• Working stiff

    My triumphant return to work yesterday was exhausting. I’m only working part-time this week in order to gradually work may way up to being a full-time, responsible, adult member of society. However, I learned a really important lesson on the first day back: I should have been slowly working my way up to getting up at 5:30 in the morning. Going from a month of getting up whenever I woke up (loosely translated as nine-thirty-ish), to five in the a.m. – cold turkey – was a real shock.

    Now I feel cooked. No worries though… otherwise I’m taking it slow.

  • Made in the shade

    Nine years ago we were shopping for a house. It was slow going due to our conflicting spacial requirements, budgetary limits, and geographical preference, but there were a few houses our realtor showed us. I remember seeing this house the first time and thinking I might be home. There wasn’t anything fancy about the house. In fact, it was (and is) pretty ordinary. It was on the small side of three bedrooms, with a yard to match. The grass was sparse, the landscaping was a little out of control, and oddly enough… it looked like the garage door had been sealed shut with caulking compound.

    It was what was all around the house that caught my eye: shade. Almost all of the front yard and roof appeared to be in the shade. On top of that there was a covered front porch, which is somewhat unusual for suburban Florida – around these parts anyway. The inside of the house matched the outside… it was small, but we confirmed the reason for the garage door being sealed shut: it had been converted into a large family room.

    I thought it was just about perfect. Although I would be dissuaded from that notion relatively quickly (after closing), it has served us well. Today was one of those days I felt really good about our decision.

    It was a pretty typical Florida summer day, the temperature around 90 degrees and pretty humid. The sun was out most of the day and there was little wind. The kids wanted to do some playing outside, and I was just sick enough of being cooped up to brave the heat and join them. Knowing that we would be in the shade was the dealmaker. We all spent the entire time on the newly obtained swing set/slide/sandbox (made possible by the generosity of friends) – positioned strategically under the big tree in the backyard. The combination of the shade, the slight breeze, and the kids having fun together was so unexpectedly blissful… it was just the thing I needed on my last day off (before returning to work tomorrow).

  • Evidence of decadence?

    I just watched two guys beat the living shit out of each other on TV. You know that thing where they combine a little bit of martial arts, boxing, and wrestling? I don’t know the rules, but I got the impression there weren’t any. There was a third guy in the ring masquerading as some kind of official, but it didn’t look like there was much for him to do but get out of the way. It looked like there was only one reason for him to intervene… when one of the contestants lost consciousness he stepped in to keep the other guy from beating the unconscious guy to a bloody pulp while he was lying prone.

    In my defense, I didn’t go looking for this. I turned the TV on while I was poking around on the PowerBook, thinking I might catch the end of the Rays game.

    I was struck dumb by the brutality. These guys were bleeding so freely from the nose the white canvas ring looked like a work of abstract art. All I could do was stare and wonder what was happening to these guy’s brains. Boxers have problems and they just use their hands. These guys were taking knees and kicks to the face… just freaking unbelievable. (I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the leg can deliver a considerable amount of force.)

    I thought to myself… here’s a display of disposable people, disposing of themselves for money. It’s illegal to rent your body out for sex, but it’s perfectly legal to rent it out to be beaten, bloodied, and broken? If you took the money out of the sex would it become legal? If you took the money out of the beating would it become illegal?

    My second thought? Maybe this puts an end to “professional” wrestling. After all, this shit is real.

    Oh, wait… just as I was editing, someone suffered what appeared to be a compound fracture of the lower leg (I’m not sure if it was the tibia, fibula, both or neither which opened a wound… there was already a lot of blood involved). I think it’s time to turn the TV off.