Thursday Morning

Sammy is crying to be let out. The grass is only heavily dewy. When I let them in at six to feed, I noticed that the ground looked soaking wet, as though it rained, and I decided to keep them in. I have learned that it was only a heavy fog, but it is still quite wet outside. But I let him go.

Bulldog

Oh, no. Annie, across the street, is now holding a bulldog - a young, aggressive, sleek, mean-seeming dog. Holding it for a friend? Or maybe a new dog that one of the kids wanted? It was leashed, and they brought it to the fenced back yard, which is encouraging. But if they are keeping it - if the dog is always going to be there - might they learn to let him loose to shit elsewhere. No one likes picking up shit. I hope my imagination is working overtime and I am just being a bit paranoid. But that bulldog looks like a real cat-killer - real fast-looking and merciless.

Kay

No truck this week. Kay arrived with Pop in the car. This is a first. I don't know if something is to be made of this little fact. It just struck me as being very interesting, or maybe I should say that it is very different, which can often seem noteworthy.

Home Life

I really hate feeling this need to hold in my piss because I am afraid, if I go to the bathroom, I might have to hear septuagenarian grunting and moaning. I am strongly tempted to just go out back.

The Fun Journal

I am going to give up the big room to Pop and Kay soon, and I am kind of in between tasks, suffering the familiar problem of feeling that there is something that I should be able to do to pleasantly kill a couple of minutes, but I cannot think of anything, sitting behind the laptop, staring into a void. I feel the loss of not having any e-friends that I can check up on. This time, I had my porn journal open, and I semi-consciously went to the beginning of it, to just flip through some pages and just see what is there. I started enjoying this, and then I realized that this is what the that journal is for. Remember, it's not just porn anymore. It is all the fast fun stuff that I pick up from the Net, including movie trailers and music videos and lolcats, as well as a lot of porn. I will have to start calling it the Fun Journal.

Reading Life

Wow, I finished the Hayman biography. When I was thirty pages out this afternoon, I figured that I probably wouldn't finish until Saturday sometime, considering that tomorrow is grocery day. It reads like a favorite novel in its own right. It is a book I can enjoy rereading again and again as much as any other book - a good life of a great writer.

Before going into the next phase of my Mann reading, in which I take up "Reflections" and "Dr. Faustus", I am going to take a quick break to deepen my reading of the Iliad. I am going to take another run through Laura Slatkin's "The Power of Thetis". It is a small paperback of 120 pages. It should not take me more than a few days, especially since I have been reading like a demon these days. ... I wish I could have found this pace when I was still in my twenties. So much time, so much of my life ... just trashed. Of course, I am still not great when it comes to using my time, but I am at least three times better than I was when I was flailing through my twenties.