Vegas baby

Rumours of my demise are highly exaggerated. At least so far. I'm going into the heart of Mammon for a couple of days. I'm not quite sure why.

Weekend of booksI

It's remarkably quiet around here considering that I'm in sole charge of a houseful of kids while my wife is off defending herself from the ravages of middle age by running in a road race far from here. There are all kinds of reasons for the quietness. The best one is that my oldest daughter has just taken my youngest daughter to her soccer game. The worst is that another one of my children is sick in bed. Another pretty bad one is that I've given my little son carte blanche on Club Penguin. He's so zoned out right now that he just looked up, at 2 in the afternoon, and asked if he could have breakfast (ok, I'm not that bad -- he's had breakfast but so long ago that he's forgotten).

Me? I've spent part of the morning wandering the house marvelling at the huge piles of laundry which seem to be everywhere. I can't believe how much laundry these kids produce, especially considering that I have nothing to do with the oldest 3 -- they do their own. The rest of my time I've spent reading this jeebly Ken Follett book the Pillars of the Earth, which is neither that good nor that bad. It rolls along in semi-predictable fashion, one learns a thing or two about how cathedrals are built and what life was like in the 12th century. But it's just ok. On the other hand, at 700 pages in, I'm reluctant to abandon ship, and really don't see much reason to. I did greet the news, however, that there's a recent sequel to this book which is even longer with some amount of chagrine. Not sure yet whether I'll take it on -- perhaps in the doldrums of August when it's just too hot for Camus.

I love books. Anyone who knows me even a little will know that. As my kids litter the house with wet bathings suits, underwear, odd socks, for me it is books. On average, I probably buy about 2-3 books/weeks and I read about 1/week. The perceptive reader will notice a lack of equilibrium here. At this pace, I'll never read everything I buy. So why buy? I think there are all kinds of reasons -- an act of faith that I'll be around long enough to read them, a commitment to myself to continue to learn, and also just because I like the look and feel of the darned things. They punctuate my life. In spite of the fact that I sometimes struggle to remember the birthdates of my kids, I can tell you within a month or two when I bought pretty much every one of the thousands of books I own.

I used to fret sometimes about the fact that there was a finite number of books I'd be able to read before my death. Now, with an optimistic lifespan estimate that I'm not going to make unless I make some lifestyle changes, that number sits right now at about 1500. I know there are more than 1500 books on my list right now, so unless I speed up the pace (which I can't right now and may never want to), there are some words that will never cross my eyes.

Lately, though, I've been able to put a positive spin on this thought. What it really means is that as long as I live I'm never going to run out of great stuff to read. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that I'll soon be able to re-read the best stuff with almost as much pleasure as the first time around.

Raindrops

I've been sitting mesmerized by the trails of raindrops rolling down my office window. Can't tell you how good it feels to be above ground, surrounded by greenery, and out of my subterranean office. I'm even getting a little quality work done, and realizing that much of the slough of despond that has enveloped me lately has been caused by the letdown from the busiest four months I've had for a long time to a sudden large tract of time that really doesn't need to be regimented on a minute by minute basis. I've always had a hard time managing those transitions. How to spend your time when you've got no hard deadlines staring you in the face?

What I need to do is to blow the last two nasty workaday tasks I have left to do (one set of book revisions half done and one technical paper half done) and then unfold in the freedom of a few months of time that I can spend learning new skills, playing with new ideas, and doing lots and lots of walking in the woods.

I'm still tired after staying up half the night to see Indiana primary results. Not sure I understand why I care so much -- I guess Obama just seems to be such a ray of hope, almost Kennedy-esque. Perhaps also because a positive changing of the guard south of the border might spill over into northern climes, and help to oust our right-wing narrow-minded opinionated zealots from office. It could happen. Maybe.

Time to go feed the kids. Maybe have a beer. Or two. But definitely not three.

Clawing out the marrow

It's done. After the six zillionth hit on this blog dealing with the loss of digital extremities, I've excised mention of a certain lovely blonde eye-patched mermaidish celebrity's malformed appendages from my blog.

And I'm sitting here, well on my way to wasting another entire day, and I'm wondering: do I turn into a housebound depressive basement-lurking netsurfer when I get sick, or do I get sick because.....

Whatever.

Grumpy as hell and knowing I need some forest but unable to muster the will to go out the door. I'll go do some editing now to prove that I actually exist, but I ain't happy about it.

New set of rules to follow:

4 pints of water/day
Never more than 2 drinks, and then only red wine or beer -- enough of this trickily difficult to measure hard stuff.
Some form of physical movement every day.
No food after dinner.

It's stupid that I sit here, a wise man bristling with post-graduate degrees, knowing the inevitability of the changes that would ensue if I just followed those rules, yet just as certainly knowing how difficult it would be to do so.

Sloughing off the slough

Between the extraordinary heat (trade winds, my ass) and the average of 10 shots of rum/day (est.) on vacation last week, you can imagine what has happened to my spring drive for health. Just walking from the fridge to the pool was exertion enough to bring on a palpitation or two. I haven't run for about 10 days and have barely left the house for the last 3. It's had a huge impact on my mood. It felt good to go for a long romp in the park with my son this afternoon, even though I could feel the 5 lb weight gain. Whether tonight's social soiree -- a birthday party where we will know nobody but the birthday girl -- will help or hinder remains to be seen. Tomorrow morning, though, I'll need to be doing the Shrek Schlump down that little trail again.