A Day

I awoke at around 8:30am this morning. A little early considering the late night last night. I put on my glasses and stumbled to the bathroom, number one only. The right lens of my eyeglasses is scratched to the point of making my vision all foggy in that eye while wearing them. I should go to the eye doctor and get them fixed or replaced, but all this travel and moving business has put a damper on my spending.

Turned on shower.

Sadly, the next thing I do is get on my computer. It’s always the first or second thing I do in the morning. Email. News. A couple of weblogs. My inbox, normally not that interesting, contains this morning an email from an old friend of mine from college with whom I’ve not spoken for several years. Unusual timing noted.

The shower is hot by this time, the bathroom surfaces all steamed up. Shower for about 10 minutes, maybe 20. Longer than I need to, but I love to shower. Decide against shaving. I’m not going to worry about that kind of stuff today.

While I’m in the shower, I think about what I want to do today. Nothing comes to mind, except for the things I have to do.

Out of the shower, I slip back into the bedroom to get dressed, careful not to wake Meg. My big errand for the day is to pick up my car from the body shop. It had a few scrapes and dings on it, so I had to get those taken care of before it goes back to the dealership at the end of the lease in 5 days. My calves finally feeling better from all the stairs climbed this weekend, I decide to walk the 18 blocks to retrieve the car. Car looks good, and I drive it home slowly, enjoying one of the last times I’ll ever get to drive it with the music loud on the good-but-not-great sound system.

Meg is up by the time I get back, watching last night’s “very special” episode of Friends on TiVo and drinking some sort of fruit drink. She wishes me a happy birthday with a peck on the forehead.

A late breakfast of toast and orange juice. I leave the toast in the toaster a bit too long and it burns around the edge of hole in one of the pieces. I scrape the burned part into the sink and eat the rest, buttered.

More computer stuff. I decide that I’m going to devote part of my day to answering my backlog of email. I also decide that I’m going to record the day’s events in this fashion. Open BBEdit, start writing.

I need some different music for all of this email writing I’m going to be doing, so I fire up iTunes and move some stuff I haven’t heard in awhile from the server to my hard drive. This takes longer than it should.

It’s lunch time…still no email written. It’s a wonder I ever get anything done. IMed with Tom about Web design. Meg just got a present in the mail. On my birthday. Running tally: Meg 1, Jason 0.

Anyway, lunch. Bologna sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise, American cheese, and lettuce. A handful of Fritos and a Sunkist orange soda accompany. You can take the boy out of Wisconsin, but you can’t take Wisconsin out of the boy.

(01:01) me: and that’s a lot of red hair.
(01:01) matt: yep. holy cow do those kids have red hair
(01:02) matt: he must have married Patty O’Flannigan
(01:04) me: it’s like that sesame street bit: “one of these things is not like the others…”

The change in music is treating me well. I’m listening to Dntel right now.

After lunch, Meg accompanied me to The California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park to see the Powers of Ten exhibit. I had forgotten how much I like that film. The similarity of the natural across different scales is one of my favorite things ever.

They had a Foucault pendulum at the museum as well. One of the top ten most beautiful science experiments of all time, you know.

The exhibit included some children’s drawings of objects at different powers of ten. Two favorites were a drawing of a hydrogen atom complete with proton and electron marked with their appropriate charges and a sophisticated — well, sophisticated for a 6 yo — bit of protest art that depicted a man saying, “someday all the fish will swim free”. Brilliant.

Then we went to look at the amphibians and aquarium. Submerged turtles and Meg didn’t like the way the crocodile alligator was looking at us, not one bit. There were pipe-like snakes coiled like springs, waiting patiently for a minnow to swim under their branch. Frogs with poisonous venoms and coatings. Huge taxidermied turtles and tuna.

A walk home and back at the computer. (I don’t know how many different segues I’m going to be able to come up with that involve using my computer. Bear with me.) Got a bit of expected email about potential work, so that’s good. Fine weekend reading.

Now listening to the new Underworld. Pretty damn good so far. Nice to see that the lads haven’t suffered too much from the loss of Darren Emerson.

A small chat on the phone with my mom, birthday wishes, etc. Then off to the store for dinner supplies. Meg has offered to cook whatever I want for dinner. I decide on some fettucini with roasted mushrooms. And what the hell, a small bottle of good champagne because when am I going to turn 29 again?

Dinner was great. Portobello mushrooms are way tasty, even when a bit overcooked (my fault).

After dinner, we gave Bodhi his medication. If you know Bodhi, you know this is not a simple task. He uses all his guile and 16 pound heft to thwart the pilling. We’ve taken to wrapping him up in a blanket like a mental patient — a kitty straightjacket. It usually works OK, but he only got half the pill down this time and spit the rest out. I yell at him, “don’t you know this is for your own good?” He pretends not to understand.

Too tired to do anything else, we popped a movie into the DVD player, The Hurricane. It was pretty good, but not great.

Went to bed around 11:30. Didn’t particularly feel like going to sleep, but it ended up that way anyway.

A normal day.