Blog Stuff: A nearly perfect day off.

I've been feeling sorry for myself way too damn much lately. I've been putting in brutal hours at work as we ramp up into another wildly successful peak season, with all the attendant retail worries over adequate sales floor coverage, adequate stocking (the downside of selling a whole bunch of stuff is that you have to get a whole bunch more stuff into the store to sell), and all the familial woes of keeping a mixed bag of a sales staff happy and pointed in the same general direction. This doesn't leave a lot of time for keeping myself happy, though, and the grind was really starting to give me the gloomies.

So, I woke up this morning, turned to face the birthplace of John Moses Browning, and swore a mighty oath that I was really and truly not going into work today.

Well, there we go: a whole day for me, me, me.

I started by seeing my neighbor off on his vacation, then settling on the side porch with a cup of coffee and my current book, watching the rising sun paint the fall foliage over the lake in a riot of color. As is usual for this time of year, something about the falling leaves and the cool, scented air brings out a tremendous sense of nostalgia. I shuffled the discs in car's changer to include a couple of blasts from the past (Enigma's greatest hits album Love, Sensuality, Devotion, and Republic, by New Order, both guaranteed to combine with the Autumn atmosphere and trigger a full-on attack of reminiscing.)

I tooled over to Bearden Hill for a knosh of pretzels with hot beer cheese dip at Calhoun's, and, with a companionable mug of their pale ale at my elbow, polished off my book (the wonderfully witty The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson,) while the usual '80s/'90s pop played through the resaurant's speakers, further enhancing the nostalgic mood of the day.

Back in the Beemer, it was just warm enough to enjoyably drop the top, and pick some of my favorite backroads on which to zip homewards. I got to wend my way past rolling fields, see a beautiful view of the distant mountains all dressed up in their Fall finery, and, as a special bonus prize, while tooling down the curvy country lane leading back to the Batcave, I had to brake the Beemer to a halt to allow five wild turkeys to grudgingly move off the right-of-way and into the woods.

Come to think of it, when I first heard the tunes I was playing on the car stereo today, it was ten years ago, and I was depressed because I was unemployed and my crappy car was always in the shop; now I have the gall to get upset because I'm so busy at a job I love that I can only drop the top on the Zed Three once a week?

Nostalgia ain't all it's cracked up to be. I feel better already. :-)