Carpet fibers, wind, gym ogres, and Tyra Banks. There is a connection.

Briefly summarized, the whole programming line-up of the Discovery Channel: choppers, big ships, people with hypothermia, and people hunted down by the FBI using carpet fibers. Right now it's the FBI one, and that solemn baritone-voiced narrator is explaining how luminol works for what must be the 80th time in his life. I wonder if he has anything to talk about at parties or if he just hides in the corner drinking all the free booze and slamming cheese cubes until it's appropriate to leave.

The wind is insane today, something like 45-mile-an-hour gusts. No one's face is visible, just a bunch of blind, hair-matted shapes on top of shoulders as people hunch and struggle across the parking lot. I'm seeing a lot of those pink seams where the wind has flattened someone's hair and jagged lines of scalp peak out. Add to that how awkward people look when the true shapes of their bodies are visible beneath their wind-plastered clothes and we all look pretty vulnerable today.

Despite the wind, I'm planning a run to the gym, purely for its unique comforts. I need to hear that weird synchronous thumping when everyone on the treadmills suddenly hits the same stride. I'm hoping the retired guy with the old, old tattoos will be there, grimly climbing stairs in jeans and a polo shirt, daring his body to break a sweat and scowling at all the rest of us. I'm also hoping the tiny Filipina woman who totally looks like one of these, complete with new plastic parts, if you catch my drift, is there preening and stretching for everyone. There's been a whole unique gym culture at each place I've lived, and I quite like the one here.

Tomorrow is the big day when we find out what and where the next stage of training is for my husband, and I hope it's what he's been hoping for. (He's finally relaxing a bit today, as am I-- he just came through the room doing a version of Madonna's "Vogue" where instead of commanding me to "strike a pose," he waggled his ass and said "touch your nose!" while striking geometric nose-touching poses. This is a large part of what we do for fun, this rearranging of pop song lyrics. That and punctuating serious sentences with farts.)

I, however, have a far more important deadline coming up before then: tonight is the season premier of America's Next Top Model, where Tyra Banks shines up that forehead of hers and regenerates her soul on a diet of young girls' dreams. Actually, I don't mind Tyra all that much. The scripted theatrics of her elimination nights are really no worse than the rest of reality TV, and she at least pretends to be sympathetic. I do miss Janice Dickinson's boozed up eviscerations though-- replacing her with Twiggy was a dubious move.