Lethargy

Apparently 8:20 am is the ideal time to break out the weed whackers and stand outside my window for a half an hour.
Finding it impossible to block out the sound, I opted, against my better judgment, to get up, though after the walking alarm clocks had moved on I considered going back to bed, as I felt extremely tired.
I’m not sure why I was so tired, as I hadn’t stayed up particularly late, and it wasn’t that much earlier than when I normally get up.
Still, the greater than normal lethargy meant that I didn’t actually get showered, dressed, and out the door until about ten to 11.
I needed to get some things from Wal-Mart, which meant going to Sterling, as I avoid the Leesburg Wal-Mart, which is where ghetto meets white trash, at all costs.
Even though it was nearly 11 by the time I left, and I had to drive around 10 miles or so, I had completed my shopping and walked out the doors of Wal-Mart by 11:30.
So I had accomplished pretty much everything I needed to for the day in about 40 minutes.
I don’t know if that makes me a model of efficiency, or just really, really sad and pathetic.
In any case, I felt like I should do something else, though I wasn’t certain what. I tried to think if I had any reason to go to Best Buy, but was unable to think of one, which is odd and kind of scary.
Ultimately I headed over to the Dulles Town Center and grab some lunch at the food court, opting for my standard foot-long Bacon Dog.
As I was sitting there clogging my arteries, I was thinking that I had just been to the Town Center a little while ago, then realized that, in fact, it had been over a month ago, when I was trying to find something for Kathleen’s birthday.
It’s difficult to explain just how rapidly the months fly by for me with my odd schedule and the ever-increasing pace of my march towards middle age, but at times, like today, it can be a rather startling and unnerving realization.
From there I simply headed home, giving up any effort at making it seem as though I have a life and that there’s any reason for me to spend time out in the world.
Once I got home there were any number of things that I could have done, like some drawing, some tweaking of the Heroic Portraits site, messing around with my Red Hat installation, going for a walk, and so forth, but instead I just kind of sat around feeling tired, and after about an hour I decided to head out to the hammock and chillax for a while.
Having accomplished that, here I am, still feeling rather tired.
There’s an extremely long stoplight that I have to deal with whenever I go anywhere. Despite the odds against it, 99% of the time I arrive at the light just as it’s turned red, so I always have a long wait, which pretty much always puts me in a lousy mood and makes me feel inclined to rant to myself as I sit there waiting.
Today was no exception, though I actually had a particular topic to rant about as I watched the guy in front of me smoking a cigarette.
What set me off was that the guy appeared to be in his fifties, which meant that he’s managed to get in twenty more years of smoking that I did, with no immediately apparent ill effects.
Given that to this day I still wish that I could smoke, I was annoyed to see someone much older than I am getting away with it.
I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but stoplight-inspired rants seldom do.
In any case, I was sitting there saying, “Sure, this bald old bastard gets to sit there happily enjoying his cigarette, and meanwhile here I am, smoke-free for over two years, and yet I’m the one who’s easily winded and is sitting here with the tightness in his chest.”
I then added, in a slow tone that indicated a dawning awareness of the significance of what I was saying, “And a stabbing pain whenever I take a deep breath. And pain and numbness all down my left arm. Wait a second…”
I didn’t get too much more time to think about it, as the light finally changed and traffic started moving, and as I went along the tightness and pains (which I’m pretty sure were just the result of heartburn brought on by eating a Granny Smith apple for breakfast) passed, and once I stopped resting my elbow on the door and moved it around, normal sensation returned to my left arm.
Obviously I was very shaken up by the experience, though, which is I why I had a Bacon Dog for lunch an hour later.
I really should take that sort of thing a little more seriously, though, I guess.
I mean, if nothing else, family history (though there are plenty of other indicators) shows that I’m a prime candidate for a heart attack somewhere along the line.
Somehow, though, I just can’t get myself too worked up about it. I think mostly because getting worked up about it would mean I’d actually have to do stuff.
And we can’t have that.
Besides, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m reasonably certain it’s going to be some sort of slapstick-style, Rube Goldbergian comedy of errors that takes me out of this world anyway.
Which reminds me, I need to give props to the Universe for getting in a good one on me yesterday.
Clearly I should have seen it coming, but that’s part of what makes it such an outstanding effort on the Universe’s behalf.
I was at the bathroom sink preparing to wash my hands, so I reached over to the soap dispenser and pushed down on the pump.
Nothing happened.
I tried again.
Still nothing.
I’ve run into all sorts of problems with recalcitrant pump dispensers over the years, so in annoyance I picked the soap dispenser up and was kind of jimmying the pump to see what the problem was.
Turns out there was simply dried soap clogging it, dried soap which was blown clear as I angrily pumped away, causing me to splatter soap all over my shirt and arm.
It would have been better if I’d gotten myself in the face (which, I imagine, is what it was hoping for), but even so, I have to give the Universe credit for so effectively taking advantage of my stupid short-sightedness.
Which leads me to…

Eye Am An Idiot Department:
One day last week in Red Hat training my eye started to really irritate me, so I headed to the bathroom, took out my contact, rinsed it off, and was about to put it back in when I noticed something very strange in the mirror.
There were these two grayish-white blotches on my eyeball.
“That can’t be good,” I said, as I leaned in for a closer look.
It looked, actually, rather like there were some sort of stickers placed directly on my eyeball.
As I moved my hand to try pull down my lid for a closer look, the splotches disappeared, and I realized that what I was seeing had been multiple reflections of the sink I was standing over.
I sighed, shook my head, replaced the contact, and went back to class, feeling that much dumber for the experience.

On that note, I’ll leave you with a link to an article on Superman that Neil Gaiman co-wrote for Wired.