Saturday, August 27, 2011

Notes from the Cave

I wonder if I'll ever actually write another essay for my blog?  The prospect seems dim at the moment.  Even my reading has fallen off the map.  I've only finished two books since the beginning of June, and none since the end of July.  I can't seem to stay focused on the books I've been trying to read.

I went out last night for Happy Hour with friends from work.  We had a really good time, although I drank too much.  Have paid the price for it today, but expect to get a good night's sleep tonight.  A bunch of people showed up, so it was a good time.  My face hurt from laughing so much.  I'm sure I made an idiot out of myself.

I slept funny last night or something, because my ear - and particularly my ear lobe - has been numb all day.  I first noticed it in the shower this morning after I had been leaning kind of funny on my shoulder, so I'm not sure if it started at that point, or if I had actually done it during the night.  In any case, I'm guessing it must be a nerve in my neck that is irritated or something.  Either that, or a tumor is cutting off the blood supply to my ear.  I did have a few moments of panic at the thought that I was having a stroke.

In-laws are coming over on Sunday for dinner, so we have been cleaning around the house today, which is even less fun with a hangover.  I did nap for a while to the soft sounds of the Weather Channel reporting on Hurricane Irene.  The Weather Channel is a great station for napping.

I think maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Notes from the Cave

Hello, Blogosphere.  Sorry for being so hit or miss lately.  I haven't had much in the creativity tank.  I actually tried to write some poetry a few weeks back, but it went nowhere.  I couldn't get it out.  I'm creatively constipated.

I worked third shift last weekend, as I always do on my weekend rotations, but for some reason I feel like I never got back on track from it this week.  I've been exhausted and sleeping a lot all week.  I hope this is just an aberration, because it's going to make things pretty miserable if I have to go through this every three weeks after my weekend shifts.

I managed to get out and mow the lawn today for the first time in almost a month.  I think I mowed it the weekend after we got back from vacation - July 24th or so - and hadn't mowed it since then.  It was actually good for the lawn, because it had time to get nice and lush.  Now that's it's freshly mowed, it looks good.

We got a new dog shortly after getting back from vacation.  Our last dog died about a year ago, and our daughters were begging for another one, so we caved in.  He is a Maltese-Havanese mix, and his name is Finley Henry Longshanks.  We call him Fin.  He's about 6 pounds with furry white hair.  He doesn't shed and his coat is supposed to be hypo-allergenic, so he was a good choice for our allergy-suffering family.  He's basically a lap dog.

Haven't seen much of the horses in the backyard lately.  They've been going out at night because of the heat during the daytime.  I see their shadows out there in the evenings every now and then.  I've also discovered that we have a lot of bats in the trees behind our house (the horse pasture basically comes up to our backyard through a break in the trees).  If I go out on the deck around sundown, I always see five or six bats flitting around the sky, searching for bugs.  I always vaguely wonder if they will echo-locate onto the end of my cigarette, but it hasn't happened yet, thankfully.

I had a rather interesting experience a few weeks ago.  I don't really want to talk about it publicly, because there are at least a few people I wouldn't want to tell, but if you want to know, email me and I'll tell you (unless you are one of the people that I don't want to tell, of course; in that case, I'll probably make up a lie and tell you something else, so you won't know you are one of the people I don't want to tell).

Does my tone in this post sound depressed?  I think I'm depressed.  My wife told me tonight that I just have a "depressive" personality.  That's fantastic.  Just what I always wanted!  It might help if I could actually get a good night's sleep once every couple of months or so.

I want to write more, but I just don't have anything.
 

Wednesday, August 03, 2011

Notes from the Cave

Just a quick entry tonight so that my readers don't think I have fallen off the face of the earth.

Went on vacation in mid-July with my in-laws to Isle of Palms, South Carolina, which was very nice.  A real tropical paradise, and the weather was perfect the entire time we were there - literally not a drop of rain all week.

Since getting back, I have stopped smoking again - today is Day Five.  In case you hadn't known, I had stopped back in October, only to start again in March.  Quitting this second time around has been harder, perhaps because my heart has not been in it as strongly as it was in October.  I want to quit, but I also don't want to.  So it's been a hard and stressful week.  I was a total monster this past weekend.  Embarrassed myself a bit.

Work is fine as always - really, really love my job and my co-workers.  This has proven to be such a positive move for me - which is even more remarkable considering how it happened and how crappy I felt about it at the time.  Hard to believe I've been there for a year already.

I literally can't think of anything else worthwhile to say.