$704.96

On Monday morning I woke up to find that I was still very tired, I had a mild headache, I was groggy, and I really didn't want to go to work.
I thought about calling in sick. Then I thought about it some more.
And some more.
Meanwhile, being of two minds on the subject, I got up and began going through all the motions of getting ready for work, all the while the part of my brain that wanted nothing more than to call in and then climb back into bed screaming, "No! What are you doing?"
While I was in the shower, to quiet that part of my brain, I worked out an arrangement.
"If you go in to work today, we'll take Friday off."
"And the following Monday," that part of my brain added.
"Okay, and the following Monday," I agreed.
"And my birthday."
"Fine."
So with internal detente achieved, I went in to work on Monday.
(The tiredness and grogginess never went away as the day wore on; I ended up going to bed before 8:00 that night. I was sitting at the computer struggling to say awake, and finally decided, "I can go to bed now if I want; I don't have to impress anyone with my ability to not go to bed really early.")
Anyway, the point is that I took today and Monday off and will be taking my birthday off as well.
I took the opportunity today to do do all of my usual Saturday morning stuff, such as going to the comic shop and grocery shopping. I also had to go to the eye doctor to pick up a new set of lenses.
(When I stopped at Best Buy after my eye appointment I used the bathroom and, upon seeing my reflection in the mirror, noticed that I appeared to be in the early stages of becoming a zombie; the skin under eyes was a sickly, jaundiced shade of yellow. At first I was baffled, but then realized that it was the run-off from the dye the doctor had put in my eyes to check out the fit of the lenses.)
At Target I discovered that Friday afternoons are apparently busier than Saturday mornings, and I ended up in line behind a woman buying four carts' worth of groceries, totalling $704.96. I'm guessing, based on the conversation she was having with the cashier, and given the sheer volume of groceries, that the woman was shopping for some sort of institution. Given the behavior of the two teenage girls with her, I'm going to guess that it was St. Cecelia's Home For Incessantly Giggling Girls.
It actually took the woman, the two girls, and the Target employee helping to wrangle the fully-laden carts, so long to get everything moving that I managed to pay for all of my groceries and get to my car before they got to theirs.
Given that their car was the sort of full-sized van favored by institutions, my suspicions about the nature of the shopping would seem to be confirmed.
(Evidently the woman shops like that every week; the exhausted cashier who rang it all up, and appeared to know her said to her, "I love you, but next week don't come through my line.")
After I finished shopping I came home and did some minor plumbing work, replacing the actuator valves on two of my toilets, as in one toilet the existing valve wasn't sealing at all, and in the other it wasn't sealing quite enough.
In the parking lot at Target I'd seen a car with a McCain/Palin bumper sticker that said "Endorsed by Joe the Plumber."
Naturally I'd rolled my eyes, but after making the repairs to my toilets I thought, "Hey, at this point I'm as much of a plumber as that jackass ever was, and, like him, my name isn't Joe, so where's my fifteen minutes of fame?"
(Considers going off on a lengthy rant, decides that the ultimate point of the rant is that people are stupid and probably ought to get punched in the head more often than they do, decides not to bother with the rant.)
After accomplishing that it was time head to the Chiropractor and get cracked. After he finished with all of the bone-popping and neck-cracking, he helped me sit up, then said, "Happy birthday." I thanked him, but pointed out that my birthday isn't for ten days. He said, "Oh, we've got it wrong, then."
However, if the world worked more like I would like it to, today would have been my dad's 74th birthday.
Happy birthday, dad.
Apart from the more unselfish reasons for wishing that he were around to get another year older, as I was walking around in Home Depot today - where I'd gone to pick up the toilet parts - I found myself once again wishing that he were still alive so that I could put him to work on my house.
*Sigh*
Anyway, that was pretty much my day off.