On the other hand, I arrive at my office before 6:01 a.m. Since I always awake precisely at 6 a.m., whether or not I have a job to go to, this may qualify as one of the shortest commute times in all the Greater San Francisco Bay Area.
I usually check my overnight email, which (to me) is a glorious aspect of life in the Digital Age. It still feels like magic to me, this wonderful connectivity. Most of us can remember when it took days or weeks to exchange correspondence with family and friends.
Now, it is instantaneous. Usually, I have a few messages from my various family members and few more from friends. I also have the usual array of "deals" from various airlines and retailers whose services I may have engaged in the past. These, I quickly delete, or mark as Spam.
Then, there are the feeds from some of my favorite web-based news and information services. While, I am going through all of this, I usually drink a cup of black tea and eat two pieces of wheat toast.
Sometimes I add a fruit spread to my toast, sometimes not.
Once the email boxes are cleared, I either get dressed or put on my robe to go out front to gather my newspapers. I don't think it is polite for an old guy to go outside in his boxers for this purpose, sorry.
Lately, I have decided to join all of my sons and switch entirely to boxers from briefs. This may well not be of interest to you, dear reader, but in my current state, this represents a change of major proportions.
Ever since I was laid off, ~ a month ago, the urge to change things has swelled within my breast. I am probably in rebellion against the American Salaryman lifestyle I often described earlier in this modest blog's brief history.
Only those blogs posted since 09.10.07 have been written by an unemployed person. What an auspicious firing date. My first day of work two years earlier had been 09.12.05. Notice how these two dates, one a beginning, the other an ending, neatly bracket the date 9/11, which for Americans seems to be the date of ultimate trauma.
My buddy Susan Faludi has written what appears to be another excellent and timely book about the gender-based cowboy foreign policy that the Bushies (with their token black lesbian Condi) executed in Iraq, to the great horror of almost all the rest of us.
One thing about investigative reporters, we always carry around a lot of secrets, which makes us a serious liability in some senses. Of course, I know a lot about a certain senior Bush Administration figure due to my years spent on a certain university faculty as a visiting professor. Not only do I know she is a lesbian; I know a much deeper secret -- her (very short) marriage to a man!
If you stop and take a deep breath, you might be amazed at what you are reading here on this obscure, seldom-viewed blog by an aging writer, currently unemployed, who commutes from his bedroom to his living room every morning, and is too modest to go outside for his papers in his boxers, even though nobody is ever around at that hour.
We all have to have our standards, after all!
One of our favorite friends in my household is Oliver. He is a lovely cat from the neighborhood, and clearly well cared for. But cats are like well-loved spouses sometimes; they wander off to somebody else's arms. Whenever I meet a sweet animal like Oliver, I cannot help but feel compassion for married people who cheat.
After all, we all only are human. We get attracted to new people from time to time.
One thing we never do is feed Oliver, although last night he begged for the chicken I was barbecuing. His owner cares for him very well. Which is another way of saying: Don't date married people!
Not that anyone is asking my opinion. But losing my job has unleashed a spirit of freedom deep within me not unlike the painful breakups of my past. Once you are free of your past commitment, you never know who or what may come around the next corner.
A beautiful new lover or a lovely new job.
-30-
2 comments:
What!? Don't leave us hanging. Dish on the Condi matters, please.
I knew about the lesbian angle (the real reason why she'll never run for public office) but the secret marriage is news!!!
Cute note about your buddy Susan Faludi. I saw her once on a footpath at Stanford. The students, staff, faculty all sport very up to the minute sporting/casual footwear -- the latest Nikes, Keens, surfer flip flops, Vans skateboard shoes, Dansko clogs, Birkenstocks, etc. And here was Ms. Faludi wearing the old canvas sneakers I remember from being a kid in the 60's. They didn't even have the white bumper toes -- just the flimsiest of canvas and rubber. And that, I thought, is one of the many differences betw. Stanford and Harvard. At Stanford, cool is still the dicta. If you spent time at Harvard, all this fashion stuff is superfluous!!
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