Later Friday evening. How late is Borders open tonight? I’m in the mood for a drive.

So I’m on vacation and I’m not feeling too workaholic-ish yet. I’ve checked email and messages once or twice but nothing serious. Perhaps I’m getting healthier.

Yesterday the boys and I attended the last Cubs/Brewers game. The Brew got swept but we’re close (even, maybe? I’m not sure) on the season series since we won both Wrigley series. After Jake the babysitter arrived (maybe 10:30AM) T, S and I left for the game. Earlier T stocked the cooler with turkey (for him), cream cheese bagels (for S), bananas (for me) and diet cokes (for all of us). Traffic wasn’t bad until right near the park but we still snagged decent parking in the nearest lot. We played baseball for thirty minutes or so, ate out of the back of the van, and cut through the tailgaters to the park. The boys wanted to go straight to the seats. The Brewers lost, of course, but we still had a good time. We wandered most of the last couple of innings, checking out the gift shops a couple times, but the boys couldn’t decide upon anything reasonable to purchase so we cut out and hit Bayshore. A couple of observations about the game before I continue:

• There are a lot of female (I think) Cub fans with mullets and sunglasses. Fat women. The kind that, were they in the Olympics, would need chromosome gender testing before entering competition.
• There were a lot of frat boy Cub fans. What a surprise.
• I saw one guy decked out head to toe in White Sox gear. Huh? While I appreciate the sentiment as a Sox fan…what the hell?
• The Brewers fans supported the team well. No complaints. We already made up a game tonight with a win over Atlanta and a Pittsburg victory over the Cubs. We’ll be fine.

After leaving the game we hit Bayshore since I promised the boys they could buy something for once. I’m usually a cheap bastard so I decided to open the wallet and let the kids get something cool. The problem, of course, is waiting for them to decide. I guess I should be happy they’re weighing all the options. T is attracted to the kinds of hats inner city kids wear sideways (e.g. weird graffiti skylines on the brim) but decided to save his cash for the D and D Players Guide. S bought a board that allows him to track and display the baseball standings by moving helmets into different slots. He has a similar football board with which he’s obsessed so the baseball version makes sense.

M says orientation was fine, by the way. She’s still looking forward to the new gig. Her confidence is up. We’ll run into slight logistic problems but nothing too scary.

Last night I was dead tired (a lot of walking at the game, plus I worked out in the morning) so I crashed on the couch and channel-surfed until the computer and the promise of a new mix CD attracted me. This one has decent flow. I stayed up until near midnight then collapsed into bed. At three or so I had a nasty nightmare in which something was floating above my bed. I was trying to hit the apparition and swearing at it in my sleep. T woke me, probably thankfully, as N was stealing both his covers and crawling into his bed. My adrenalin was pumping to heart attack proportions. I wonder if nightmares cause people to die in their sleep. Maybe. I slipped onto the front porch and slept until after dawn when N woke me because he wanted me to taste a cheeto. Thanks, buddy.

After waking I checked GR and worked out again (this time to a Weeds episode, M and the kids were gone). I cleaned and rearranged the home office. God, that space was messy. M has a nasty habit of storing crap in crevices between and behind furniture. Talk about garbage…gross. Anyway, I was pissed off and muttering through most of the process but the office looks great now. The file cabinet is in the basement, I moved the table against a different wall, and the room appears to have doubled in size. I’ll post pictures later. Over the course of the day I hit the gas station for the Friday NYT and WSJ (some woman in front of me paid for her gas by check…what the fuck? She took ten years) and Costco (blueberries). Later I roasted Yukon gold potatoes while lifting weights, pulled the potatoes from the oven, and knocked out another twenty elliptical minutes while T and I watched a cool Samantha Brown episode on the Chinese city with the terra cotta warriors. The skies turned grey and a torrential and much needed hour-long downpour moved through town. I sat under the gazebo through most of the storm. You could see the change in wind direction by following the rain threads’ direction. After that the boys and I watched some of “Streets of Fire”. God, the dialogue in that movie is laughable but I find myself strangely attracted to the film (despite the presence of much more swearing than I remember, I think my kids learned some new words). About halfway through the movie N and I ditched upstairs and read a couple books before bed. I shaved and talked with T about the new Player’s Guide. He and I will create some characters tomorrow. They leave on Sunday, so we’re down to the last few hours and I want to do something he wants to do.

Farmers market in the morning. More later this weekend. Goodnight.