My silly pic in Flickr’s explore, as seen on the iPhone app.

WOOHOO!  I made Flickr’s Explore again.  I feel like the Weasley twins when the sorting hat placed Harry Potter in Gryffindor!

*note: scroll back a few days. I mentioned I was re-reading the Harry Potter series. Chances are we’re going to get weird Potterverse references here and there for a while. Sorry.

It was the weirdest thing.  This morning I stopped at a CVS to buy a Diet Pepsi to drink on my way to work.  They had recently remodeled the entire store and there were two guys standing in front of the check out who looked like they were contractors on a break.  I don’t know if they were or not, they just looked the part given the scenario.

When I went to check out they were still there.  I wasn’t paying attention to them at all, but the most peculiar thing caught my ear.  I’m not sure, but I believe I heard one of them use the phrase, “Geez Louise” in a non-ironic manner.  By that I mean, he used it as an actual exclamation, not as a sarcastic comment.

He could have said, “oh my god” or “damn” or “fuck me gently with a chainsaw”* but no.  His brain took the fraction of a micro second it had available to search it’s collected vocabulary to find an appropriate exclamation and it chose… “Geez Louise.”

What is this world coming to?

 

*This is a quote from the movie Heathers, and it may be the greatest line ever uttered in the entire history of the English language.  I bet even Shakespeare would think to himself, “Geez Louise, I wish I came up with that one.”

I failed to post anything last night.  I had something I wanted to post, but I didn’t make it on time.  Why?

Because I wasn’t feeling well.  While driving home last night I started getting a nasty head ache.  I think it might have been related to strobe lights.  There was a thunderstorm in the distance as I was driving up route 3.  Never in my life have I seen such a lightning show.  Bolt after bolt, clear as day, right in front of me.  I think all that flashing light messed my head a little.  At least it probably made whatever I was already feeling worse.  When I got home I sat in the living room with my eyes closed.  Harry was at karate and I wanted to see him before I went to bed.  Once he came home I went to my room and turned off all the lights and buried my head under the blanket.  It was about 8:30.

I would like to say that I took advantage of the situation to get a great night’s sleep.  Nope.  I woke up around 2:30 and couldn’t fall back to sleep.  A little after 3:00 I sat up in bed and surfed on my iPad.  The head ache was gone, but I still felt a little off.  Around 4:00 I tried sleeping again and I was able to get another hour and a half or so. It was during that middle of the night wake up that I sent off the post I had meant to add last night.  Rainbows are purty.

I am feeling okay today, but still not quite right.  I think I might be coming down with a sinus bug or something.  My head feels a little weird.  I don’t feel sick, just weird.

Oh, and speaking of Apple products (look close, it’s there), I got myself an Apple Card today.  Now I just have to wait a few days for the titanium bad boy to arrive.  Suh-weeeet.

Did I mention that we played golf the other day?  Like golf as in not miniature golf?  Well, it wasn’t a real course, it was a pitch and putt, but it wasn’t mini-golf, that’s the point.

I used to play in an annual tournament with my father and the church group he volunteers with.  My father, brother, and I would also sneak out every now and then and play on our own.  John and I actually took a lesson at one point.  I had my own set of clubs, but they were just an old set my father had retired.

I was not good.  I was not okay.  I was a step above the guy who just shows up and tries to play and doesn’t know what he’s doing and holds everyone up as he screws up left and right.  I was better than that guy, but only a little bit better.

I enjoyed it for the most part, but golf is a game of frustration, and the line between enjoyment and loathing is really, really thin.  There came a day when the frustration level put me onto the wrong side of that line and that was it.  I was done.  I never played again.

Until now.

My step son Harry has always had an interest.  Someone took him to a driving range when he was really little and the seed was kinda planted.  Last week he said he wanted to go to a driving range again.  He, Jen, and I went.  We rented a single club, bought a small bucket of balls and went at it.  I tried to show him what I knew, but I don’t know a lot and I forget most of what I once new.  I could see when he was doing things wrong, but I don’t have the ability to correct him, so we just hacked away.

He had a few good drives.  Straight, line drives that didn’t go very far, but went far enough.  I also had the occasional good drive.  Nothing terribly long, I hit around 100 yards a couple of times, but surprisingly straight.  I’d say one shot out of five was decent.  I was surprised.

As we were wrapping up we remembered that Kimballs in Westford had a little nine hole pitch and putt course to go along with the world’s greatest ice cream.  We gave it a shot on Sunday.  We rented a pitching wedge and a putter each and went at it.  The holes were short.  I think the longest was 70-80 yards.  Even with a wedge I was on the green in two or three shots most of the time, and sometimes I was on the green in one.  It was weird.  I wasn’t god-awful.

Harry, again without any actual knowledge of what he was doing, hit a few great shots on the early holes and then learned a fundamental truth of golf.  When you think you have it figured out, that’s the moment you lose it completely.  After a couple of good holes he started having tons of trouble.  He seemed to be getting annoyed.  Remember that thin line between fun and hatred?  He was skating on that line.  On the last couple of holes he stopped thinking about what he was doing and that let him make a couple of good shots.  He was back on the fun side again.

I would say that it was probably about 16-17 years ago that I declared I had played my last game of golf, and then there I was a-pitchin’ and a-puttin’.  Never say never, kids.  Never say never.

I haven’t watched these all the way through.  The first one is worth it just for Racing in A, even though Steve sounds like he might not be having the best night.  The second one has a corresponding album and I have heard that, I just haven’t watched the video yet.  It’s a prog all star sort of thing.

Oh yeah, I bought a ticket for his Boston show in a few weeks.  Just pre-gaming a little.

Oh what the hell, let’s have some Genesis too.

and…

 

Two items of note from this glorious holiday weekend.

First, I’ve developed a new quirk to my whole CPAP experience. Apparently I drool in my sleep now. Interesting.

Second, yesterday we played a Harry Potter trivia game and I failed to get every single question right. Well, eff that. I loaded all seven books, in audiobook format, onto my phone. I don’t know everything? We’ll just see about that.