Yeah. I know. I pen an entry on Thursday night, in which I say that I’m going to try to get back to daily updates, and then I don’t write anything else for 5 days. I’m a slacker. I know.
The worst part about doing that is that I honestly forget what I’ve been doing every day. It’s a ritual of sorts. I wake up between 6:00 and 6:30, go downstairs to feed the cats, go back upstairs to pee, turn on the news, and forget everything I did the day before. I know that the throngs of people swarming this blog each day think that my goal is to write things for them to read, but the truth is that I’d like to keep this thing updated just so I’ll know what the hell I’ve been doing with my life.
Now that I’ve cleared the air, I’m happy to report that I’ve done basically nothing since last Thursday. Friday was a typical work day, followed by a typical do-nothing evening. Saturday was given over to yard work and gushing perspiration. Sunday was the annual Sausage Fest at a brewpub in Roswell.
Actually, Friday night wasn’t a complete waste. I began reading – and generally enjoying – Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. This was Betsy’s idea, and I believe she’s been harboring it since I told her a year or two ago that I’ve never read more than about two pages of Faulkner in my life because I can’t stand the way he writes. She gave me a copy of AILD a few weeks ago and insisted that it wasn’t that bad.
Spam. Brussels sprouts. Faulkner. Three things that I hated as a kid and three things that I decided that I needed to try again as an adult. So far, I can report the following:
- Spam no longer makes me vomit and may actually be useful for low-maintenance camping food; but I’m not going to rush out and buy a bunch of it just in case I want to fix myself a big ol’ spamburger at home.
- Brussels sprouts remain the single most disgusting plant on the planet. Anyone who eats those things and claims to like them is a liar. A damned liar, even. Seriously, Brussels sprouts are just plain nasty. The simple act of thinking about them makes my tongue shrivel up.
- The jury is still out on Faulkner. As I Lay Dying has, for the most part, kept my interest. Yes, there are some chapters that make me shake my head and whisper, “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ALL ABOUT?!?!?” but I have finally learned to recognize and appreciate the sheer genius of Falkner’s writing. I could write 10,000 words a day for the next 20 years and I still wouldn’t have the literary rhythm of the gentleman from Oxford.
Moving up to Saturday for a minute: I managed to get my wood chipper (the one that won’t start) into my car (an Audi A3). This was not an easy thing to do, but I did it. I then drove to a small engine repair place in Duluth and asked them to make the chipper work. They indicated that they’d be happy to if I gave them about three weeks. That was fine with me. So. They now have my broken chipper and I still can’t cut any brush.
After bringing the chipper to the shop, I spent most of the rest of the day doing things outside in the extreme heat. Picked up pine cones. Trimmed a few bushes (and piled up the clippings). Washed my car (I do this about once every three years whether it needs it or not). Sat on the deck. All typical things designed to give me heat stroke, and I think I may have accomplished that. I hit the sack at about 7:30, was asleep by probably 7:45, and was out of it and nearly incoherent when a friend called me at about 9:00.
On Sunday, I did pretty much nothing until about 3:00, when I drove to the 5 Seasons Brewpub in Roswell and watched Mercury Orkestar perform at the pub’s annual “Sausage Fest,” and event in which some people bring in samples of their sausage recipes and everyone else votes on them.
I think I’ve said before that I’m not overly fond of Mercury Orkestar, which is a “Baltic Brass Band” (read: a very very very very loud gypsy band). but Betsy, John and various other friends are in it, so it seemed like a good way to spend an afternoon.
Yesterday was Monday and today is Tuesday. ‘Nuff said.
TWD