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Sunday, April 27, 2008

Jude Law and a Weekend Appreciated

Today I was staring back at some expensive villas lining the beach front, watching some obviously over privileged kids play volleyball on their personal sand court and eventually move to another leisure activity where they each throw a weighted ball toward a target and the closest wins. For that brief second I was filled with a jealous rage of these kids that have so little to worry about.

Then the ocean sifted sand between my toes and all blind hatred washed into the depths of the ocean to be swallowed by Ahab's ghost. A wave pulls my legs backwards and then dances over my freshly shaven head. I have no reason to complain. This weekend has treated me great. Life in general is pretty great. I will try to present to you the reasons why I've been so blessed this weekend and attempt to do with without gloating or throwing it in any of your faces. If done properly I hope to pay my happiness forward, giving anyone who reads this just a small glimmer of the happiness I've experienced in the past few days.

Let's start with Friday. It had been hell week with all the standardized testing at the Care Center, creating overly excited and energetic kids that rightly feel they shouldn't have to do anymore schooling this semester because they've taken their final exams essentially. We have to motivate them for another month and a half. I got to leave at 3:30, two hours earlier than I normally do. This was a great start to a much needed weekend.

I came home on Friday to find fresh Netflix (two disks of the Trailer Park Boys) and one of the books I ordered (Catcher and the Rye) from Ebay. I had played on "bro-ing" out with Neil until everyone got off of work and we could go out. I took a shower and then met Sallie for pizza at dinner. This new New York style pizzeria opened about two blocks from our house. We met there and ordered a mushroom pizza. The credit card machine wouldn't take our card, and instead of requesting money or another card, the man gave us our pizza free. It was delicious.

Sallie had another 45 minutes to waste before her break was over. We decided to go to Wal Mart to grab some beer and look at TVs. My TV can't project sound in our family room and recently I've noticed in order for me to play videogames I have to hunch over and squint with a classic gamer posture. However classic it is... it crinks my back. We found a 42" LCD 1080P TV for about $400 off the market price. I had recently sold almost all my games, DVDs, some books, and my PSP on Ebay to go to the TV fund and I made about $600, therefore we didn't have to pay much out of our own pocket for one of the last three TVs they had in stock. I knew I had made it in life when the TV was wider than our car. Sal says thats more of a sign of misappropriation of funds. Sal had to get back to work so I called Neil and he came to the rescue in his Corolla. We still had to take the TV out of the box to get it to fit, but soon we were rolling down 501 with two six packs of beer and a new TV. How freakin' amazing does that sound. I've ridden with the windows down in my car hundreds of times before, but for some reason the wind smelled a little sweeter and felt a little warmer that night.

We set up the TV, try to switch controllers playing Xbox, but eventually decide Neil needs to go home so we can play on our respective awesome TV's across the internet. We game for a good two hours before everyone started getting off of work. The phone starts ringing and everyone wants to go to Ron Jon's for our new Friday night tradition. Beer and fries GALORE! 6 A.M. bedtime with an 11:30 am wakeup.

After some great BLT's we packed up some towels and drove down to the beach. The sun warmed the Earth and air to a beautiful 85 degrees. I put on my "Feel Good Music" playlist and we sang along to all the songs. That brings all of you up to where I started this blog. Briefly envying people I shouldn't because I can't think of much more I would want in life right now. We had great dinner at the new brewery in town, using our $20 membership gift card, finding that in all of Myrtle Beach, we are the first ones to bring in our membership card and use it.

Now, I'm typing this blog at 2:40 am with a cat laying in my lap. Sal is sleeping in the other room. The fan is sitting in the window blowing a cool breeze across my face and the ocean laces the air with just a hint of its fragrance. I'm watching "Enemy at the Gates" and the epic battle between the two snipers is about to happen. Yes indeed, right now I want to be where I am.

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