ok, it works.

not sure if i'm sold on the method, though. overall it's less click-intensive than meandering through the blogger.com logon & interface labyrinth...i'll try it again next time. but since i'm already here....

one of these years i'll get around to updating the other pages of this blog, but not tonight.

another weekend in the books. no shortage of chores for me yesterday, followed by a great salmon dinner at Nichole's, to which everyone but Loren made it out. nice to see everyone; i haven't seen any of the Sargent clan for nearly two months. my nephews are getting big!

i suppose it's only fitting i mention Harley's condition deteriorated last week and Jason & Melissa relucantly put him down. i suppose the only good thing to say about that is he's not suffering, and as hard as it is to have your dog put to sleep, it's surely much harder to watch him struggle and decline. i'm gonna miss Harley, he seemed to like me almost as much as i liked him, and he was a great dog.

Dozer was a hit for the Sargent boys last night- they sure love dogs. they asked me where Chowder was, but i was pretty sure Dozer would make an appearance, so i let him ride out the evening at home.

my neighbor Bruce had an extra (season) ticket for the Seahawks regular season opener today, and invited me along. he likes to take the train, so we did, a first for me. the train's clean, but probably not as fast as driving- especially if you get downtown somewhat early, know where to find parking, and know the right way to get to the freeway afterward. most people make the mistake of trying to get on the freeway as quickly as possible, creating a bit of a backup along the two southernmost on-ramps north of the stadium; pass those two up and head a few blocks north and you're in front of all those brake lights.

i checked the fares and timetables while i was on the train to get an idea of what it would be like to commute to work on it- not going to happen. even if it were cheaper or quicker, i just like having my truck with me. it's pretty easy to get used to having wheels at your disposal.

anyway, the Seahawks win at home; they looked pretty rusty in the 1st quarter, but started to get it together late in the 2nd, and looked pretty good in the 3rd. i think the final was 20-6; the Bucs never made a touchdown and never scored after the 1st quarter...at least as of the time i left, with about a minute and half left in regulation. ran into Jeff & Dean's little brother on the way out of the stadium; he tells me Jeff recently moved back from Montana, to Mountlake Terrace, and that Dean's flying solo again, this time living off of Olympic View Drive in the Perrinville neighborhood, over by Meadowdale Beach. for the life of me i simply cannot remember their little bro's name, which is bugging the crap outta me. real nice guy; totally didn't recognize him at first since he's got a thick goatee now. he saw me, actually, and called my name a couple times- i looked right at him and didn't recognize him before realizing who he was. always khoul to run into khoul people you haven't seen for a long time.

came home and caught the night game, the first Sunday Night game of the regular season. for me (as of last year) Sunday is the new Monday, since Al Michaels (my favorite) and John Madden (my other favorite) host that show. the Giants put up a good fight, but 3 starters and 1 backup guy got injured, and the Cowboys played pretty well (with Wade Phillips at the helm for his first regular season game) and chalked up their first W. Eli Manning went out in the 4th quarter with a "bruised" right shoulder, and they lost their starting running back, so welcome to the War of Attrition. not that i'm particularly a Giants fan...

so, two trips to Qwest Field under my belt this year, both Ws. gotta like that.

back to work tomorrow, with boats moving in for the Boats Afloat show, and a truck heading east to retrieve gear from the Gorge. i forgot to grab Jason's CDs to burn over the weekend, maybe that'll take up some of my evening time over the week this week...assuming i actually have any free time this week. i know now, that until the end of August, working where i work, i'm going to spend the majority of my time working and commuting. the sad part of that is, i think with just a little more organization and planning (admittedly not always possible due to lack of necessary information in advance) things would move a lot more smoothly there. i have a much better idea of what to expect in the course of a summer next time around.

Loren's started 9th grade...hardly seems possible. i'm going to turn around and he's gonna be all grown up, and i'm gonna wonder what the hell happened to the last twenty years. he seems to like his teachers alright, so far, which isn't altogether too surprising considering they haven't had the kids do any real work yet, and i think he's enjoying the difference in the atmosphere. he mentioned that he was considering playing basketball and baseball, and i told him for the 1,00th time that i totally encourage him to play any sports...he mentioned tennis, which would be interesting. i love racquet sports. told him again i think he's a natural for football, but the question is whether or not he's aggressive enough. personally, i think that's a long shot for him (he's just WAY easygoing) but you never know....when he gets a little hair on his chin he might surprise the hell out of everyone and become Captain Testosterone.

alright that's it for me, i'm not particularly inspired tonight.

another weekend almost gone

Loren's down for the night. we dug into Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows a bit more this evening, played some darts and chess this afternoon, and went to pick up a C. S. Lewis book (Out of the Silent Planet) which he was assigned to read over the summer, for a 200 question multiple-choice test in store for all the incoming 9th grade advanced-placement English students. we got some laundry done, and the dishes, and ignored some other chores that failed to demand loudly enough for our attention. yesterday we played racquetball in the morning, and followed it up with a short visit to my folks' house, where i took one of their old teak & leather wooden chairs (with its matching footstool) off their hands. it's a nice chair, and quite comfortable, but i don't exactly have a place for it...maybe i'll get to figuring that out this week. we also watched our requisite Star Trek DVDs (8 episodes of Voyager over the course of the week) and squeezed in the newly-released animated Dr. Strange video yesterday, as well as playing some of Loren's newly-exchanged and now-functional Tony Hawk: Project 8 video game. still fun stuff. we got in a few episodes of DBZ (the end of the Frieza or Namek saga...not sure which, but we left off with the episode where Frieza gets diced by his own power disc attack) over broiled chicken with rice and peas for dinner, and this is all- i'm quite certain- terribly fascinating.

so. nothing too out of the ordinary, but you won't find me complaining over having the opportunity to spend two uninterrupted days with m'boy. tomorrow he's back to his mom's and i hunker down for another week of work. the boss suggested i take a day off this week, possibly Friday, which would make for a 3-day weekend upcoming....might be nice. been working a lot of hours lately, and there's no shortage of household business to take care of.

s'pose that's all i got for the moment. PEACE

so it's 8 o'clock on a Saturday night

and it's obvious to me that i have nothing better to do than post something...anything, really, just something.

i have a mild headache, most likely brought on by inactivity, or lack of caffeine until a relatively late hour, or the lack of actual nutritional value offered by the scant remains of most of the easily prepared substitutes for real food, through which i've half-heartedly ruminated periodically over the course of the day, or by some other reason which i'm either failing to notice or opting to omit, or some combination thereof.

i could turn to the medicine cabinet, which would require my leaving this chair, negotiating the doubled-back flight of stairs to the 2nd floor hallway, which shortly leads to the upstairs bathroom. there, a few tablets of generic naproxen sodium would likely take the edge off the dull pain in my head within 20-30 minutes, at which point i might feel entirely more motivated than i do presently. whether i ultimately summon the motivation to do so remains beyond the scope of this narrative to this point.

it's likely no coincidence that the pain in my head seems to a fair degree to be exacerbated by smoking cigarettes; after all, nicotine is a well known vasoconstrictor. i suppose it's entirely possible that my cranial discomfort is due to a restriction of blood flow, and further restricting my brain's access to gas exchange might very well increase my discomfort. or maybe it's all in my head.

i have the impression that being more physically active increases blood pressure and circulation and raises the body's metabolic rate. i'm generally quite active, typically, especially on working days, but this morning i made a vague resolution to attempt to "rest" today, as it's necessary for me to work at least a partial day tomorrow, in order to meet the demands of the following day.

despite the fact that smoking cigarettes makes my head hurt worse, i've chosen to light one as i remain seated here, typing, rather than make that journey to the medicine cabinet upstairs.

after all, i made, earlier this afternoon, a special trip to spend around $25 of hard-earned money i've not yet been paid on 100 of these little paper-wrapped tobacco-and-chemical nicotine delivery devices, for the express purpose of ensuring i need not today confront an interruption in their supply- a familiar occurence which periodically occurs to all those who've succumbed, willingly or torturedly, to their addiction. clinging pitifully to their (our, my) short end of the stick, they (we, i) reach that familiar point in their (our, my) often decades-long love/hate relationship with the seductively evil product of American Tobacco and dutifully, resignedly march, head bowed, to renew their (our, my) financial/physical/emotional bludgeoning at the hands of gleeful corporations and perennially thirsty government revenue collectors.

the cigarette i lit when i began that above paragraph has done its damage. its contribution to my (presumably worsening) Pulmonary Obstructive Disease is complete, and having fulfilled its mission it died, predictably, its quiet death with neither comment nor protest. its crushed, lifeless body lies motionless amid the foul-smelling corpses of its brothers, a pile of tar-stained cotton filters in random disarray, sporting charred shocks of tobbaco filaments like haircuts of punk rockers burned in their beds.

and there is still the question, the unresolved issue of whether i'll traverse the staircase to the medicine cabinet.

it's certainly not the only possible course of action. i could light another cigarette, for instance, or put my fist through the monitor before me. i could take off my pants and run screaming around the circular cul-de-sac outside the front door. i could put the 2nd DVD of the evening into the player in the other room, and once more vegetate before a cathode-ray tube, this time in the more-fitting darkness which has accrued in the hour i've taken describing these things. i could opt to tell you which DVD i've already watched today.....which might or might not be entertaining to any with eyes following this narrative. perhaps i'll do exactly that, later. perhaps not.

looking inside the finely engineered, foil-paper-lined, precision-folded, mass-produced utilitarian marvel which is the "pack" box, an apt term for the tightly-packed delivery vehicle in which 20 of the aforementioned cylindrical, smoldering kamikaze soldiers infiltrate our lives, i chose to select the left-most of the two remaining candidates. exhaling the last of the particle-laden exhaust, for which it was conceived and created, and to which it owed both its existence and ultimate destruction, i began this sentence.

the longer i remain in this chair, slouching slightly toward the monitor, the more discomfort i feel in my neck and upper back. this is an ergonomically challenging chair which came to me approximately 15 years ago in what i believe was a random series of events involving a former friend and the redecoration of a bank lobby. it's certainly no chair i'd choose to purchase. in fact, i've never purchased a chair, nor a table for that matter. nor a bed or bed linens of any sort. nor a nightstand, bookcase, entertainment center, or desk, nor any dishes or plants. i could make a very long list indeed of the things i've never purchased. suffice it to say that nearly everything furnishing my residence requiring the expenditure of any significant amount of money had that expenditure provided by others. the furniture manufacturers are simply not winning the competition with the tobacco companies for my business.

my stomach is increasingly attempting to persuade me to follow the "put-the-frozen-pizza-in-the-oven" scenario, while my head concurs, and suggests i make the journey to the medicine cabinet.