Bag Pipe Dreams.

It’s Monday. I didn’t make any posts over the weekend for about 10 different excuses, none of which hold much merit. I had plenty of time. I even sat down to write a few times and got squished under the block.

This will be an abbreviated entry to get my weekend in order on the blog so that my mind doesn’t wander backwards as I add new entries this week.

My most random thought of the weekend.

How many U.S. presidents are in office during the average life span of an American? I really wanted to share this thought with you. I had it while I was washing the dishes. It has to be the most random thought that someone can have while washing the dishes, wouldn’t you agree? I think the answer probably falls into the 15-ish average. With a little research and some basic arithmetic I could probably answer the question for you and me both. But, is it really worth it to know this little tid bit of information? I think that this question came to my mind while wondering just how many terms of Bush presidency our country could endure in relation to our own mortality rate. Quite a harmless question, but I’m still worried that I may be blacklisted for posting such rhetoric.

My weekend activity.

Saturday morning I received a note on this very blog that the San Diego Reader would be interested in having me write the May installment of “Blog World.” I am very excited about the opportunity. Naturally, before I responded I checked out the Reader with a standard Google search. It all checked out with just a few clicks and I emailed them back during my next activity for Saturday…work.

I work in the auto lending industry. I love what I do. Some days it has ups, which deduces that it also has its downs. Usually Saturday is a very quick ordeal. I work in an operations center with is a massive brick building that during the week is the home of about 500 cubicle bound screendroids. Yes, I just invented a word. I indeed had to right click my mouse over the squiggly red line and select “Add to dictionary.” Screendroids are people who reside in honeycombed office cubicle farm and spend anywhere from 30 to 70 hours a week staring at a glowing box. Please call Webster because that is also a new definition. There are two full floors of cubes at the aforementioned operation center. On Saturday I am usually all by myself on the basement level floor. Upstairs there are anywhere from 50 to 100 people finishing their respective work week. To finish, I put in hours 41-48 on Saturday. And this sums it up. My boss called me this morning and asked me “How was Saturday?” My response, “On the slow side of steady.” I probably reviewed around 125 credit applications. That’s about par for a steady Saturday.

Home for the weekend.

Saturday night around 5:30 I arrived home from work. Rhiana was in the process of finishing a slow cook recipe that would be ready early Sunday. Asking about her day I learned that she was sore from her meeting with a personal trainer earlier Saturday. She had also been to the grocery store and I was informed that she saved $46 by using coupons and buying items currently on sale. How neat is it that our grocer tells us all about all the money we save after we just spent nearly $200 with them. I’ll share more of my thoughts on this concept in future entries I’m sure. I’ve always been of the opinion that “spend money to save money” is the worst concept that industry ever sold to the consumer. And we ate it up. Back to Rhiana. Her personal trainer informed her that she was going to have homework and that she needed to buy a new pair of sneakers. Rhiana and I actually had a mini conversation about how athletic shoes are referred to. This is one of the fun parts about our relationship. We get to compare notes about life in Rhode Island versus life in Indiana. There is a world of difference. For instance the word “route” is pronounced with a long “O” here in the Northeast much like the word “root.” In Indiana however the “OU” gets more emphasis. Hence the word sounds more like, well, more like how it is supposed to be pronounced, “route.” So we agreed here that sneakers are pretty much referred to as the same. No alternative names or pronunciations for tennis-shoes.
So we went out into a drizzle of a rain and found some over-priced Nikes, but shoes are not an area to compromise. We also came home with a new pair of sandals.

Super Bowl Sunday.

I have to ask myself. Do I really care to see the Pittsburgh Steelers square off with the Seattle Seahawks? I am a Colts fan. Speculation through all media outlets was that the game was going to have very little pull with the audience this year. Those who would be watching would be more so for the highly anticipated commercial presentation rather than an over-hyped, over-commercialized, lopsided contest between two mid-market franchises. What can I say? I was bitter that the Colts weren’t there playing, but only half-heartedly so. I fell asleep after the first quarter of the game. I didn’t know who won until I got to work this morning and found myself embarrassingly unprepared to speak at the water cooler.

Bag Pipe-dreams.

Ah yes. The second installment of sitting down with Rhiana’s parents, Patti and Richard, for a wedding planning session was in good order today. First off, her parents prepared a very pleasant Sunday lunch. Patti served a nice home cooked chili. Her father had prepared a improvised light vegetable soup with some assorted meats thrown in the mix. Good stuff! We moved through a list that Rhiana prepared a week or so earlier as things we had yet to complete. Starting with the guest list we moved through in a very casual manner. We conversed mostly about the ceremony music and the reception dinner. In all it was a very productive meeting from my perspective. We left a lot open for interpretation and Rhiana surprised me by selecting a bag piper for ceremony music. Not that I don’t want one just that I would not have guessed this to be the decision we would go with. It had never crossed my mind. It has now.

The last thing I remember.

Rhiana woke me from a deep sleep before the Super Bowl ended, but long after the channel had been changed. I didn’t even bother to ask if the game had ended or who had won. I had taken my contacts out and couldn’t see anything. We went upstairs and made the bed with freshly washed sheets, as we do most Sunday nights. A few times during the night Kayla and Buca came into the bedroom. They wake us up promptly at 6 a.m. every morning. Last night however we got a few visits prior to our standard wake up call. I’m pretty sure the blurry red alarm clock numbers read something in the 3 a.m. category. I put up just enough fight to get them back into the other room and immediately resumed my unconsciousness.

As the blurry numbers changed from “5:50”’s to “6:oo”’s this morning the dogs arrived back at the foot of the bed dancing like little kids. Their canine claws clicking on the hardwood floors like the bleepity bleep bleep bleep of Morse code ticking away on the teletype.

And so a new week begins.