I got to hit one of the items in my list yesterday, thanks to Ann. We had spa day at a Burke Williams dayspa in my city that I didn’t even know was there. “That’s sad,” my massage therapist Scott said about that, “We’ve been here ten years.” But I’m so glad Ann looked it up, found it, and we went!

It was a much needed girl day; we started by meeting for a brunch of crêpes at Lulu’s Creperie Cafe, a local favorite of mine. La Galette with ham, mushroom, & spinach Brittany topped with 2 poached eggs, yum. Then we wandered into a Mediterranean bakery where Ann bought a bunch of little pastries before we hit the spa. I soaked in the whirlpool for awhile, slinked into the steam room to sweat out all my impurities and months’ worth of stressers, then met back up with Ann in the Quiet Room to read in fluffy recliners before an attractive man came in to collect me for my 80 minute relaxation massage.

I had a great time on that massage table. Scott is the therapist who trains the other massage therapists there on the deep tissue technique. He also does physical therapy and personal fitness training at a rehab gym in an affluent nearby area. I happened to have a lot of gymming soreness. “I guess I got lucky,” I said, face-down.
“I’d like to think so,” Scott joked.
I had one of the best conversations I’d had in awhile. The topic started off with physical training and nutrition, transitioned into his other job, and by the time 80 minutes were up we’d hit sociology, theories on what motivates human decisions consciously and unconciously, religion and its effect on the masses, personal searches for defining and achieving happiness. It wasn’t too unlike the conversations I have with Dwaine, even recently, but it was a great uninterrupted 80 minutes of it. What I also liked, was that he actually listened to me and wasn’t afraid to call me on something that I’d said without putting sufficient thought behind it. Kept me on my toes. And he made me laugh. “Do you and your friends sit around coffee shops and have long talks like this?” I asked.
“No,” he answered fairly quickly. “I don’t have enough friends like this who I can talk to about anything philosophical.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, and I meant it. It’s not often I find a really introspective man who can also be blatantly honest about himself with a stranger. Then again, Mr. W is always astounded at how much random people open up to me. The rarity with this guy, though, is that the conversation wasn’t one-sided. It wasn’t just him telling me stuff, asking me how I see his situations. We had a very nice mental tennis match. Entertainment like that while getting an effective sports massage and diagnosis by an actual trained physical therapist who was able to relieve my sore muscles and tell me how to tweak my workout routines made for a great first half of the day. He also provided a new perspective that balanced my flailing spirit, but he’ll never know.