Checkin' In

It’s been a week since the Snowpocalypse of ’16. Three-quarters of it’s melted, thanks to temperatures averaging in the 40s. Was supposed to get a dusting either yesterday or today, and despite overcast skies and the mercury declining Friday, got nothing. Today it’s mild and sunny.

But I’m not writing to update you about the weather.

I’m not quite sure why I’m writing, except that I get oogy when I don’t.

’Twas a busy week, though nothing of substance seemed to get accomplished. The days flew by even though the sun stays out later and later. I had a job interview on Monday that went nowhere. I am e-stalking a corporate lead for the opportunity to speak with her in person in the near future. Took a two-hour computer class one night at the local library to bolster my resume. Considered answering an ad to be a postman while mailing some bills this morning, but the pay is only two-thirds what I’m used to (yes, I know, a million times what I’m making now).

Morale was up and down over the past seven days. Cheated twice on my diet, in major ways, but I think I can get back on it without too much difficulty. On the brighter side, taught Patch some constellations and stellar names one night. Watched her soccer practice on Tuesday and an indoor game earlier today. She played hard because there wasn’t enough teammates present to enable substitutions, and she had just finished an hour of basketball practice, and a schoolmate’s birthday party even before that.

Me and Little One did errands after I paid the requisite bills: bank, post office, dry cleaners, recycling center, library, grocery store, and then lunch. Earlier in the week we watched The Faculty and Cloverfield in the afternoons after she finished homework. She graded the first an A+ and the second a B. She has some friends coming over for a sleepover after her basketball game at 6:15 tonight, so I had to tidy up and vacuum the house so a quartet of tweens can destroy it later on. It also means the wife and I will be exiled to the upstairs master bedroom. We’ll probably end up watching a bad action flick on cable. The wife will fall asleep at 10, I’ll have to stumble downstairs to tell the girls to be quiet a few times, and try to make headway on my Deerslayer book.

Speaking of books, I finished Anthony Beevor’s The Second World War. That conflict and the Civil War fascinate me, a peace-loving guy for all intents and purposes. Not sure why. After reading Beevor’s book, I’ve come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t read much more about it, which is a pity as I got Ike’s and Churchill’s autobiographies staring at me from the Shelf of Unread Tomes. The technology and the military theory appeal to me, but the incredible, voluminous magnitudes of human suffering do take its toll on the reader. Though Beevor does not go into the Holocaust or the death camps in depth, details here and there grip me and rip my heart asunder. O thank the Lord I or my family did not have to suffer through such terrifying times.

Looking to finish James Fenimore Cooper’s The Deerslayer in the next few days. I’m around the halfway point of the 662-page paperback and find myself under-motivated finish it. It’s not that it’s a bad story, it’s just that, as Mark Twain famously pointed out, the book meanders like nobody’s business. Cooper’s certainly in no hurry to bring events to a head. What I might describe in a few words he details with a few sentences. Likewise, a Hopperian sentence translates to a Cooperian paragraph. The man takes his time wrapping his thoughts around his subject, binding ideas, actions, and dialogue in yards and yards of exposition tied firmly from every conceivable angle. The pages do turn, yet I feel I do not make headway into the tale.

After that I think I’m going to resume my physics reading. No death or Sisyphusian suffering in physics. Only the unravelings of God’s masterpiece, the universe macro and micro. Probably will start with physicist Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, a book I read about 15 years ago that I just recently rediscovered in mint condition in a box in the attic.

Worked out five times this week, slinging the weights around, and chase each workout with some hard boiled eggs, a can of tuna, and/or a protein shake. Arnold has nothing to worry about concerning me, but I do feel better, look better, sleep better, and that’s all that counts.

Something interesting on deck for tomorrow, if I can eke out an hour or so to pen it.