An Epiphany

Here's one summer project of mine. I'm done with fast food drive thrus, and hopefully fast food in its entirety. If you can get it from a drive-thru, it's off my list of acceptable places to eat. The reason for this, other than the obvious "It's healthier not to eat that crap?" I was at a drive thru today, picking up some lunch after stopping at a gas station to fill the tank and drive through the car wash. I've had my 2009 RAV 4 for about 5 months now, and I'm still loving it quite a bit. I noticed today that I've made it a habit of taking any drive-thru pick ups and setting their bags on the floor because I don't want to take the chance of something spilling out and staining my beautiful passenger seat. I've done this reflexively probably ever since I bought the new vehicle, and today I thought for a moment about why I was doing it. And it occurred to me: If I don't trust this stuff enough to set it on a car seat, why the @#$! am I EATING it?

What SHOULD I do on my summer vacation?

The following post is written under the assumption that at least some of my current 64 Facebook friends and perhaps a few other people beyond that group will be checking this blog periodically to see if I have anything amusing or profound to say. I really hope some people are, because this whole thing feels like a waste of time if nobody is reading it.

Anyway. One of the things I'm considering doing this summer is trying new things. Mostly because I've spent enough time in my shell for these first 4 decades, and because it's summer and I have loads of time on my hands and trying something new or unusual might give me something to write about. Nothing crazy like bungee-jumping from helicopters, but low-key stuff that might be kind of odd but not extremely so. A couple ideas I'm toying with so far: Make a trip to the grocery store where I can only buy things I have never bought before; read an entire novel in one day; time out an afternoon in a theater where I can see three or four movies start to finish; paint the wall in my kitchen something other than blood-red; spend a day wearing only one sock... so, I guess I'm going for the stupid and the ridiculous more than anything. So if anyone IS ACTUALLY READING THIS, tell all your friends how darn enjoyable it is so they read it too, and then come up with some mildly pointless things for me to do to occupy my time.

I'm Really Kind of a Happy Idiot

Or maybe a hopeless music nerd would be a better description... It's about this time each year that you hear people who work in a school talk about what their plans are for the summer. Some travel, some spend time with family, some take on projects. A couple years ago I remember hearing about someone in my school planning to spend the summer perfecting a recipe for the ideal strawberry margarita. These are the types of indulgences you can allow yourself when you have some 70-odd days off from work. I won't deny it; it's pretty sweet.

I've got my own set of goals every year, including this one. And one of the more ambitious ones is also one of the most ridiculous. I have a new 120 GB iPod, new enough that I still have kind of a crush on it. It's big enough that there will be more than enough storage space for me to hold my entire music library, including the songs and CDs I've never put into iTunes before. So I'm going to do just that, but with this set of steps:

(1) Import all CDs I currently don't have on the iPod,
(2) Re-import any partial CDs I have, so the songs will be in the proper order while stored in the music library,
(3) Add the cover art for the album that every single song came from so it will show up on both the iPod display screen and on my iTunes screen saver,
(4) Maybe, maybe update the genre and star-rating for each song in the library.

I don't know exactly which obsessive disorder this would file me under, but I'm sure it's gotta be one of them...

Now, did I mention that when this little project is done I estimate I'll have somewhere in the neighborhood of 13,000 songs on the iPod? And yes, one of them, appropriately, is Styx's "Too Much Time on My Hands."

John & Kate + 8

Really? Wow. Who cares?

Exercise

I was going to write something this morning about what a crap mood I'm in, but that doesn't seem like a strong beginning, being this is the first actual post following my weak introductory one. I'm not even sure the happy singing and yet preternaturally self-aware kids from the "Glee" ads could pull me out of this funk. Yeah, today I'm that guy. Eh. It happens. I'll get over it.

So anyway. I got an e-mail from the Life Coach today, seeing if I was up to joining her at a Body Pump or Body Crunch or Body Abuse or Body Whatever class at the Y this morning. And my only possible response was "No," because my mood does not really enable me to be around people today if there's the slightest chance they will worsen it. It would have been fun to hang with Life Coach for awhile, but instead I'll do chores and convince myself that this bottle of Vitamin Water is actually going to make a significant difference in my health and physical conditioning.

So anyway, again. Can't seem to focus on a topic here.... Since physical exercise is off the table today, there is still the other reason for writing a blog (and oh my, how I detest that word): A writing exercise. With summer vacation on the near horizon, I'd really like to get some intentional writing done so I need to warm up the creativity, much like I would try to stretch out my legs before Life Coach and I had one of our physically taxing indoor-soccer-old-fart-league games this past spring. My biggest goal for the summer is to get some significant writing done, which means revising a book, maybe finishing another, maybe starting another. I discovered a few years back when I spent much of my summer working on the one book I've finished that I consider worthwhile that living the lifestyle of a writer is actually REALLY easy to get used to. But to actually write and get some progress made I need to activate that part of the brain again, and that ain't always easy.

So for now, here are quick teaser descriptions of what I'll try to work on this summer. These would fall into the category of children/adolescent literature if you couldn't tell:
(1) an Internet time-travel book where the bad guy is the lead character as an adult;
(2) a small-town sports rebellion book;
(3) a haunted lake book that I have literally been picking away at for close to 15 years now.

If I get at least one of those done this summer, I'll consider the break a success. If not, I'll add it to the pile of other significant failures that have *sigh* come to define my life.... ahh HA! See? You forgot that I'm that guy today, didn't you?....

Day 1 - Kind of

Memorial Day weekend does feel like the beginning of summer; I have a bag full of math tests to grade, and I could not possibly care less about them then I do. I gave my class a brief lecture about how they should not be "checking out" for the last three weeks of the year because school isn't over yet, but a part of me is resisting the urge to skate through to the end myself. If they only knew....

If you found your way here from Facebook, thanks for visiting. I hope you'll keep visiting, because this whole thing feels somewhat pointless if there isn't an audience. On that subject, I'm hoping to see posted comments along the way, even if you're just telling me to lighten up and let some happy rays of sunshine reach down to my cynical, caustic heart.

I'll be continuing and perhaps elaborating on my Facebook 10-Word Movie Reviews, writing about whatever books I'm reading or CDs I'm listening to, chronicling the events that will add up to what promises to be a typically less-than-memorable summer, and just providing my own self-indulgent commentary about how many stupid people there are in the world and venting my frustration as to why I have to interact with them. If you're coming here from Facebook, visit my profile and read my "10-Second Interview." That should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect. If you are coming here from some other direction than via Facebook, well, congratulations. Resist the temptation to creating a Facebook profile, because you're not missing much. Although maybe my opinion about that will change once school is out.

Okay. That's alls I gots for now....