Deprivation on so many levels...

I am taking a deep breath now and contemplating going back to bed. I've fulfilled my duties: stirred awake a friend upon the couch, put coffee in our delirium tremened hands, and managed to drive him to the airport. I rewarded myself with a shower and breakfast, a second cup of coffee.

I am looking at the calendar now. Cathleen has merged our lives such that a Gmail calendar foretells future plans with family, friends, and places along the way. We got nothing, it's beautiful. The only plan we had was called off this morning when I awoke hungover with a voice of gravel, foreseeing a day of Battlestar Galactica and new-fashioned ready-to-eat packaged food.

I have nothing to do. Future possibilities in employment lie dormant, hibernating through the annual budget analysis and holiday hangover. I spoke with a few employers yesterday, kind bored HR types issuing dates of the ten-step hiring process, consulting mundane calendars. "Thank you Mr. Reebs for applying. We felt your interview went very well and would like to string you along for another few weeks before a follow-up interview. How does that sound?"

I made friends last night. Local Oaktowners with major promise in vocational connections (through one's Daddy) and a future tennis partner to take the strain off Cathleen, who I daily ask for a tennis match requiring her to more often than not decline. It was a big dinner party at a friend of a friend's restaurant in Sebastapol. Four courses and forty dollar bottles of wine lining the table. Great conversation and a little yo-yo in the bathroom compliments of the chef. At a local watering hole we played shuffleboard and drank cheap bourbon. I somehow managed a lightning sobering act and got us on the road after one, pushing south 101 to a car filled with chatter and deafening music. Life can be so good.

I want to thank friends for a wonderful week. The love helped me stave nausea for Christmas, my least favorite thing to do... right up there with selling narcotics to children. I want to take a deep breath and manage to cleanse the temple a little bit, lay off the sauce until football rolls around. Want to tell the Bobicks that I respect their guys out there doing battle on the gridiron. May the best man win. And if you got any more lip, eat me.



My baby likes mimosas...