Suck It Up, We're Stuck With Each Other Until August 5th, 2009

As I've said, there is now no incentive to get back to the post office early. Therefore, I find my poor customers edging away from me while I shout into the rapidly closing door, "Come back, I've got a story that's even longer." It may just be coincidence, but so many of them have asked about my retirement plans that it's starting to hurt my feelings.

I'm reading Bill Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words. It's a source of some pride when I know the right meaning of a word, but it's much more often humbling that I don't, or worse, I don't even understand the trouble. I'm pretty sure, though, that my customers, and their doors in the preceding paragraph have some sort of disagreement about how many there are of each (if I'm using that correctly; "each" has its own entry in the book).

Filler

If someone wrote for the Andy Griffith show, would their collected work be a Magnum Opie?

O For a Thousand Tongues

It's hard to argue that we're properly grateful, but if you think about it, doesn't that conjure kind of a creepy picture?

A picture's worth a thousand words, and I left my camera at home.
I got my bike tuned up today, the summer tires put on and a new suspension to replace the front fork. It was a beautiful day for a ride, so I took one. I wish you could have been there. It's only way you could know how beautiful it was because I would have taken maybe 20 pictures, and I don't have that kind of time to blog.

Where Does Pride Goeth? Before a Fall.

I just realized that last week I was telling Leah that I used to always get sick in April, but now I never do. Attentive readers will know that almost immediately I was stricken by a virulent flu. In fact, the flu bug that bit me might have had rabies.
I feel like Louis Pasteur's mailman.
I did go back to work today. Since the clipboard people (still there) would rather have us follow their chart than to actually be productive, I expected a hero's welcome after three days of getting paid to do nothing, but no, hero's welcome: not on the flow chart.

Still at Home

Between bouts of coughing and the Game Show Network, I've tried to do little projects here at home that require no physical exertion. If I'd known what a bad job I'd do, I might have just gone to work.

Two Entendres Are Better Than One

I'm still at home with my cold. I don't think I would have been quite such a sissy and stayed home again, although I do feel bad, but the clipboard people have been there so long and they have made it seem that slavish devotion to the M-41 Handbook (the carrier's bible, except it was not handed down at Mt. Sinai) is more important than efficiency, or even actually delivering mail that my residual (small inside carrier's joke) sense of obligation to the Postal Service has been quite reduced. If they call sorting mail in the afternoon "shooting the station in the foot," then staying home all day doesn't seem as big a deal as it used to. I'm sick, I've accrued almost a year of sick leave, so I'm almost convinced that I shouldn't feel sleazy as well as feverish.
So, I'm still at home. I've read one book, and started another. I've also watched a lot of TV. This morning I watched the Game Show Network for a couple of hours, which included a couple episodes of the Match Game from the 60's or 70's. Watching them smirk as they made their double entendres seemed so quaintly old fashioned. Now, even children on TV say things that would make Gene Rayburn blush.

By the way, I have actual medical proof that my normal temperature is 97.3. It's in my chart at my doctor's office. Also, it turns out that if I don't waste eight or nine hours at work, I've got a lot more time to include pointless links.

My Temperature Was 99.6, That is 2.3 Degrees Higher Than Normal

Yesterday I went to work with a sore throat and runny nose. When the sore throat woke me up in the middle of the night last night, I wrestled for hours with whether or not I should call in sick for the first time in years. Just when it was time to start getting ready or go back to bed, I realized "I've been wrestling with this for hours. I've barely slept at all. That decided me; I called in and went back to sleep for hours. Now I'm totally giving myself over to being sick, and enjoying it, except for feeling sick.. I may very possibly still be sick tomorrow, especially if I still feel as bad then as I do now, even with the self indulgence and the reading and watching movies.
It's playing havoc with my training schedule for the Hardly Davidsons. That and the fact that the trails are still sort of randomly covered in snow.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Hateful

but, "Suicide Attack Leaves 32 Dead" means slow news day in Iraq.

My Kind of Race

I've joined a team, the Hardly Davidsons, that's going to ride a 100K race to raise money for diabetes research. I was a little concerned since I've never ridden 100 anything, I told our team captain, "I don't want to be the one the holds the team back, but I start out slow, and don't finish." She said that was fine; the race organizers don't monitor the teams. Once you've paid your entry fee and raised your donations you can come to the picnic at the end even if you never start.
That's not what made America great, but then neither am I.

They pointed at me and laughed. They said I was mad. No...wait, that was another time.
There was some skepticism, though, when I said the snow would be gone by April 15th. As usual, the skeptics were right.

"He's A Man"

I was talking to two ladies at work this afternoon. We could have been working, but the clipboard people say that sorting mail in the afternoon isn't on our flowchart, so we have to take a break or use vacation time to leave early. They were replacing screws in the bottom of their crampons so that they'd be ready for next winter. I said, "That's tightening," One lady said, "How'd you know that?" and the the second one said, "He's a man."
I said, "That's going in the blog."

No Surprises Here

According to a fire department chaplain on TV last night, April is the cruelest month, at least as measured by number of suicides. So, T.S. Eliot was right, but I still don't like February.
The chaplain used to be a police department chaplain. I don't know why he switched, some sort of doctrinal schism between the two departments, most likely. Perhaps, about the very meaning of flames as set out in I Corinthians 3:15, in a discussion of schisms, in fact.
Anyway, I was thinking about my own life here on the beachfront in the Slough of Despond, when I used that very phrase today. I was talking about my blog, and how it's (the blog) like when the listener first met me she thought I was funny, but now I'm boring. But no, when she first met me, she thought I was funny, but now she thinks I'm weird. I had thought this was getting awfully predictable. I mean when I sit down to type, I always pretty much know what I'm going to say.

Here's Some Bad News: Dreams Come True

This morning when I woke up I was so relieved to realize that "it was only a dream"; I hadn't weighed myself yet, I didn't weigh 160 pounds. Then I weighed myself and I weighed 160 pounds.

Kids Grow Up So Fast

It seems like only yesterday our little girl was in the first grade, and now her teacher is getting married.

That's Not How I Pictured It

Sort of a non-traditional Easter service today. It opened with a riveting video and finished with a rousing chorus of Amen, but not much in the way of "He Lives" or "Hallelujah" in between.
A little boy ran up the aisle near the end yelling "Is it over?"
And then it was.

Eggcetera. Well These Titles Just Get Worse

When Sarah found out, as a little girl, that there was no snow in Iowa at Easter she was worried that her cousins couldn't have an Easter Egg Hunt since there would be no place to hide the eggs. Nowadays we rarely hide things on purpose, although things do sometimes disappear for awhile. As you can see (and even more clearly in this close-up) we would have no trouble hiding eggs this year or even her cousins.

Did That Last Post Get a Rise Out of You?

Sorry, that was inexcusable.
Today at work, our station manager called us all together. First he told us that we were all doing a wonderful job, except, apparently, for everything we do. Some people started to respond, but then he told us "This isn't a bitch session."
Well, I guess you know what that means for this blog, don't you? Ha, not really because how we're doing is another thing I've lost interest in. Especially since today is Maundy Thursday. As I understand it, no one knows what Maundy means, but it's the day that Jesus washed his disciples feet, and called us all into a life of service. I'm pretty sure Jesus who was nailed to a cross for us without complaint would agree, "This isn't a bitch session."

Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?

In this post, I'll play the part of the lump. When we were on vacation last month, I expected to gain some weight. After all, I left a food convention just long enough to go to a buffet. What had surprised me, though, was how slowly I was losing the weight since we returned home. Last night while I was eating a carefully measured meal, I glanced at a copy of Health Magazine that someone had left on the table. They were extolling nutritional yeast instead of salt on popcorn. I felt, as I so often do, smug, since I not only use yeast on popcorn, but I have been burying baked potatoes in it as well, sometimes two potatoes at once interred in a thick layer of tasty yellow goodness. Well not for nothing do Jesus and Paul warn us against leaven. The article went on to say that yeast has only 30 calories per tablespoon, which translates (in the NIV)into 30 calories per bite the way I've been eating it.

This is My 100th Post

One hundred posts seems like a good time to take stock and see how far we've come together. I don't know about you, but I'm sitting in the same chair, still watching Dog the Bounty Hunter so, no thanks, you can live in the past if you want to, but I'm all about living in the moment, soaking up the sun, being the change I want to see, and you know, whatever.
This morning the paper had a whole article about Kincaid park where I got lost in yesterday's post. There was a sidebar about what I had considered the worst day of my life and how it could have been so much worse. I already take 100mg of Zoloft every day to avoid thinking about it and now, um, what I was I talking about? M-M-M Zoloft. Oh, incindentally, I met a young lady a few years ago that wrote an article about her relationship with Zoloft that I thought was insightful.