Night Off

After a quite stressful day doin’ what I’m paid to do, (and doin’ it well, I might add), I am going to take the night off.  Too much shrapnel flew around the office all day to get any serious writing done, so I’m just composing this note while awaiting traffic to thin out a bit on the highway that runs past my store.

The little ladies are a state away with their grandparents; the wife is down the Jersey shore on business and then later dinner with a colleague from her previous company.  So I have a few hours of peace and quiet to myself.  What’ll I do?

Don’t know for certain … but it’ll probably involve a nice big bowl of split pea soup and pasta (nuthin’ says “90 degree Summer days!” like a nice big bowl of split pea soup) and a bottomless glass of ice tea.  Which I will consume in the air-conditioned living room with Kirk Douglas’s The Big Sky playing on the flat screen.  Why The Big Sky?  Well, I have an ancient paperback copy of the novel down in the On Deck circle since like forever and I’ve had the Kirk Douglas movie on the DVR since like forever.  So for two hours I’ll transplant myself to the Old West, where men were men and, er, not, er, wage slaves.

Anyways, after that I’ll try to finish my Majipoor Chronicles by Robert Silverberg.  Two-thirds done, itching to start something new.

And as a corollary, I need to put in, say, a half-hour or so on this idea I’ve been thinking about to actually get my life back on track.  It’s like having a slip of paper with all the answers on it while standing in a dense fog, and the breeze pulls it from your hand.  It’s still there, you can still sorta see it, vaguely, shapelessly, but it’s close, even though it’s slightly outta reach …