Live-blogging my Summer Vacation so you don't have to!
10:12PM: I just put Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” into the CD spinner in order to mourn the near end of my vacation week and summer as well. “If You Could Read My Mind” works well too, as in “if you could read my mind you’d know I need another Guinness.” No kid glove treatment on the beer front; great energy expenditures during the day demand generous beer drinking to offset. (For medicinal purposes only of course.)
On Thursday, visiting mom, she said that I looked exceptionally good: my hair shinier, my stomach flatter. Vacation agrees with me, I told her, though I’m not sure it’s exactly a vocation. "My vocation is vacation" or "my job is retirement" sound remarkably oxymoronic. I suspect that laziness works best in small quantities so please don’t try it at home.
I did the annual bookstore tour this morning, begging off water aerobics despite my promising to be the Michael Phelps of that activity. (Would Michael Phelps blow off swim practice for a bookstore?) On Wednesday I told my instructor/drill sargeant that she’s “got to be German” and she said “yes, how did you know?” completely oblivious and honestly curious. Which is perfect, because you know Germans are always accused of not getting a joke. She’s a lean, mean fighting machine: I'm guessing 100 lbs wet and 5% body fat. She adheres to a diet of only raw meat and veggies; humans have been cooking food for, what, at least a few thousand years and yet she’s got to be different.
The bookstore tour began with a Columbus Borders since it was the only one open before 10am. I found a dog book for my wife, though I made the mistake of not “vetting” it by reading the ending first. She doesn’t want sad dog books, defined by the death of the canine protagonist. This really limits the dog literature field. I scanned the ending back at home, reading something about “he stopped eating” and “cremated ashes” and rolled my eyes. That’s $9 I’ll never get back unless I take it back, though the gas to get there would be close to that.
After visiting a second store I hit the glazed asphalt for a bike tour through the lovely and talented Clintonville, a part of the city where the homes are traditional but the residents not. Lots of Obama signs tarnishing beautiful old stone homes. “War is Not the Answer” declares one yard sign and I wonder why in Republican neighborhoods there is never a modest “Raising the Capital Gains Tax Does Not Significantly Increase Government Revenue” sign. I’m never quite sure whether these sorts of bumper stickers are a way of claiming your tribe or designed to change people’s minds. It could be the latter since we are notoriously susceptible to momentum and what’s hot.
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