5/2/09 7:51PM Saturday

I’m in the Grafton Alterra’s, Saturday night, nearing eight. The sun is falling, and I’m in the window facing north, listening to my Hold Steady/Drive By-Truckers mix and finishing up grading papers. Maybe it’s the caffeine combining with emergence from illness, but holy fuck, I live in Wisconsin! How the fuck did I get here? And isn’t southeastern Wisconsin beautiful on a late spring night? The sun is falling on a cloudless sky and cars are passing back and forth in front of the building. The cute coffee shop girls have grown accustomed to my consistent Saturday night presence, off in the corner with my headphones and computer, and smile when they give me my change. Life is good.

So what’s been up this week? Monday night T, S and I caught the Brewers game for S’s birthday. Pics to follow, but they’re already up on facebook. Why haven’t you checked, lazy blog readers? Anyway, we had a great time, although I had to lean on T a little for spazzing out in his seat. He doesn’t have S’s sports focus. I also froze my ass off walking back to the car in the pouring rain. In turn, the cold rain, and probably not swine flu, rendered me sick later in the week. On Thursday and Friday I had to stay home. I’m serious. I couldn’t go to work because of the swine flu fear. They wouldn’t have let me in the door. I wonder if they would have called security. I can imagine the security guards huffing it across campus ready to bean me with their batons. But I’m their friend! Would I have been able to talk them down? We’ll never know. Anyway, I slept a lot and essentially felt as if I was going to faint if I walked more than twenty feet at a time. I also watched Transporter 3, one of the worst movies I have ever seen (and I liked the first Transporter movie, just to be clear), and read some Doestoevsky (sp? I’m not checking). The temps were supposed to improve but hovered just below sixty, too cold to open many windows.

This morning I felt well enough to get on the road after close to three days of quarantine. I drove down to Borders (5 buck gift certificate plus 40% means very cheap third book in the Twilight series for M’s mother’s day present), Best Buy (Twilight movie to add to the present) and Costco (the usual). While I was tired upon my return I wasn’t dead. Ross stopped by to show me his scooter (he wants me to buy the machine) and we sat on the back porch and talked for a while. Mike stopped by, too. The neighborhood kids ran from yard to yard until the neighborhood mothers lassoed them up and drove them up to the park on the bluff. After Ross left I managed thirty minutes on the elliptical. The sweat felt good after two illness-attributed days off of working out. Tomorrow I’m going for weights and cardio.

Now I’m at the coffee shop. M’s watching her mother’s day present at home. T has a friend staying over. S and N are probably playing Wii. The sun has set. I’m facing the window, but I can see the people working in the coffee shop behind me in the reflection. The cars are turning on their headlights as they pass. Life is good. Life is fucking good. Please stay this way. Thank you very much.