Spring Broke

I've been feeling increasingly weary of my school schedule and lab aide duties, so I arranged not to work during spring break.

I also vowed to do as much fishing as possible, and not to do anything that looked or smelt of school work.

Here's some of what I did do for the past week:

• Ignored new email.
• Listened to three audio books, started a fourth.
• Fished in a reservoir that, looking back, probably had no fish in it.
• Found about 40 golf balls at the reservoir, as it neighbors a golf course.
• Cleaned about 40 muddy golf balls in my bathroom.
• Threw my denim jacket, muddy from collecting golf balls, in the laundry.
• Took Julianne to lunch at Garcia's.
• Ignored a phone call from my aunt, who always has computer problems.
• Went to sushi twice; once with Leon for his birthday (again), and once with Dave (who posted here exactly once).
• Went to a star show at the new Clark Planetarium.
• Visited several video rental stores, looking for four DVDs in particular.
• Researched joining a DVD rental by mail service, as none of the brick-and-mortar places had what I want.
• Broke my black leather executive chair by removing the arms (I guess it needed them) and then attempting to lean back.
• Ignored my blog reading, resulting in something like 1,500 posts waiting to be read this morning.
• Got my hair cut.
• Bought a beard trimmer and trimmed furiously.
• Got sick, just in time for school to start again.
• Took lots of drugs last night to guarantee I'd sleep, wandered around in a drugged-up haze until about 3:00 pm today.

But it wasn't all fun and games.

Anyway, I'm sick and tired now, and this is after a week of rest. Maybe getting back to my schedule will distract me from the sickness until it wears off and the tiredness until I die.

The audio books I listened to were:

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" by David Sedaris

"Patriots: Brotherhood of the American Revolution" by Barnes and Noble Audio

and

"Fresh Air With Terry Gross - Laughs"

And last night, in the last few remaining minutes of my wheezing spring break, I started another B&N Portable Professor selection called "Vault Of The Heavens: Exploring the Solar System's Place in the Universe." Last night I listened to the introductory lecture, and it was excellent.

"Me Talk Pretty One Day" was good once you stick it out until about halfway through, where the author really finds his groove and tells some genuinely funny stories. The ones about the interplay between his sister and his dad are very funny.

"Patriots..." was very good if you're an American Revolution buff or would like to be one. It does a particularly good job of highlighting just how unlikely the Revolution was on the whole, and how very, very unlikely it was that it would turn out the way it did. It also did a good job of humanizing the founding fathers, i.e.: Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Franklin. These guys were moral heroes of their time and contradictory to the cause of morality at once. It's a fascinating audio course.

Fresh Air Laughs was good, but not as good as I'd hoped. It is really just collected interviews with Terry and various comedians, talking about serious subjects with funny bits dribbled here and there. That's not what I paid $20 for. Disappointing overall.

Once I'm done with "Vault Of The Heavens", I'll listen to Joe Mantegna's narration of Sun Tzu's "Art Of War." Joe's in a lot of gangster shows, but I know him as Fat Tony on the Simpsons. This should be interesting. An Italian American reads a 2,500 year-old Chinese classic on warfare philosophy. (On the next Oprah.)

Oh, and during the break, Krys asked for membership to Phischkneght. I granted it in the hope that he'll become a regular poster. As far as I know, everyone here knows or at least has met Krys and feels positively toward him, so this shouldn't be a problem.

He also requested membership to Confessions, which mystifies me. I'm all for my friends joining Confessions and giving their input on entrepreneurship, but as I understand it, Krys equates entrepreneurship with selling one's soul to Elizabeth Hurley (not such a bad idea, actually). This is not an attitude that would be conducive to my intent with that blog, so once he clarifies his intentions I'll make a decision there.

One last thing...I've put Confessions on the Phischkneght mailing list, so new posts there should show up in your email if you're subscribed to the Phischkneght list. If there's an uproar, I'll change it, but I think it will be a good thing on the whole.