Tag Archives: sunday

A few extra…

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This Sunday’s archive posts were a little light on content and a little long on lack of sleep if I don’t miss my mark. These were all from the week or two immediately after Winston joined the family, so puppy patrol was the order of the day and the blog definitely suffered as a result. Since I’m a good guy, I’ve added a few extra posts to the usual Sunday Five this week. Hopefully you’ll consider volume a sufficient substitute for lack of depth this week.

Posts from March and April 2008 are up and available for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy this week’s no-strings-attached trip down memory lane.

Traditions…

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In keeping with my now long-standing Sunday tradition, I’m pleased to present this week’s installment of Sunday morning archive posts. Today’s selections come to you live and unedited via tape delay direct from March 2008. From Spring snow in Memphis to contemplating the end of a major stage of my career, we’re covering a lot of ground this week. There weren’t any epic rants in mid-March, so apparently most things were right with the world. I guess even I have weeks like that now and then. I suspect I’ll look back on more recent posts in five or six years and find that I’ve gotten more jaded an cynical over time. Some people would argue that’s a bad thing. I’d argue that it just makes for more entertaining writing.

Check back tomorrow when I’ll be blogging in the present day. I haven’t picked out a topic yet, but I’m sure someone, somewhere will do something ridiculous that will need commentary. One of the great perks of being an observer by nature is that it leaves you with an almost limitless supply of material. Even though I avoid people as a matter of principle, I do appreciate them as a source of content. I’ll be waiting for my Humanitarian of the Year award.

A trip to Walmart (or Barbarians at the gates)…

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When it comes to grocery shopping in southern Cecil County, Walmart represents the least objectionable of three craptastic choices. Right off the bat that should tell you everything you need to know about the grocery situation here in the northeastern corner of Maryland. I would seriously consider selling a kidney if someone would build a Giant, a Safeway, or a Kroger somewhere closer than the current 90 minute round trip drive to get to any one of those options.

Since it’s the lesser of the local evils, that’s were I end up most weekends. I was there yesterday and here are my studied observations on the experience:

walmart1. There are approximately 237 billion parking spots surrounding Walmart, yet nine times out of ten I end up pulling down the lane behind someone who will sit and wait for the family of six to load their two carts of groceries, buckle the kids into their seats, adjust their mirrors, turn on their GPS and select the “home” option, back halfway out of the spot, stop for no apparent reason for 30 seconds, back the rest of the way out into the lane, spend 20 seconds trying to shift into drive, stall out, restart the car, and then drift away at approximately .175 miles per hour. All of this might even be acceptable if it were midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s 11AM on a Friday. There are acres of open spots as far as the eye can see, but the douchtard in front of me wants this exact spot for some reason. Well, congratulations. You got it. You saved yourself at least 15 extra steps you’d have had to take from one of the already available spots. This trip is not going well and I haven’t even gotten out of the truck yet.

2. There are three carts inside the door. One filled with some combination of leaves, trash, and possibly a diaper, one that has apparently hosted a seagull convention, and the third and final option… That one apparently doesn’t have any bearings in one of its wheels, so I get to spend the next 40 minutes wiping bird shit off my hands or listening to THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE every time I take a step. I don’t know if there’s a hell or not, but If there is, I’m absolutely convinced the background noise is THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE.

3. Walked by the ammunition case. No ammo. Or more specifically no ammo for guns that anyone actually owns or uses on a regular basis. Can’t blame Walmart for that one, really. It’s just another disappointing part of this little voyage of the damned.

4. Milk, eggs, bread… Even Walmart cant screw up the staples too badly. Just when I thought things might be turning a corner a three year old girl came charging out of nowhere and flung herself at my cart. Looking up to see what she probably expected to be the face her theoretically loving parent, what she got was a surly look from an unknown middle aged guy with a goatee. Clearly this was not what she was anticipating as the result was a yelp that I can only equate with what happens when you step on a dog’s paw and the child attempting to sprint away and running directly into a bottled water display set up in the middle of the aisle. It seems that with enough momentum, one can really bounce off the side of a few pallets of bottled water. Who knew, right? The last thing I saw was her theoretically loving parent showing up from the next aisle over and clearly wondering why her little darling was lying flat out on Walmart’s floor.

4. I wanted to make a roast on Sunday. Roast beef was a regular fixture at Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house and about once a month I pull out the stops and make one with all the trimmings. I have found decent cuts of beef at Walmart from time to time, but they’re few and far between… as you might expect, this trip was not one of the exceptions to the rule. It looks like I’ll be partaking in the much more recent family tradition of Taco Sunday again this week.

5. I walked up to a checkout counter that had just cleared its last customer. Not waiting in line to checkout is practically unheard of here at my local Walmart and I thought maybe I was going to get a break here at the end of this test of my endurance. Of course it wasn’t. The cashier was apparently engrossed in her conversation with the last customer. After unloading my cart onto the belt, she was still engrossed. I pushed the cart forward so I was standing directly in front of her and she was still engrossed. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t started adding my two cents to their conversation, she would probably still be engrossed. Look lady, I don’t need you to be happy to be there. I don’t even need you to be pleasant. All I need you to do is slide my crap across the little scanner thingy, take my money, and let me get on with the rest of my day. The sooner that happens the happier we can all be.

Basically, the only good thing I can ever really say about a trip to Walmart is that no one has yet set my truck on fire in the parking lot. That’s probably only a matter of time, though, because truly the barbarians are at the gates.

Today’s post is the latest installment of “By Request,” where the readers pick the topic and I rant about it.

Pretend…

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I like to pretend there is some kind of art or science to this whole blogging thing. I review the metrics, watch the traffic and hit counts, and imagine that I have some kind of idea what people might be interested in reading. At best it’s a 50-50 proposition most of the time. Fortunately, I’m mostly writing for the sake of writing and working out my chops, so the individual hits and misses aren’t really all that important. Lucky thing, too. If you tied much stock to whether you stats are up or down on any given day you’d drive yourself round the bend in no time.

Sundays are probably my slowest, least read day. I don’t know if that’s because I’m the only one who finds these archival posts even remotely interesting, or because everyone’s gone to church when I’m posting, or that you lazy jerks are still lying about in bed while I’m here slaving away at the keyboard. Not that it’s really important. I’ve been having a blast looking back at how the blog evolved over the last six years. The stuff I’m pulling in now from 2008 is far more personal/day-in-the-life than what I’m posting on a typical day in 2013. I like to think the writing has gotten better and the threads a little more coherent along the way. I know I’m more confident in my voice now that I was in the past, so even if practice doesn’t make perfect, it still makes for a better story.

I think everyone that lives part of their life online has some kind of performance fetish. We all want attention in one way or another. We’re all looking for the next “like” or comment or share at least on some level. For me, it’s the writing it all down that really feels important. I still find it fascinating to see what I thought was important the better part of a decade ago. Some of it holds up to the test of time and some of it just leaves me shaking my head and wondering what I was thinking.

Don’t forget to check out this morning’s archive posts from February 2008!

Quick math…

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I was going some back of the napkin calculating this morning and it looks like I’ve got about half a year’s worth of archive posts left to go. It feels like I’ve been drawing down on that source for a long, long time. I guess I have been leaning on them pretty hard to get Sunday posts up without needing to worry too much about originality. Don’t worry, though, I’m sure when the time comes, I’ll find something to fill that gap in your Sunday mornings. Maybe it’ll be time to recruit a guest blogger so I can continue to have basically one day a week off. We’ll see about that when the time comes.

Since we don’t really need to worry about any of that until closer to the end of the year, I’ll simply direct your attention to the center ring, where this week’s feature presentation highlights the joy of suburban living as well as the run up to Hurricane Dean. While Dean turned out to be a bust for the US, that week was one that opened my eyes for about the way we throw large numbers around without giving it much thought… especially when we’re talking about the budget. Trust me, it only sounds dull. If you knew how often these conversations took place throughout the District, even the most spendthrift among you would have more than a moment of pause.

Without further adue, I present you with the world that was, in mid-August 2007.

Sunday mornings in June (2007)…

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Hello and welcome to this weeks edition of random posts from the mists of time… or in this case, from June 2007. This week we take on topics ranging from using lawn care skills to make your neighbor look bad, the end of The Sopranos on HBO, and explore one of the many ways worrying about work can lead to ulcers. I think one of the best elements of these Sunday tours through the past is that none of us are really sure what’s going to show up. As much as I enjoy the process of getting all my old posts collected into one place, I think I enjoy the insight into where I’ve been and where I’m going even more. There are definitely some familiar themes that keep showing up. Personally, I’m glad to see that kind of consistency in my thought process from year to year.

As always, I hope you enjoy the trip to 2007 as much as I’ve enjoyed bringing it to you. Don’t forget to stop by the giftshop on your way out to pick up some reading material for the week ahead.

Lack of sleep, coffee, and other stuff…

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It’s Easter morning and thanks to the decongestant I’ve been living on for the last week I slept for a grand total of two hours last night (and then only when I propped myself up in the recliner so I could actually breath). Either one of those factors, by itself, would probably be sufficient justification for letting the regular sunday posts fall by the wayside. But still, here I am – bleary eyed, hacking my damned fool head off, and not even sure if the words I’m throwing together make any sense at all. Sick or well, it’s just what I do on Sunday mornings.

At some point in the not too distant future I’m sure there will be a wall and that I will run into it with predictably bad consequences. In the meantime, I’m trying to front load as many of the days activities as I can into the morning. Since my ability to craft a coherent narrative is a bit suspect at this point, I’ll cut this short and just let you know that the Sunday update from the archives is available at your convenience.

Feel free to stop by for a visit in May and June 2007.

Hear my voice…

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No one recognizes the irony of posting voices from the past when my current voice is a bit ragged. Conveniently here in the 21st century, I don’t need to use my shredded vocal chords and raw-feeling throat to get the word out. Sitting at a keyboard and spreading my own version of the good news feels more natural anyway.

Anyway, we’re back on a regular Sunday schedule which means that the latest offerings from the archives are up and ready for your enjoyment. Featuring five posts from May 2007, we cover plenty of ground – from the joys of business travel to photography. One of the things that “expert” bloggers always tell you is to find your niche and stay in it. Fortunately, it seems my niche is being a cranky commentator on whatever happens to cross my mind on any given day. I guess it does help if you’re writing what you know.

Feels like Sunday…

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So this is the last weekday of my extended winter vacation. Since I didn’t take much of a summer vacation this year, I had plenty of days saved up and taking them sounded infinitely better than letting them disappear. Sure, I could have donated them to an allegedly worthy cause, but let’s be honest, does that sound like something I’d really do unless I was backed into a corner?

Make no mistake, when you’re use to being at your desk four or five days a week, every week, month after month, two unspoken for weeks are a real think of beauty. I had some minor concern that boredom would set in sometime around the end of week one when the mayhem and chaos of Christmas cleared, but that really wasn’t a problem. Honestly, the thought of being bored never occurred to me. Since I’ve been back here at the rental casa, I’ve done some reading, some writing, some cooking, some general running around, and caught up on a lot of quality television I’ve missed over the last few months. When any one of those things has started showing the least sign of being boring, I just change up the order and do them all again. Honestly, it’s probably a snapshot of what my life would look like as a lottery winner. Fortunately, I’ve always been able to more or less keep myself entertained. When you’re an only child as a kid, you learn the value of not relying too heavily on anyone else to make things interesting.

But yeah, today feels a lot like Sunday… or specifically that general feeling of “Eff this I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow” feeling that always seems to show up sometime during the day on Sunday. That feeling has been held blissfully at bay for the last two weeks and I wasn’t quite ready for it to show up already. Intellectually, I can accept that I’ve got to go back to work at some point… but emotionally, my inner lottery winner wants to keep this party rolling. There’s so much reading, writing, and cooking that I just haven’t gotten to yet. I guess that means I’ve got to cram a whole bunch of stuff into the next to days, because Sunday is coming on fast.

Wasted Sunday…

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This hasn’t been the sunday I thought I was going to have. Mostly it involved dragging the computer down from the office (not all that hard since it’s a laptop) and spreading out the dozen odds and ends I’ve been putting off around the kitchen table and taking them on one after another. The good news is that I just shredded the last bit of paper and closed the last file. The bad news is that I’ve been sitting here in the kitchen hammering at the keyboard since almost 8:00 this morning. That’s pretty much the working definition of a wasted Sunday. Sure, it’s all stuff that needed done and I’d been putting some of it off for weeks now, but that doesn’t make looking at the tail end of the weekend any easier… Especially when you know you’re going to spend the next five days hammering away at a different keyboard. I’m glad it’s all done, I just wish I could have figured out a way to do it in half the time. You know when going down to the crawlspace to shut off the outside water spigots counts as a break, you’ve seriously misspent your day.

For the time being, I’ll take as much comfort as possible in knowing that getting this particular pile of stuff done now frees me up next weekend. The long break coming after the next two work weeks is definitely a high point. I’ll do my best to live in the moment, but for the record my head is already in Western MD complaining about how friggin’ cold it is up here.