Looks Longer Than It Is (no joke here)

With my son and I going on our two mini trips to Cleveland and The Dells, my daughter going on her maxi trip to Costa Rica and my wife going on her trip to breath-taking Macomb, IL for a class to get her Masters’ Degree to help support me I started thinking about souvenirs and "how did that bazillion dollar industry begin?". Souvenir, as you might guess, comes from French and means memory which is nice. But I was wondering if they’re our memories why do we bring stuff back to people who weren’t there and don’t share those memories? In Japan souvenirs are called meibutsu and omiyage. People bring back small edible trinkets to share with co-workers like candy... I’m sure it was we Americans that turned it into spoons and thimbles and floaty pens and T-shirts but I guess the sentiment is the same.

I find that trips and sex are viewed differently by the genders. It occurs to me that for men both sex and trips are about the destination and for women sex and trips are about the journey. Think about it in your relationships - I predict 93% accuracy.

Speaking about 93% that’s what I got on my Census Takers quiz a while back. WGN News reported this morning that only 38% of Chicagoland has sent their Census back. Today is the final day to mail it so maybe more part-time work coming my way? That is proof that people are reading my blog and following my advise.

Since I am in my writing phase I decided to whitewash the fence yesterday and channel my favorite all-time writer Samuel Langhorn Clemens. We have a small bird sanctuary area off of the back of our house. One side is blocked by The Tiki Room and I put up a 24-foot long fence on the other side. The birds love it and we like watching them. We now have a lot of rabbits there and two days ago we had a male and female duck wandering around out there; he is probably looking for a job. Anyway, the fence was put up two years ago and needed a whitewashing especially with a graduation party coming up in a couple of months. As I got into it I felt like I was channeling Pat Morita more than Mark Twain. I was Danielson not Tom Sawyer. They never showed them painting the tough-side of the fence only the nice flush side. It did help me think through some things regarding my script and it made me decide on a name for my writing/collaboration friend. I will from now on refer to him/her in my bloggings as “Twain” paying homage to Sam Clemens and his/her writing career exploding with mine in the next few years. I ran out of whitewash and need to get more today.

I realized that a lot of the great writers in history were loners or alcoholics or the like. I guess these issues, like being unemployed, give you a lot of time to think. I am not condoning any social malfeasance but it works for some.

Gonna wrap up since this is getting long (insert your own joke here). Here is what I did yesterday:

I woke up, I went downtown to look for a job (on the internet) - Cheech & Chong
woke my son up, fought with him to get up and made his lunch
drove son to the bus stop because he fell asleep in the shower
cleaned the kitchen / did the dishes
3 loads of laundry
did the bills
worked out (upped my reps on abs and added weight on everything else today)
went to the YMCA and did 4 miles on the elliptical (usually do 6-will explain tomorrow)
went and made the car payment (thankful one is paid off)
did the weekly grocery shopping
started moving the patio stuff back to the patio
whitewashed the fence (took longer than I thought)
made dinner (grilled BBQ porkchops, potatoes and salad)
watched our 2 Wednesday night shows (no basketball practice woohoo)
cleaned the kitchen / more dishes
worked on my screenplay until I fell asleep
woke up to start it again

“See” you tomorrow (unless you “see” me first)