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Posted on

smoke and silence

Zealots need not apply.
As much as I love music, I sometimes crave silence. When it’s silent, you can hear sounds you normally don’t hear. The sound your spit makes as you work your mouth; skin rubbing skin as you wring your hands, your own breath in your throat. Smoking my pipe in silence has always been enjoyable to me, to be able to listen to nothing at all and watch the smoke waft from the bowl of the pipe. I can remember sitting on the back porch back in Florida smoking my pipe and reading the yellow-paged copy of The Fellowship of the Rings I bought from the used book joint. I liked to go out when it was raining… sit in the screened-in shelter and read and smoke in silence. Yeah… that’s what I’m writing about.

I’ve got to try and get to bed earlier tonight… this 1am thing is fine for vacation, but won’t work with a 7am rise-n-shine. One thing that staying up and sleeping late is good for is dreams. Over the past week I’ve had several memorable dreams, a strange occurence for me. My dreams always seem to mix old and new. Just this week, I was trying to protect a friend who hired another friend to kill an ex; was scuba diving with two acquaintances from college, and making a scale model of some geographical feature… an islet, or isthmus, or phalange or something. Whenever I wake up able to recall a dream, I wish I had one of those dream “interpretation” books, although I’ve looked at them and they’re about as specific as a horoscope most of the time. Still I would hate to miss the fact that dreams about scale models of fjords mean you’ll win the lottery if you only buy a ticket.

Something about the idea of a commune is totally appealing to me. Except, I wouldn’t call it a commune… I think the term “co-op” has a lot less Davidian connotation. Y’know, get some friends together… snag some cheap undeveloped land, and start communing on it. We could grow our own grub, build our own houses, generate our own power, maybe do some web-developing work for extra scratch (like the comet-cult), whatever. No job except tending the crops and animals, keeping the house, generating power, and fervently praying to the co-op’s chosen higher power. OK, we could skip the fervent prayer part… but I guess the “no job” thing is relative considering maintaining the cult… uh… co-op would be a full-time job anyway. Maybe I’ll just join the Rainbow and move to a national forest.

One the back-to-basics kick, I proposed a week-without-TV experiment to Sharaun tonight. I want to go one week without TV, seems like such an easy thing right? We could read more, talk more, maybe get out and walk around more or something (pre-surgery, of course). When it comes down to it I guess we “watch” a lot of TV. Even though I rarely “actively” watch, the TV is probably on every second we’re in the house… even if just in the background. Most of my killing-time time is spent on this computer, typing or surfing the web for nothing. I bet that’s not so uncommon nowadays… online time overtaking TV time as the dominant thoughtless activity. Anyway, I just wanted to see if we’d feel any great sense of “liberation” by cutting the cord and going TV-less for a week. I picked a bad time though, with her being laid up post-surgery and all. Although, she didn’t seem completely opposed to the idea in general… so maybe after she’s recovered a bit.

Ugh… every time I search through my old entries and find one of those strange WordPress-conversion artifacts (y’know, commas-turned-question-marks, letters with accent marks turned Chinese characters) I just cringe. I hate the fact that some of the older entries look crappy. Every time I find a post with artifacts, I try my best to fix it… but I know they still exist out there. Tell you what, if you see one… or find some ingenious way to search for them… lemme know and I promise I’ll fix every last one. OK? Thanks.

What a piecemeal entry… I’m sorry. It’s time to go to bed now, goodnight.

Posted on

newborn year

The internet has sprung a leak.
2005. 1st post.

Friday I watched Garden State again, for the sake of Ben and Pat, not because I’d fallen in love with Natalie Portman’s character… absolutely not. For some reason I identify a lot with the movie, even though I’ve never been on anti-depressants, killed my mom, or done lines off a urinal… I think I identify with some underlying sentiment or something. Some kid (can I still think of myself as a kid?) trying to find something. Not me now, or anything, but maybe a me back in the day. Skipping college to drive to a playground by the river and swing on the swings. The place was empty. We swung on the swings while songs from Mellon Collie played in my head. Each time I swung to the top, I wanted to keep to jump off and fly away. Then we stopped, and I decided to get a tattoo. I’d had the intended design in my wallet ever since wasting a day at my drafting table once back in high school… so it seemed as good a time as any.

I guess, even though the Pumpkins and I had a “falling out,” and I kinda gave up on their music… three of their albums were huge to me at the time. I can remember listening to Siamese Dream in Andy’s room sometime in 10th grade. I played that album to death… driving down the river road back home. Then, Mellon Collie came out during my first year of college. Sharaun and I were apart for 8mos… and that album was prominent during that swirly-emotional period where incidents like picking up the daughter of a mother and father team of long-haul truckers at the Books-A-Million or, while trying to find a place on the road to pull over and have sex with a girl, stopping at a public park I only remembered because I’d been there in high school hunting psychedelic mushrooms on a nearby farmer’s land, just served to reinforce the fact that I wasn’t with Sharaun. Then, parts I and II of Machina (although I’d pretty much given up on them) helped me through my first mind-numbingly boring month at my post-college career by giving me something to read and a new interest.

Jeez… I know that was a syntactically complex paragraph, but I don’t really know how to rewrite it so it’s more clear. Good thing it’s Monday now as I write, and I care no longer about the coherency of old-and-busted, led-by-emotion writing. Guess that means it’s time to get back to the more practical “what I’m doing” style.

I’m sitting here, my last day off before returning to work. While I’d much rather sit around and not go to work, there is a pile of stuff calling me back to the cubicle. It’s going to be an interesting 1st couple of months I think. I’ll be “working from home” for a bit this week and next, since Sharaun goes in for surgery on Friday. Then I’ve got some travel tentatively planned for the first quarter of ’05. I feel like I really let things fester a bit over this vacation, but then I feel torn for feeling that way – since I have a deep belief that a “vacation” should be a true respite, a complete disconnect, from work. There are any number of loose ends I could have chosen to tie up with my free time this past couple of weeks, but I instead chose to watch the Twilight Zone marathon or take a nap. I promised myself that I’d play a little catch-up today… and in fact that’s why I’m here on the computer right now… writing this entry… not catching up at all. Maybe it’s the rain.

Listening to the new Decemberists album, which, while leaked on the 18th, isn’t set to see release until the end of March. I kinda felt bad reading Mr. Meloy’s response to news of the promo leak while actually listening to the album, a full three-and-a-half months in advance (apparently they even know who leaked it?). But my love of the band, and curiosity about the new material, once again drove me to listen. I held off on forming an opinion upon a single hearing… at least anything other than, “Yup, sounds like the Decemberists.” I’m about four times through it now, and happy to say it’s getting better with each spin. And, as always, to appease my conscience (which seems to be growing ever more virtuous with age), I’ll purchase the album at the next show. Sheesh, no more pirate warez on my box, no more P2P sharing (as if one-way downloads are any better), and no more beating up the aged. What’s happened to the callous badassness of my youth? Spoonfeed me applesauce and be done with it.

Afternoon folks… more tomorrow if you’re lucky.

Posted on

mud and weeds

I'll cleave you in two.
Sharaun and I rented Garden State tonight, what an excellent movie. Made me think a lot about some of the times I go back home to Rockledge. Seeing old friends, seeing old places. It was a really, really good movie (at least, to me). I think that Scrubs-guy is my hero… writing and directing such an awesome movie. And great Lord in heaven… Natalie Portman is the single most attractive woman on the planet (both physically and a little bit because I think I could make her be in love with me). Seeing her in that movie only helped to cement her into that position atop my list of “best” women (non-attainable women, mind you). Maybe I liked it so much because it centers on people who are my age, going through what people who are my age go through when they “go home.” The scene with Simon & Garfunkel’s The Only Living Boy In New York nearly made me cry. So good.

A while ago, Sharaun got these neato print-your-own iron-on sheets to make t-shirts with. Today, since I’m taking full advantage of being on vacation and indulging in laziness, I decided to make a couple of shirts. I made one shirt full of alchemy imagery, and one full of Voynich Manuscript imagery. Sharaun said they’re “stupid” and “devil-worshipy.” Yeah, so maybe it’s kinda “dumb” to have t-shirts with stuff from old manuscripts and stuff… dumb indeed. Owell, it’s not the first time I’ve been dumb.

It has been raining on our little house for nearly two days straight, without so much as an hour break. Our half-done backyard is all mud and weeds… the little trees all bare for the winter. Because of the rain, I’ve been hold up inside a lot these past couple days… I actually like it. Back in high school, I’d sometimes get the urge to hide away in my room for an entire day and make “songs.” Fancying myself a brooding artist or something, I dunno, I’d purposely not shower… just wallow in grease and pluck a guitar with the tape running. My “songs” sucked. Most of them are sung in my I’m-afraid-of-singing, cartoony Adam Sandler voice. I made two tapes though… edited down into songs and everything… Sharaun still has one, and I have it on the headphones as I write this. So. Effing. Terrible.

I guess there are a limited number of way to approach a “blog.” You can write about what you did that day, like a running ticker at the bottom of CNN or something. You can write super-introspective, raw, personal-type stuff… riddled with bad poetry and a depressed, lonely air. You can be a political pundit or social activist. I guess, actually… there are probably an infinite number of ways to approach a blog. My way, I think, is haphazard… but the semi-permanent theme is always “make ’em laugh.” I guess that’s what I’m trying to do, overall. Tell stories, pontificate, make fun of myself, whatever.

When I was a kid and we used to take long trips in cars, I’d sometimes pretend I could shoot a laser beam from the tip of my index finger. The laser beam was molten-hot, or razor-sharp, or both, and whatever it fell upon was cut right in two. I’d sit in the seat and “aim” the beam out the window, slicing everything in the car’s moving path to the same horizontal plane. Trees, people, buildings, other cars, whatever… I could slice them right in two along the plane of the moving laser. An odd daydream.

If there’s one thing good about being up at 11:30pm on a Thursday, it’s that, on this particular Thursday, I don’t have to go to work on Friday. If there’s two things good about it, it’s that I don’t have to go to work, and that the garbage truck will come take away our garbage tomorrow morning while I sleep in.

Goodnight.

Posted on

no cuts, no butts

Splash.
More people than all those that died in the the Vietnam war have died as a result of this typhoon. I was thinking about that today as I was in line buying cat litter at Costco. The lines were ridiculously long, and one woman “excused me” past my cart and met her husband at the front of the line next to me with a couple last-minute items. As she pushed her cart between the two lines and unloaded her items onto the conveyor belt, an old man in a long coat and hat with a feather began to rumble. His voice was deep, gravelly, and surprisingly powerful given his age – I remember thinking it actually reminded me a lot of my own grandfather’s voice.

“Hey,” he bellowed, “What’s all this crowding at the front of the line?!” “Why does she get to go in front of all us?” The woman’s husband turned and said, “She’s my wife sir,” at the same time the woman was saying, “He’s my husband, we’re one family.” The old man kept hollering about “cutting in line” and “we’ll all be here for god-damned ever if they let everyone cut.” Finally, the woman’s husband turned in line and said, simply, “Merry Christmas, sir.” It was the perfect response to the situation, and it made me smile. The old man was furious, cursing and shaking his head, but he managed a more sheepish than powerful, “Happy New Year,” as an attempt at an equally witty response.

Prior to the exchange, I had been thinking about the typhoon… and the more than one-hundred thousand people that died. It just struck me how mad this old man was because the lines at the local warehouse food-store aplenty are too long and he’ll have to wait 10min to spend his money on gallon jugs of liquor, fresh-ground gourmet coffee, and 3lbs bags of luncheon meat. Not that I’m on the next Red Cross plane to Phuket to help with the relief efforts or anything, but hey anyone can talk big on the internet.

Last night it was rainy and windy in Northern California. I turned in around 1am, and listening to the wind blow the rain against the windows… I imagined I was on ship at sea. In the old times, mind you. Y’know… some kind of “galleon” or end-of-Goonies-lookin’ pirate ship. Perhaps under sail in the dark of night… headed towards some island to trade silk for molasses, or gold for salt, or something. Maybe running rum from the East Indies to the colonists who aren’t to prudent to party, or skirting the shoals of Southern Africa en-route to a spice dealer in India.

I didn’t write yesterday because I was at Anthony’s doing an all-day Lord of the Rings marathon. While I know it’s extremely D&D nerdy, we queued up all three extended edition DVD sets, which, at two discs and several hours each, put us firmly entrenched in the world of Middle Earth for eleven hours. We came up for air every three hours or something (and by air, I mean pizza), but other than that it was a solid loaf-a-thon. A good way to waste a day of vacation, and since it was raining I didn’t miss out on working in the yard (which was the real goal of this week off).

OK, done.

Posted on

down at the end

You'll get it after reading it.
12:53am on… I guess on Tuesday morning, although to me it’s still Monday night. Once again my fingers protest the amount of coordination required to type words. I have a full glass of water on the desk beside me, y’know, my garlic necklace, warding off the vampire that is hangover. I actually had a really abstract paragraph written earlier today, about how I like women… it was a good piece of writing… but I trashed it. I do that sometimes, trash stuff I think is good… because it’s not fit… not fit for the “blog,” or something. So go the perils of an “online” journal, I suppose.

There are some times in my life, not very many actually, that I can remember feeling… feeling alone. Not that I really was alone, but that I felt alone. Not without friends, just an in-the-moment loneliness. Something not quite like a true feeling of being alone – but more like feeling alone in that moment… mostly a welcomed kind of alone, not something uncomfortable or negative. I don’t even really know, I just thought of this theme as I was brushing my teeth – and in my slight drunkenness it seemed like a nice personal divergence from the boring slop I’ve been posting lately… somewhat of an entry in the true “journal” sense, like things used to be or something. I’m going to run with it now I think, since it’s on top.

I feel alone. I’m staying at my Uncle Tom’s place in California. My brother and I are here for a week. Uncle Tom and Aunt Judy live in small house here in Tepesque Canyon. They have goats, and chickens, and a satellite dish. In the morning, we throw feed to the goats and gather brown eggs from the hens for breakfast. Aunt Judy cooks the eggs while Frank and I watch the Monkees and You Can’t Do That On Television on some crazy satellite-only channel called Nickelodeon. Right now it doesn’t show much but Canadian programming for kids and some old, old reruns. I don’t know that at the time though. I remember helping paint a shed, and sitting on a porch swing with Tom and Judy’s dog. I remember a tree-swing’s apex that put you over a small cliff looking down on a field of tall grass. I remember masturbating for the first time, and associating the feeling with homesickness. Hey, I told you this was going to be personal.

My mom and my brother and I have just come home from our after-school place. My dad has beat us home today, sometimes that happens. Before Frank and I can get out of the car, my dad comes out of the house and greets my mom with a hug. Something is wrong, I can tell. I’m not sure what Frank was thinking, or even if it made that much of an impression on him at his age. But I know something is wrong, even through the silence of the car-window glass I can tell by the way my mom is reacting to whatever my dad is telling her. The house has been robbed, and vandalized. Many of our things are missing or ruined. It feels very personal, the “feeling” part of the word “violated” that can’t really be conveyed in a dictionary’s definition. I get on my bike and ride. I feel alone. I ride aimlessly, I don’t want to see the house anymore… don’t want to smell the soy sauce in the hallway carpet; don’t want to see the ketchup on the walls and ceiling; don’t want to wonder what they did to my cat that makes her walk funny; don’t want to think about the fact that they stole the spare keys. I ride to my school, and find my 4th grade teacher still in her classroom. As I cry on her shoulder, I feel alone.

I feel alone. I’m on a Greyhound bus to Texas. I left college only a few hours ago. I didn’t bring a book to read or anything. There is some humongous kid next to me, he got on the bus in a town called Defuniak Springs and he’s talking about going to football camp in Texas. I try to be as polite as possible, making him feel good by keying in on things he says and learning what makes him feel comfortable. I’m good at this. I feel like I can read people like books, judging within minutes what makes them feel most comfortable and using it to befriend them. Do they most enjoy talking about themselves?; listening to you talk?; strategic non-talking cues?; whatever it is – I’ll exploit it and make them comfortable. Emulate his posture, his demeanor, ally loosely with the things I presume he believes in and trusts. We talk for hours about things I could care less about. His folks are split up, one lives here, one lives there. Eventually he gets off the bus, and I’m alone again. No matter who sits down next to me, I’ll have this conversation with them. The couple going to Las Vegas, the girl who’s just leaving Florida. I don’t even smoke, but I’ll have cigarettes with you at the stopovers. As I retire from my game of dice with four guys in the Dallas Greyhound terminal, and curl up to sleep on my suitcase so it won’t get stolen, I feel alone.

I’m sitting on a stone bench outside a lecture hall at college. I feel alone. I watch as people ride by on bikes, heading to class. My class isn’t for another hour, but it’s easier to stay here than go home to my place. At least I found the right building, this campus is huge. I only have an hour to wait. Between classes the street is full of students making their way to whatever’s next. I’m waiting here for the 1st day of differential equations. Calc I and II were no sweat, but I had a hard time during some of the more abstract portions of calc III. I don’t really know what to expect from differential equations. I couldn’t know at the time that I’d strike an accord with the teacher, enjoy the class immensely, meet a couple friends, and go on to earn one of my post-community-college As. At the time all I could know was that I was feeling kinda lonely on that stone bench in the sun waiting for class to start. Watching all the other kids go by with such a sense of knowing where they were and where they were going. A long way from the here and now of writing this paragraph, a lot less confident, a lot less knowing.

I’m sitting in some cubicle. I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing, so I’m not really doing anything. I’ve got conflicting feelings of guilt and getting-away-with-something. I’ve been working here for a month or so, and my manager has changed twice already. No one even really knows I’m here, I can leave when I want. So I do. I come in late, and leave early. No one knows I’m here, I report to no one. I feel guilty sometimes, taking a paycheck for what I do during the day: listening to Kid A and researching alchemy online. Frequenting the Smashing Pumpkins message boards, engrossed in the mystery that is Machina and the symbology and double-meanings of it all. I do nothing to contribute to this company, I am collecting an engineer’s pay for nothing. God I feel alone up here, no one knows I exist and my requests for work seem to fall on deaf ears. Once, I got called into the lab to help record data… but it turned out to be idiot’s work, and I was back at my desk reading about Jung’s thoughts on the spiritual applications of traditional alchemy in no time. I have none of the knowledge required for this job. I am in over my head, but it’s OK because no one even knows I exist. Lonely.

Yeah, I feel good about this one. Tipsy or not, I like the writing. I like when paragraphs appear without effort, like they’ve written themselves or something. It’s that easy sometimes, when you’re “in the zone” or something. Words come out and start lining up to make sense, you don’t even need the full faculties that soberness affords… it just flows.

So, with my glass of water nearly empty and my eyes heavy in anticipation of dreams… I’m signing off. Goodnight to you all.

Posted on

the donner party got nuthin’ on us

Snowed in.
Well, we made it home… but it was no pleasant journey. Leaving Oregon around 10:30am, I pegged us to pull into the driveway at home sometime around 8pm-9pm that evening. Little did we know (no, really, we knew a little since we checked the website) that we’d be caught in a huge freakin’ snowstorm through the mountains into California. Fearing a bad trip in the snow, we stopped right before the mountains and ate a late lunch. We even stocked up on “provisions” (soda and chips) in case the trip over the passes was long. We hit the first hint of snow a mere 20min later somewhere south of Ashland.

Half an hour later we were at a dead stop on I5, in park on the freeway… nothing but taillights and headlights stretching to eternity in front of and behind us. We remained parked on the freeway for over an hour, watching the snow fall outside and watching Napoleon Dynamite on the laptop inside. When we finally started creeping along, it was a mess. The snow had erased the lanes on the road, so people were just following each other single-file, trying to stay in the established ruts from the cars before them. After an hour so so driving like this and debating whether or not to put on the snow chains… Ben and I broke down and did it. Although I’ve owned chains for several years now, I’ve never actually had to use them. So I was off to the side of the road, snow raining down onto my Bernie Mac raincoat, huddled around my taillight trying to read the instructions. After some head-scratching, we managed to get the chains attached and merge back into the 10mph single-lane traffic. Another mile or so and we hit the source of the delay, the chain-check, no one got through without chains or 4WD and snow tires.

After getting past the chain-check, it was every man for himself on the road. The traffic thinned out considerably and that meant the snow had more time to accumulate on the road with no cars to melt it down. Driving 30mph tops, I made my way through another 40 miles of blizzard-like conditions. Trying to keep the windshield from icing and trying to keep a safe distance from other vehicles, it was a stress-test for sure. We finally rolled out of the mountains (and snow) some five hours after we’d gone in. Exhausted and spent from driving, I handed the duties over to Ben after a midnight cheeseburger (animal style) at In-N-Out. Luckily, Ben ferried us home safely through the rain that the snow had turned into… and we finally collapsed into bed around 3:30am this morning. What a trip.

Now it’s Monday, and a gloomy and wet one at that. Sharaun and I rolled out of bed around 11:30am, readied for the day, and just got back from a nice lunch at the indian buffet. And while she decided to spend the day shopping, I’ve chosen to sit here on this couch and watch the accumulation of TiVo’d Twilight Zone episodes. I’m supposed to be taking the week off, at least that’s what I had planned. However, I feel really strange about this one… I dunno. I mean, I have this feeling like I should be there… like it’s not an “official” vacation or something. Work seems to be pulling me in, making me feel guilty for not being there. I think perhaps it’s because I did a poor job “advertising” that I’d be on vacation, like I usually do. So it makes me feel like I’m somehow shirking my duties or something. I’m hoping the feeling goes away…

Well now… until next time.

Posted on

can’t put brown down

Wisemen... not wiseguys.
Merry Chrimma all! It’s that time of year for family and wrapping paper and ham and making the universal mistake of buying sweet potatoes for the sweet potato casserole instead of the required yams. Actually, the term “sweet potato” in the casserole’s name is most accurate. If you do your research, the things that stores commonly sell as “yams” are really a type of sweet potato (there are two varieties, the whiter-fleshed kind which the stores accurately call “sweet potatoes,” and the orange-fleshed kind which stores wrongly label as “yams”). In fact, true yams aren’t potatoes at all, they’re roots. I think because so many people refer to the orange sweet potatoes as yams, the stores must do it too. Either way, Sharaun makes this awesome casserole every year – so we’ve learned the difference the hard way. However, since mom and dad did the shopping this year before we got here – we ended up with the wrong thing again. Damn you, you confusing sweet poyamoes, yamatoes, potams… Wait, can I say “damn” on Christmas?

The non-sweet potato part of Christmas went swimmingly though, the gifts were a’plenty, a’thoughtful, and pretty a’awesome. I got some clothes, new shoes, and even a laser-guided parking system so I can accurately park my truck in the garage to within inches. Not to mention a two-year subscription to Maxim, a razor, socks, underwear (yes, with iron-ons), and some of the little things I always enjoy: silly putty, a Duncan yo-yo (butterfly style, bitch), and a Wacky Wall Walker. Can I say “bitch” on Christmas? Damn. Sharaun seems to like her gifts a lot, I think I did a better-than-usual job of buying this year (thanks Kristi) – and the list she gave me was only part of the reason. Even mom and dad made out pretty well I think. We all had a fine time tearing into gifts and posing for pictures with the cast-aside bows on our heads. As a plus, my folks really seem to dig the copy of Brian Wilson’s SMiLE I got ’em… good music.

Around noon yesterday, while sitting on the couch at my folks house having just finished Christmasing up the blog, I spied a copy of The Da Vinci Code on my parents’ bookcase. Over the years, so many people have told me I would like this book – based on my existing interest in theology, alchemy, Masonry, Illuminati, and countless other things that end in the “ee” sound. With nothing much to do on Christmas eve, I decided to give it a go. Before I knew it, it was dinner time and I was already halfway through the book. Already being familiar with some of the history featured in the book (the Templars, the canonization of the Bible, the Gnostic gospels, etc.), I found it fascinating. Eventually, it was 11pm and I had under a 100 pages to go. I made the call to finish the book that night, and turned the last page around 12:30am. It was a good book, the religious history and theory and code-crap talk right to the guy in me who voraciously read The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross.

With the passing of Christmas day, our short vacation in Oregon is over – and we hit the road again tomorrow to head back down into sunny, and almost inconceivably less-liberal than here, California. Whereas the Gods smiled on our journey north and did not hamper us with snow, it seems we must have angered them over our short stay, and they plan to blanket the mountain passes with white stuff. I’m totally cool, I got the snow chains (never used ’em, and only the slightest idea how to put ’em on), and I’ve been practicing driving on ice. Not really, I’ve never driven in real snow or anything. Either way, I know tomorrow means another ten hours on the road… and perhaps even another buffet and embarrassingly-awful cabaret show, who knows.

Well folks, I think that’s my entry for the day – time to Christmarelax instead of writing. Suzy’s Christmas entries were particularly good today, I’d recommend them if you’re hard up for more blog-reading on this, the day of Christ’s birth. Since I don’t normally write on the weekend, I think I’ll take tomorrow off (convenient, since we’ll be on the road all day long). Until Monday, safe and back at home…

Merry Christmas!