Friday, I went to the gym to run. I hate running at the gym. I’m generally a fan of fresh air and real reality, and running indoors on a treadmill listening to an iPod while watching TV, completely disconnected from the others doing the same thing around me, strikes me as futuristic in the worst possible way. But, hey, the gym has day care; the beach doesn’t; and the day before, Minor screamed for two whole miles — as if running weren’t painful enough, I need to have Minor articulating my pain?

A lot of people are bored stiff by the treadmill, but I actually enjoy using the speed and distance meters to challenge myself. As a bonus, I can get caught up on the world via the cable news networks we don’t get at home. I always see something interesting. Once, I saw an old boyfriend from college on Fox News. No, he wasn’t involved in any kind of police standoff; he is a financial analyst, as is his identical twin brother, and the gimmick is that they appear together and give their different slants on a particular topic. That’s why I could be found on the treadmill that day, yelling at the screen, “Hey! Didn’t they use to be English majors?”

And Friday the excrutiatingly dull coverage of the Supreme Court’s decison on tribunals was interrupted by footage of Bush and the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, who was sporting the most awesome ‘do on a head of state ever. Check this out. It’s a little bit Beatles, a little bit Richard Gere, with just a soupçon of Mary Tyler Moore thrown in.