8/5/09 6:46PM Wednesday

A few minutes to write are presenting themselves this fine evening. S and N are in the yard feeding ants (both S and N are in full Halloween costume for some reason, I’m not going to ask), T is at football practice, M at the Y for Zoomba. Yay quiet. This morning I slept a little later than usual, after seven, and felt immeasurably better than I have over the harried, over-busy last few days. I was full-on down last night when I fell asleep. I’m esp. worried that I’ll start the semester without a proper break (Chautauqua DOES NOT COUNT…when you’re on edge in your mother-in-law’s house, you are not relaxing) so I’m building in four “off” days the next two weeks, starting Friday, when M and the boys will be down at Great America. I’ll “work at home”, which hopefully means I’ll watch movies and maybe get the house puppy-ready.

Puppy-ready, you ask? Yes, if all goes well in less than seventy-two hours we will pick up two fox terrier/spaniel puppies (four months or so old) from an open house/shelter gathering a couple towns south. We started exploring adopting the puppies a couple weeks back and found two pairs that looked as if they needed to stay together. The first were way up in Ladysmith, and they seemed popular, according to M’s conversation with the shelter lady, so we went with the other puppies. I don’t want to jinx the process, so I’ll stop talking about it now except to note that the shelter is crazy thorough and even did a home visit to make sure we were sane. The home visit went well, by the way, and the shelter guy’s kids didn’t want to leave after playing with ours.

So how was today? Decent, then. I took a leisurely approach to the morning, arriving at work near nine, and worked on class prep (three weeks early, maybe a little overkill) until eleven, when Preston stopped by the office. We chatted for thirty minutes or so, followed by more class prep, followed by my cutting out and hitting Bayshore. I picked up a book for M and Barnes and Noble then a slew of food at Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s is quickly becoming my favorite food store, or at least the perfect compliment to Costco. After dropping off the groceries I drove over to the Y and knocked out thirty minutes on the elliptical and thirty minutes on the modified stairmaster. I was pretty cashed, since I hadn’t eaten much today, so I showered quickly, ate dinner, and settled on the couch to watch the replays of Prince Fielder trying to kick Mota’s ass in the Dodger locker room. Later I took T to football (more on that in a minute), stopped at the library, and otherwise made myself useful.

Bullet Points!

• I was pissed off when the puppy home visit fucked up this week’s routine. Between the assessment class, Chautauqua, and M’s class last week my routine has been fucked. Totally fucked. And after a decent Monday Tuesday was fucked. Today was better. Stop being fucked, routine. Now.
• T started football on Monday. This isn’t little kid flag football, it’s testosterone-laden manly football. The kids practice every night this week from 5PM to 7:30PM, just helmets and shorts now, full-on conditioning. He seems to enjoy the experience. More power to him. I only lasted through fifth grade with football. Maybe he’ll break my record. Why, by the way, are all youth football coaches below 5ft9in tall and over 300 lbs? Is there some sort of rule?
• I’m enjoying the Hemingway quite a bit, but I may read Everything’s Ravaged, Everything’s Burned this week since I only have the book for fourteen days from the library.
• I haven’t seen a movie in forever. Maybe I’ll check out “The Watchmen” on Friday. Maybe I’ll live dangerously and go to the theater. Do I dare? I just checked the listings and didn’t recognize half the movies playing Friday.
• I should shave. But I’m digging the shorter hair. Makes life easy.

Have a lovely Wednesday evening…