Only just past 5PM, Sunday, but the hour feels later. Not sure why. I’m in the glacial upstairs bedroom, burning a hole in the ozone right about where I’m sitting, I’m sure, but I don’t care, I love air conditioning. Suck it, environment! What have I done today? Hm…let me think. Nat came into the Wii room, where I was sleeping, and curled up next to me around 4:30AM. A storm woke him, I think. We both woke near six. I watched Fox News while he played line rider on the computer. Then I considered making pancakes but bagged the idea when he wanted waffles instead. Through the morning I cleaned, wrote a review of that Gaiman/Guy With The Long Italian Last Name anthology, and hung out with the boys. Pete and I also stood under the gazebo and watched the storm come through after I hit Costco for pizza creation supplies. Then I made the dough (not sure if I was completely successful, need to experiment) and watched some Happy Gilmore with the boys. They seemed to love the film; they’re watching again now. Later I hit the Y for day five (the five days on, one day off rotation seems to work), cardio/upper/lower/abs. Then I finished the pizza, cleaned the kitchen, ate some pizza, and here I am. I’m pleasantly tired. Shall we hit bullet points?

• The new Stars CD, The Five Ghosts, is growing on me. I also finished and sent a shebang CD and a couple out to the Netherlands for a friend.
• S and I hit the West Bend batting cages yesterday after the farmers market. I have some cellphone pics I’ll try to upload later. One of the machines was broken and gave us approximately 100 pitches instead of the usual fourteen. That was awesome. S struggled (his bat was too big, I think) with the 50mph pitches but kicked ass on the softball machine.
• I haven’t taken sleeping pills the last two nights and I’ve slept ok. Maybe tonight I’ll go for a third meds-free night in a row.
• We’ve had a shitload of rain, but in a good way. The sage is growing well out along the garage. I’m too lazy to do much landscaping, though. I know our house pales in comparison to the neighbors. Fuck it. If we ever sell, I’ll landscape then.
• On Friday I played hoops for the first time in six months. We had only eight guys and I acquitted myself quite well, thank you very much.
• My weight shot up slightly. Please be muscle, please be muscle…
• The boys start summer school tomorrow. I considered taking them to Minneapolis this week but they’ll already miss summer school when they’re in hell, er, Chautauqua, so I decided to hold off until closer to September.
• I’m back reading Wind-Up Girl.
• The dogs have been fun lately. I’m not leaving them to hit Chautauqua. I’d love to take them with me.

Ok, that’s all for now. Have a lovely start of the week.

First pizza experiment...turned out, need to practice...

Father’s Day, early in the morning, nearing four. I’ve been up since 2 or so. The laptop battery power is fading so I must write quickly. Mack is sleeping on the couch next to me, sighing every few minutes. The room is dark but I’m pretty sure Pete is dreaming on his blankets in the corner. The window is open behind me, and the cool night air rustles the curtains to the left of my eyes. Every few minutes I hear the kitchen mouse but he may now be especially quiet now he/she knows I’m here and the dogs are loose.

And how are you? My week has been ok, but I’m tight and tired this morning. I’ll be ok. Yes, yes, bluntly, I’m exasperated with the inability to go a week without…crashing…but…apparently I can’t. I’m functional, don’t worry, I drive to work, hit the gym, hang out with my kids, all that, but holy hell, when it hits, it hits. And I can’t handle groups of people at all. Want to hang out?

Ok, what did I do this week? A couple of meetings at the office. Read from that stories collection Gaiman edited with the guy with the long Italian last name. Visited the West Bend farmers market with S. Oh, when was it, Friday morning, I stood outside very early in the morning and watched a massive, perfect storm roll in from the south. I took off my clothes under the gazebo, kneeled, and prayed. Yes, you read that correctly. No, the Wisconsin populace was not scandalized, no one can see me back there. And after a couple minutes the rain drove me inside because, well, the rain was fucking cold. But life is too short not to take off your clothes and pray sometimes. Seriously.

More later.

Is today June 13th? Wow, this month is passing quickly. Highlights! Today was busy, and I’m all sweaty, but I’m ok. Well, let me start with last night. At 4PM M’s “end of the year” work party started. I attended, along with M and the boys, and my full social uselessness emerged. I don’t know if I give off “I suck at talking with people” vibrations or something, but I didn’t do very well. However, 1) I think these people know I’m in education, and you would think that would mean we could converse, but remember, most of the women are in education and their husbands all were wearing Nascar t-shirts and talking about guns. I’m not kidding. So…thank God for dogs and children. I played fetch with a dog named Lacey and baggo with S (he kicked my ass, I tweaked my knee). Anyway, after a brief consultation with M I cut out early. When I arrived home I ate dinner, read a bit, and tried to crash on melatonin. I was somewhat successful but woke at 10:30 and realized no one was home. After a quick set of unanswered texts/phone calls to M I started to worry. They were driving on some dark country roads. But they arrived home minutes later. I was too wired to sleep then so I watched Sportscenter and tossed and turn. By 6:30AM I was up on maybe two hours of sleep. Suckass. The dogs and I read on the back deck until I decided I was sick of looking at the ratty ass couch/ottoman in the living room and drove to ShopKo for a futon frame. Now, follow me here, ok? First off, ShopKo is a depressing store, sometimes more depressing than Wal-Mart, but not often. The ShopKo light is worse and the employees more…mutated. I know that sounds mean, I apologize. The store was deserted, I didn’t see anyone for ten minutes, but I finally found a cheap metal frame for the futon and knocked ten bucks off by signing up for the ShopKo reward card (not a credit card, more like the Borders reward card), so I picked up the frame for a little more than fifty bucks. Why not purchase a decent couch, you ass? Well, the two dogs are not done chewing on crap, and I don’t think they can chew on a metal futon frame, and if they could, well, the frame cost fifty bucks. Knock yourself out, Mack and Pete. The boys were surprisingly adept and helping me maneuver the old couch into the garage (how do we throw that out?) and put together the frame. N and T helped a lot, S not so much. Around noon I hit the Y for 30 hard minutes on the modified stairmaster (the one with the buzzy audio I hate). Later I ate lunch, watched some of the World Cup, fixed the library table, lifted weights/abs, planted hostas and, oh, fucking freaked out when the dogs got out of the yard and I had to chase those little speed demons, yelling “goddamn” and “motherfuck” for the whole neighborhood to hear until I lured them back in the house with dog treats. Yay.

Bullet points, shall we?

• I’m angrier lately. I like to think that’s progress, but I don’t want to scare the kids.

• The new Hold Steady is better than I expected. You can tell the piano guy is gone. I liked him, I don’t mean to say otherwise, but this is very much a guitar record.

• I’m switching my Shebang theme from “weather” to “classical”.

• The kids’ school year is complete. This means I don’t have the house to myself in the afternoons. Shit. Maybe I’ll work at coffee shops more often.

• Work is going well, I’ve finished my autumn syllabi, believe it or not. On to NCATE, etc. I want to take more time off this summer, at least two more weeks. Maybe I’ll travel.

• I finished the excellent Winter’s Bone and have moved on to The Wind-Up Girl. I love Science Fiction in the summer (is “Science Fiction” capitalized?). The start has been slow-going, however, I think because of my horrible lack of sleep. You know, I’m scared I can’t sleep. I’m fucked up. I’ll be ok. Story of my life, I suppose.

That’s it for now. Does tonight feel like Sunday night? Not really, I think, because M and the boys are off all summer.

For everyone behind the ficus...

This morning I woke in the Wii room near 6:30, rose, got ready, and dropped S and N off at school just past eight. Rain was falling and for some reason the carpool lane was bogged down in traffic so I kicked the boys out of the car at the bottom of the hill and sent them sprinting through the (fairly light) downpour into school. They survived. Then I drove down to the Milwaukee Public Museum for the Dead Sea Scrolls. Well, after finding good parking I was early so I had the rest of the museum pretty much to myself. The Milwaukee Public Museum sucks. Just to be clear, this isn’t the Milwaukee Art Museum, which I like quite a bit, this is the historical museum or whatever. The “Old Milwaukee” section is hilariously weird. It’s like a Disney animatronic ride except you have to walk and instead of singing pirates or children you have, like, a German lady cutting sausage. Let me image search. Here we go:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3382/3587088133_885156a2e2.jpg

and

http://image.absoluteastronomy.com/images/encyclopediaimages/s/st/streets_of_old_milwaukee.jpg

I also walked through the section with taxidermied (is that a word?) animals and weird historical scenes with traders and Native Americans. What a sad museum.

The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was pretty cool, though, especially since I followed a group of retirees and was just before the school group tidal wave. At the start the exhibit was mostly about the scrolls’ discovery and some historical context, then a short movie on the excavation, and then a little more on the containers that held the scrolls and some facsimiles of larger scrolls. Then you go into a cool dark room with the tiny papyrus fragments and their origins and translations above each fragment. Hm. I can’t find a picture, you’re going to have to trust me. I stood in front of a 2,000 year old piece of Ecclesiastes. Very cool. I bought the museum catalog and drove home in the rain.

Later I met Barb and Amanda at a coffee shop in West Bend. We talked/gossip about the university, etc. for a couple hours before I returned home and made the pie pictured below.

N’s calling. More later…Piratefest this weekend…have a lovely Friday night.

Pics of my first pie experiment...

1) Thanks, Jim, for the recipe...
2) It's apple...I wussed out and got a premade crust, though...I'll try my own crust soon...
3) The pie tastes great. Yay!

Why hello, everyone. I’m on the bedroom floor, the air conditioner blowing over near the window, a train whistle sounding through the skylight. I’m under the weather. This afternoon I curled up with Tokyo Suckerpunch, fell asleep, and woke three hours later. Will I sleep tonight? Hell yes! Thank you, sleeping pills!

Let us proceed directly to bullet points.

• I like my office in the summer. A few colleagues call it “the cave” as in, “I didn’t know you were in the cave today.” I leave off all the lights save one for the plants, turn on music, and work in the dark.
• Tomorrow I’m checking out the Dead Sea Scrolls. I have tickets, even. Then I’m driving out to West Bend to have coffee with Barb and Amanda at one of my favorite, if distant, coffee shops.
• I’ve slacked on the novel this week due to illness. I’ll catch up this weekend.
• Piratefest starts tomorrow. Why doesn’t the city support Piratefest more? Because they suck, that’s why. They support Fish Day, with the white trash shirtless drunks and 70s rock, but they can’t support Piratefest? Port Washington, I love you, but sometimes you’re a dumbass.
• I need to pay for not one but TWO lost library books. In Seattle I left the guide book on the bus. T lost one of his books, too. I will wait until a nice librarian is at the counter and approach with shame.
• This week I picked up Alice in Wonderland from Redbox. Ok, it’s not really Alice in Wonderland, I don’t care what anybody says, but I’m going to watch again anyway.
• The boys are down to the last week of school.
• I’ve been eating like shit, but in a good way.
• Oh, I’ve been on the bike twice this week instead of hitting the gym. Yay vitamin D. Remind me to check wind speeds before I ride in the future, though. Riding north into a twenty mile wind blows chunks.

Have a lovely evening, ladies and gentlemen. I’m tired. Off to read.