Friday off

Woke up the same time I usually wake up during the workweek, even though I had today off. Jogged. Spent about two hours at my computer, analyzing baseball statistics.

There are people in this neighborhood who don't have real jobs for some reason who go outside in hot mornings like these and they walk slowly and they idly rub at invisible blemishes on their warmly bare shoulders and they sip at chilled versions of beverages that are usually served hot, as if it's a Sunday in someone else's backyard.

I helped my buddy finish his research paper on carpal tunnel syndrome. It's still a mess, but at least he no longer has to resort to 14pt Impact font with a twenty dollar bill stapled to it.

I stopped into Ann Sather's all by myself and finally had that pecan french toast with hazelnut cream I'd been thinking about all week. I somehow only completed like four words out of my entire RedEye crossword puzzle, one of the clues being blatant gimmes like "Yoko from Tokyo". The waitress who kept refilling my orange juice looked on with pity.

While folding laundry and doing dishes I watched Full Metal Jacket again. During the scene where Private Gomer Pyle goes crazy and shoots his drill instructor, I pressed pause and ran into my bathroom to see if, in front of a mirror, I could also do that "evil" look that Kubrick likes so much, you know, the one that Malcolm McDowell used in A Clockwork Orange and Jack Nicholson used in The Shining? Glowering intensely into the mirror with lowered brows? I did a good job and wondered if I were a Hollywood actor, would I be typecast as a psychotic maniac, instead of the more obvious quirky pizza delivery guy used for comic relief?

Then I went to a used bookstore and picked up some more novels I'll probably only get halfway through and I also picked up the box set of Twin Peaks. While leaving the bookstore I got greeted by more than just a friendly leg hump from a strange dog. It practically made sweet gentle love to my leg, then grew cold and distant, then cheated on it with my other leg.

On the way back home I noticed a miniature artsy-looking Stonehenge in this quiet little park. Instead of an empty center, though, there was a tall, thin metallic wall, rusty-colored with inch-wide holes punched into it. I stepped within the ring of stones and sat down before the centerpiece. I noticed that the grass around the base of this thing was sickly white.

When I said, "What are you?" the wind promptly blew a coffee-stained business flyer onto my lap. Urban tumbleweed. Everything on the flyer was illegible except for the first part of the address, which said "180."

I took its advice and walked around to the other side and sat there. That's when I realized that a large billboard could be viewed through the holes from that angle. I slid myself back to the outer perimeter of stones and saw that the holes lined up with certain letter fragments on the billboard, revealing just this message:

n    o t    Th   is y
e     a r!

..."Not this year!"?

Then I looked down at my right wrist and noticed that my blue rubber Cubs Believe bracelet was missing. I'm not sure how. Maybe it snapped off during the encounter with the dog that humped me earlier. My heart was pounding.

"Not this year," I muttered in bewilderment, not sure what to do with myself anymore.

I'm so sick of shit like this happening when I have the day off.