. One doesn't answer the phone. (So if you're depending on the kindness of strangers, you best bet is to call Gail.)

My rant of the night: My 5:45 a.m. aerobics class. I am boycotting during this beautiful weather and taking very long walks every night. I bought hand weights, an exercise ball and a body bar for the weight portion. The instructors generally don't get there until 6 a.m. I have to leave at 6:30 a.m. to get my son to school in time. This means that I wake up at 5 a.m. to get only 30 minutes of exercise. It just makes no sense. I'm only going to aerobics classes on the weekend.

Susan, who just ran the Chicago marathon last weekend, tells me of a lady in her group who walked three miles and ran two miles in intervals but beat her (and she ran four miles and walked in one mile intervals). So then I start talking about Joe's article about walking being just as good as running healthwise.

My heart rate doesn't get high enough just walking, so I have to do intervals. The running does scare me some because I've been doing step aerobics since college and I can hear my knees creak and crunch all the time now, at the ripe age of 35. Susan still wants me to run the Chicago marathon with her next year, but I'm not sure if I'm ready to commit to that yet (especially if walking is just as good for you healthwise). We'll see.

In the meantime, I've started a walking group at lunch at work now that the weather is so beautiful. We walk in the neighborhood behind our office for 45 minutes - and we get some very strange looks from the neighbors in our dresses and tennis shoes.

Well, tomorrow, I will be at a golf tournament we are sponsoring all day, so if you e-mail me I probably won't have time to get back to you till Saturday. (And my best friend and her kids are coming up to go to the fair, so there will be very light blogging this weekend most likely.)