Eat, Play, Loaf

How was your Thanksgiving? Mine was filled with carbohydrates and preteen girls all a-squeal, so it was a triptych of intestinal, aural, and mental degradation. Not that either the food or the young ladies was bad, it's just that my tolerance for both ill-considered self-indulgence and cacaphony was tested to the nigh-breaking point. Our home is cozy in the way someone says when they mean “small”, and at one time there were eight children camped out in the living room watching Disney Channel or playing games or defacing the pictures of loathed teen celebrities in Tiger Beat (a zombie apocalypse pales in comparison to a horde of prepubescent girls armed with scissors and Magic Markers, it's the stuff of nightmares).

The culmination of all this holiday merriment was a birthday party, mercifully staged in the clubhouse of our apartment community. Ever try vacuuming tracked-in pine needles and glitter off of carpet? “Sisyphean” is a word that comes to mind (or does now that I looked it up). Also soft drinks, birthday cake, and ADHD are not good bedfellows, as in I'd suggest burning the bed before any kid gets near it.

I had to have a break, so when the opportunity presented itself, I took the bike out for a ten-mile spin through the neighborhood. Autumn, bar none, is my favorite season in which to ride or walk. The smell of the air in itself intoxicates, and then in turn it's layered by holiday cooking smells as I wheel through the streets. I'm a vehicular cyclist, meaning I use the road as an automobile would because I feel it's the safest way to travel, but when I can I love to roll the side streets, particularly when I have no set destination. Even on a bike, there's a certain tunnel-vision that takes over when commuting to work, so riding just for the fun of it will always be the most rewarding. This was the first ride in three weeks and it felt great. I can't let that much time pass between rides.

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You know what's the enemy of writing? Twitter. I just sidetracked myself for ten minutes, scrolling through my feed instead of working on this post. I'll have to find the discipline to avoid distractions like that, but these Internets, they are succubi. I'll be unsure of the usage of a word, or be looking for an apt analogy (see “sisyphean”), and off I am to Wikipedia, where likely as not I'll become mired in a side link and end up reading about HMS Tantalus, yeah I kid you not, I went from Greek mythology to a British submarine in one click. See what I'm up against? I've very recently entertained the notion of doing some copy-writing for “mad money” ('cause I'm mad I ain't gots no money), and if I give that a serious go I'm just going to have to put blinders on, or better yet write it out long-hand before committing it to the pixels.

Yeah, I'll let y'all know how it works out.