It's Good When You Like Your Work

I may have said this here before, but I work mainly from home. I work as a copywriter, so telecommuting is a real option for me. Fortunately, I love my work. Recently, that was driven home to me.

I got a project to do, writing Internet content, on a variety of subjects. It was great. I must have turned out 15,000 words in 3 weeks. I was on a roll, in the zone, working at a furious pace, and loving every minute of it.

The drawback, of course, is that I was glued to my laptop during that time. My friends complained that they could only reach me on email, and my wife, well, when she resorted to emailing me, I took a day off.... But the point is, when your work is fun and appealing to you, you can do anything. I got that project in, 3 days early, is the shape the client wanted, and netted myself a nice bonus (5 cents per word, you figure it out).

I'm taking a few days off right now, resting my fingers, and doing some light reading and blogging, but I'm also thinking about work. I checked my calendar; I know what's coming down the line, and I'll be ready. I have a talent for researching web content articles, and fitting keywords into them during the writing process, and then for turning out a readable product. And my boss knows it. So maybe next week I'll be hitting another zone in content writing, but that's OK with me.

I like my job, so I can take whatever it can deal. And what can get better than that, in any profession?

This May Sound Familiar

...because I think I've written about it before. So what? It's my blog, I'll write what I choose. We took the kids to the park the other day, to get one last go in before the end of summer. A five year old, a three old, Mom, Dad, and a soccer ball. What could be better than that?

The girls played well together, like they always do... I love to watch them. They get along so well, even though they are so close in age. I watch them, and I realize that my wife and I must be doing something right after all....

The kids kicked and chased the ball, and climbed on the slides and monkey bars, and my wife and I sat in the shade and watched them, and actually had time to chat. It was great. The only thing we forgot was the picnic lunch.

So, about two hours later when the kids were hungry, we packed it in and went home. On the way, we stopped for groceries to make dinner: salad greens, chicken breast, cucumbers. All very simple, and happily, the girls' favorite stuff this week. We had dinner together, as a family, which is sometimes far too hard to do these days, but which is always worth it when we manage it.

All in all, it was a great day. Just fun with the kids, on a late September weekend, and some real quality time as a family. When we put the kids to bed that night, our 3 year old said, "Mommy, you're my best friend."

That was worth the price of admission.

My Three Year Old Went to Preschool

At the start of the school year, I had the greatest pleasure that a parent can ever have: I got to watch my 3 year old start school.

We enrolled her in a preschool because it was time. We found one that focuses on the basics: helping kids learn to play together, to follow instructions, to learn in a group, to make friends; in short, to do all of the things that we do with her as a family, but to reinforce it by putting her with her peers.

She was so excited that first day, she couldn't wait to get there. We bought her a backpack, and a little sectioned lunch tray for her snacks, and she was ready! That morning, she put on her favorite little dress, asked Mommy to make her hair pretty, and ran to the car. It's a good thing she doesn't drive yet...

When I got her to the preschool, I walked her to the door. We had to go through the playground, and she just knew that this is the best part. She kept pointing to playground equipment and saying, "Daddy, I will play here, and here, and here...."

At the door, she turned to me and said, firmly, "Bye, Daddy!" and ran inside. I watched her new teacher give her a hug, and show her where to put the backpack, and then she ran to the other kids. It was great to see her bloom like that, so quickly. She felt so big to go to school.

Her enthusiasm hasn't faded, and it's really wonderful to watch. I just hope she can keep it as she gets older. I'll do my best to help her, and I'll love every minute of it.

An Evening in the Kitchen

I like to cook. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that here before, but I know I've talked about food. Food is important to me. I'll admit: I live to eat.

So last night, I decided to cook up one of my favorites: fajitas. I don't pretend that what I cook is anything genuinely Mexican (I spent a weekend in New Mexico once, and once went to a house party in Detroit's Mexicantown neighborhood, but that's as close as I've ever gotten to Mexico), but let's play Let's Pretend.

So, I bought some shoulder steak, and asked the butcher to cut it up into thin slices. I also picked up half a dozen mild Cubanelle peppers, a few red bell peppers, a couple of big Vidalia onions, three large tomatoes, two dozen soft corn tortillas, and a great big honking jar of hot salsa.

The actual cooking didn't take so long. I chopped the veggies: the peppers into strips, the onions and tomatoes into little cubes, and then sauted them all in a big frying pan. I sauted the steak strips in a separate pan, and mixed the meat and veggies when they were all done. All of this took about 45 minutes. Total. And then dinner was served.

My kids liked the meat, and poked at the veggies. They didn't like the tortillas. My wife liked everything. So I guess this meal was a success.

The key here, though, is that the actual cooking was easy to do. You see, while I like cooking, I like eating even more. You wouldn't know it to look at me, though: I eat healthy, and stay fit. Which is also fun, but that's for another post.

MP3: Can't Live Without 'Em

I work from home, as an Internet writer. Sounds glamorous, but what it really means is 8 to 9 hours a day in front of the computer, working on projects that thousands, or even millions, of people will see and never know that I wrote. It can seem a little thankless.

Fortunately, I enjoy my job. I love writing, I love the every-changing online world, I love being part of the cutting edge, even if that part is a little dull to some. And, it pays well. And, I don't have to go to an office, dress up nice, or spend my mornings primping, shaving, grooming, etc. I can go two days without shaving, work in my underwear, and never comb my hair... not that I do that, though: my wife would freak. But I do get to spend the summer days wearing shorts and a T-shirt even while I'm working.

I telelcommute, and meet with my clients (some of whom are on the other side of the world, while others are merely on the other side of the continent) via webcam. Messenger, AIM, and Gmail chat are my best buddies.

And so are my MP3s. That's what I really want to talk about. What I love most about my work is that I can choose the working conditions. And I choose to have a soundtrack.

No matter what my mood, I can find some music for it, to make my workday a little more pleasant. I can sit back and listen to the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan, or Billy Joel. If I want something more eclectic, I can put on the mix files my cousin sent me. When I'm a little down, I'll put in Cyndi Lauper; when I'm feeling mellow, U2; when I want to rock, Bruce Springsteen.

Life has a soundtrack, folks, and if you listen closely, you can sing along with it. And the best part is, I don't need headphones.

Happy listening!

Those Sunday Mornings

Last Sunday, I got up early (at 4:30, no less!) showered, cleaned up the late-night dishes in the kitchen, went out to the all-night grocery store down the street and picked up some staples (flour, backing powder, vegetable oil, frozen blueberries), and came home to make some coffee and start breakfast. By 7, when the kids got up, I had blueberry pancakes waiting for them.

That was a good morning. Almost as good as my breakfast date with my wife. She was pretty amazed when she got out of bed an hour after the little ones, and saw how everything was quiet, the kids were eating, and the second batch of breakfast was still warm.

She loves blueberry pancakes.

So after that morning, I got to enjoy a lazy Sunday. The kids ran around the yard, and my wife took out her sewing machine and made a skirt. I took a nap on the couch.

For lunch, we ate the leftover pancakes, cold, with blueberry jam. It was perfect. Only fresh blueberries (instead of frozen) could have improved that day.

So what do you do to fill those weekend hours, when you haven't got anything productive planned? A quiet day at home, doing things with the family, left me feeling recharged, despite getting up at such an unholy hour. Fun and relaxation come in so many different varieties; which one we actually need at a given moment can be hard to figure out.

I'm Getting all Introspective

I had a birthday a few days ago. My wife and I got a sitter, and we went out to dinner. I didn't know it, but she had phoned ahead to the restaurant (it's a place we go pretty often, they serve a good roast salmon, and even better desserts) and ordered a small cake for our table, with candles and two good bottles of lambic ale. The waiter brought it out when I tried to ask for the dessert menu. It was cute, and fun.

But my birthday got me thinking. I might be 35, but when I shave, the guy in the mirror is still 25, and I can't quite figure that one out.... sometimes I even wonder where the kids came from (yes, I do know). I had a good time at that birthday dinner, but I just started wondering when my definition of 'fun' started changing...

...Once upon a time, fun meant hopping in the car and driving really fast with a bunch of the guys, maybe passing a joint around, stopping for late-night munchies at Denny's or someplace similar, or hitting a concert at an outdoor amphitheater and drinking beers on the hill while yelling all the lyrics way off key.

...And later, fun was [text removed to keep this blog family friendly].

...And now, fun is playing with the kids in our family room, or in the park down the street, or having a quiet dinner with my wife, or going to a bookstore.

When did my life grow so sedate? And why don't I mind it so much? Sometimes, I get all misty eyed, when I think back to the "good ol' days," but were they really so good? I guess I must have been looking for something... I sure was expending a lot of energy back then. Sometimes I look at my oldest daughter, who looks just like I did at her age, and I'm certain that whatever I was looking for back then found me, instead. It's not a bad thought, just a realization that my youth is behind me.

Life is not sedate, but it's pace does change. And so do its entertainments.

Showing your Face, online

Facebook is such a lousy excuse for a life. Yet you use it, don't you? Perhaps even a lot? Well, guess what? So do I.

My new favorite Facebook-related time-waster is the Pieces of Flair application. I've always been the type of girl to affix that sarcastic pin to the lapel of her jacket or to some piece of her backpack and Pieces of Flair makes that hobby virtual. So now, instead of or along with tapering an article of clothing with expressions of self, you can do so online. This is where the fun of it is for me - that for a shy, introverted type like me, Facebook is a place of my own, in which I can express myself and my own personality (which most people simply seem to think isn't there) to the hilt if I so desire. It's almost like advertising yourself: see! I am a human being with a spirit and a sense of humor, just like you! It's just that I don't show it so easily in a large, crowded group of people.

It ain't a disease, people. I don't need medication for it. And I'm certainly not the only one. Presumably, people that you don't know or only slightly know regularly check your profile for updates; you know, because we're all voyeurs. The fun of Pieces of Flair for me is that I can put up virtual buttons for every side of myself - the place I live, my loves of singing, dancing, and reading, movies I like, sarcastic comments I would actually make, and so on and so forth. It's a no-pressure online environment in which people may get a chance to see you for who you really are.

Date Night, Redux

My wife and I had another Date Night. Well, we called it Date Night, but we actually went out for breakfast. We had pancakes.

We both believe that it's absolutely vital for a couple to do this periodically, just go out together and have a date, even though it's been years since we've actually dated. It keeps things fresh. It keeps life exciting. It reminds us of why we got married in the first place.

So the other day, we dropped the kids off with my wife's sister, and we went out for pancakes. I had chocolate chip pancakes, my wife had blueberry. We both had plenty of maple syrup. Afterwards, we wandered around our little suburban downtown, at 11am on a Sunday morning, and just held hands. Once, years ago, when we first started seeing each other, we wandered around the same neighborhood sharing a cigar.

We didn't have a cigar this time, and we've changed a lot since then. She's gained some weight, and I've gotten a little grayer, but somehow the couple we see reflected in the shop window is still 22. It's funny how that happens, isn't it?

With fun times, there isn't always a lot to say. After all, how much can you say that the day was good, and the company was better? But this was the best of mornings, and I know we'll do it again.

Fun With Pets

I have a pet parrot. I'm 34, and I've had this bird for as long as I can remember. My parents got her, when I was 5, she'll be 30 next year. She'll probably live another 30 years.

There's something to be said for having a pet with you for your whole live. You really get to know each other. My bird is a White-Fronted Amazon, a bit smaller than a common crow, and while she doesn't talk, it's clear that she understands a lot of what we say to her. She likes to click, whistle, chirp, and mutter under her breath. Sometimes, you can almost understand what she's saying. I guess that's her talking. It must be what we sound like to her.

White-Fronts are the smallest Amazon parrot species. They're from Central America, and they live in the rainforest canopy. This means, for the pet owner, that you need stuff for them to climb on. Fortunately, I'm pretty handy, have a decent size house, and was able to convert a small room (it was desinged as a little office, I guess, and it has good window with southern exposure) into a bird room: the room is criss-crossed by perches, and has two large, parrot-safe potted plants in under the window.

Sometimes, I go in there, sit down, and just talk to her. She'll dangle upside down from some of the ropes I have hanging from the ceiling, and chatter at me in her wordless parrot lingo. We get along pretty well.

Sometimes, she'll climg down to me, and sit on my shoulder or arm. When she does that, she wants to be groomed and scratched behind the ears. It's a bonding thing. I understand that dog owners have something similar.

Tennis, Anyone?

My wife plays tennis. She was actually on her college tennis team, and was pretty good. I've never picked up a racket before in my life. Can you see where this is headed?

Last summer, she took me out to the tennis courts to teach me the game. At least, that's why she said she was taking me. I think she just wanted to whoop me at tennis.

It wasn't pretty. I'm not terribly coordinated, and while I can hit a softball pretty well, a tennis ball is a lot smaller. And I never really appreciated just how much short-burst running is involved in this game. ESPN just doesn't make that clear.

And I never realized just how hard you need to hit that little ball. There's a reason why Stefi Graff grunts like that. Wow. That's some tiring stuff.

Still, I have to admit, that my wife is in pretty good shape. After two hours of lessons, I was bushed, and she'd barely broken a sweat. A lot of times, fatigue depends on what you're used to doing.

Next time, I'll sign her up with me in a co-ed softball league.

Bathtime

Anyone reading this blog, even semi-regularly, will know that I have kids. The little ones are 6 and 3 now, and they seem to get cuter every day...

Yesterday, I was giving them a bath, and unfortunately, there was only one rubber duck in the tub. Conflict erupted almost immediately, as did a column of water about the size of the Empire State Building.... as well as a chorus of giggles and squeals.

I have to admit, seeing them there, laughing like that, each with her hand on a duck and most of the bathwater swirling down the drain in the center of the floor, it was hard to suppress a smile. But I did. And took away the duck. And ran a new bath. And sat there and supervised them as they got to work with their bath scrubbies. Neck, armpits, tummy... and then they washed each other's back. Sometimes, I can't believe I got so lucky, to have such great daughters.

It get's better, though. Right before I put them to bed, my wife went in to take a bath. And as she did, the 3 yr old followed her, took the rubber duck off the sink, and gave it to her. Because you just can't have a bath without a duck.

Improving a Rainy Day

If you read this blog enough, I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of what I see as fun revolves around my wife and kids. I guess that makes me a Family Guy. Fifteen years ago, I don't think my friends would ever have chosen me for this role, but as it's turned out, I was the first of my 'crew' to get married, the first to have kids.... You never know what life will bring you.

I got a chance to teach my older daughter that lesson last weekend. In simpler terms, we spent the afternoon playing Chutes and Ladders on a rainy day.

Everyone knows that game; it's a childhood classic. And for grown ups, it's enormously annoying. I mean, there's no real point, the climbs and falls are completely arbitrary, and there's no skill involved. You can never predict what will happen.

Which makes it perfect for a 6 year old. Little kids haven't got the logic skills or patience for more advanced games. What they're really after is the time with a parent. So, between rolling the die, and helping her count out the squares, I got some quality time with my daughter on a rainy day. My wife had taken the little one out to buy some shoes and a potty seat, and I was supposed to take the older one to the park, but it started raining, and the drizzle turned into a full-out thunderstorm, one of those midsummer storms that just blasts in out of nowhere with a lot of noise, a hard rain, and even some hail.

Chutes and Ladders, and some time with Daddy, kept her from getting scared by the thunder and lightning out the windows, and winning one and losing one taught her, in a subtle and fun way that was completely unlike the weather outside, that you never really know what life will bring you. When the game was over, she gave me a hug and helped to make dinner. Definitely a good day.

So Just What is Fun, Anyway?

I'm writing this blog about fun, but what is fun, anyway? I'm not sure that I've ever bothered to define that..... So let's try.

To start with, fun is hardly an absolute concept; it changes with every person, with every situation, with every circumstance. If we pick up a dictionary (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, second college edition, 1984, which I have on my shelf) we'll find among the definitions for "fun" the following: "a source or cause of amusement or merriment, as an amusing person or thing."

Hmmm. I don't think that helps too much. Dictionaries are too formal, anyway. So I googled "fun definition," and I found this: "Recreation is the use of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active for the participant but in a refreshing and diverting manner. ..." Maybe the Internet is too formal, too.

Or, more likely, maybe defining something as amorphous as "fun" is harder than it looks. How can we define something, in a way understandable to everyone, if the very concept is experienced differently by everyone? Even the question has to be phrased in a convoluted way, if we try not to be completely self-referential when talking about the concept.

As you can see, the difficulties here are many. Is there a way out of this?

Well, yes, there is. We can just admit that "fun" is a purely self-referential concept. There is no activity, which one person defines as fun, which will not be though unutterably dull or useless by at least one other person. Fun is defined internally, by the person engaged in it, and that's that.

So now let's get back to the fun!

It Was Date Night Again

Sometimes, it seems that my life is just a series of recurring events. Fortunately, "Date Night" is one of those recurring events. If you've been reading here, than you'll know that Date Night is when my wife and I go out on a date. We get a sitter for the kids, and we just take off for two or three hours.

In order for Date Night to work, there are rules. These rules change from time to time, as we figure out what works and what doesn't. Last night, the rules were:

1) No talking about the kids. This was important, as said kids had been driving us nuts.

2) No talking about work. This was important, for the same reason.

3) No buying cigars. Last time, we shared a stogie and then tried to kiss....

So what did we do for Date Night? We recaptured our youth; we went to the roller rink! Ah, the joy of strapping wheels to your feet, and trying to stay upright for two hours.... What could go wrong? Well, considering that my wife is an excellent roller skater (and ice skater), and that I am not, I'll leave that question to your imagination. Suffice it to say that I will be invoking Rule 4 next time:

We always alternate who chooses the date.

Otherwise, it's just not fair, is it?

Mobile Phone Games

I got a new cell phone recently. Nothing to sneeze at really, but it's better than my last cell phone, gets a better signal, is significantly smaller and lighter, and, well, it's my new toy. I'm having some fun with it.

So the best part of this new cell phone is, it has some games on it. It's not like I never knew about mobile games; of course I've heard of them, I do live in the 21st Century, even if I am a little bit of a technological idiot. But there are some things that just don't "click" for me, and games on a cell phone were definitely on that list. They weren't important to me. I needed a cell phone to make phone calls (rad idea, isn't it?), or to store phone numbers (but only as a backup to the PDA, which is itself a backup to the old-fashioned pen and paper). I have been known to use the cell phone as a small hammer, when I needed a tack to hold securely in the wall. Definitely not a recommended use.

I'm digressing a lot here. I meant to talk about cell phones and video games.

I like video games. I really do. So while I was playing with the new cell phone, I was happy to discover.... a built in games folder! With two games already uploaded! I would have played them longer, except the phone rang. It was my wife, asking for someone's phone number.

Another Basement Find

So, I've written here before about finding some good books in a box in the basement. Well, I'm still cleaning out the overstuffed storage space in the house, and this past weekend I found a real treasure: Wally Pleasant's Houses of the Holy Moly. I haven't heard this music since (my restless) college years, and I couldn't wait to try the tape in an old boombox. It worked.

Yup, a tape that had sat in a box in the basement for 6 years (the box was labeled 2002) worked, and I sat back and took a break from housework on a Sunday afternoon and listened to some wonderful, funny old songs, like "Stupid Day Job," "Dysfunctionally Yours," and "I'm Nice." It really took me back....

To 1996, when I was first introduced to the music of Wally Pleasant by a coworker who was also nice enough to copy the Holy Moly CD onto a tape for me. A few nights later, I went with a bunch of my coworkers to a bar at 9 Mile and Woodward where Wally was playing. We tossed back a few (too many) brews, and enjoyed an evening of comedic college alt-rock-folk. It was something normal to do, when you're 22....

Listening to this tape, it seems that Wally really captured something of those years. It felt good to hear it again. I wonder if I'll ever find the Wally Pleasant CDs I bought in the late 90s? I think they died in the car accident, though...

If you want, you can check out some samples of Wally Pleasant's music here. It's definitely worth a look.

The Toast of the Town

The other night, my parents came over and stayed with the kids, while my wife and I got out for a while. We played a game we hadn't done since college. We call it 'Toast of the Town,' and it goes like this:

Go out late at night, to all of the late-night breakfast-type restaraunts you can find, and order toast. You can order coffee with it, but no meal. I'm talking places like Denny's, or Ram's Horn, or Sunshine Cafe.... any of those chain-type places, or the Mom-and-Pops that sometimes take their place in smaller towns and suburbs. IHOP is particularly good for this.

See how long you can go on toast and coffee, before you start feeling nauseous. Of course, back in college, there were a couple of bottles of Boone's Farm to go between breakfast places, and at the end, that famous Moons Over MyHammy if your stomach hadn't completely turned yet, but you get the idea. Eating wasn't the point.

I'm not sure what the point was, anymore. We didn't get very far. At the second place, we stopped and ordered pancakes and scrambled eggs and hot chocolate, and sat around remembering what happened when. It would have helped if the scrambled eggs were better.

Anyway, none of that matters. It was another sort of date night, at one in the morning, and every couple really needs that. It doesn't just keep you together; it's also fun.

A Day With the Kids

So I'm home from work today. The kids have chicken pox. Both of them. At 5 and 3. Oh, the joy is never ending. And yeah, that's sarcasm.

My wife escaped to her job. I have more sick time piled up, so I'm with the kids. I took them to the doctor, who confirmed that, yes, they do have chicken pox, and no, there's nothing much I can do about it, and then I brought them back home. We stopped for calamine lotion on the way, and now they're covered with little pink dots. They each have some footed pyjamas, which is good, because those'll help stop them from scratching everything, and spreading it more. In the meantime, they itch. And scratch.

And ask questions. Like this one: "Daddy, what is a chicken pox?"

That was fun to explain. "Well, it's a disease..."

"NO!"

"...that lots of children get when they're little. Even your Mommy and Daddy had it."

"What does it do?"

"You know the little red bumps on your body? And your sore throat?"

"Yes."

"That's what chicken pox does. And once one kid in a school gets it, they all get it."

"You mean the one kid shares?"

Sometimes, it's really hard not to laugh. But I managed to keep a straight face, this time, and told her that this isn't really like sharing, even if she did give it to her sister. Ah, well, she'll learn. I'm gonna go set up the oatmeal bath.

File Sharing

Sometimes, I'm a little behind the times. That's OK, though, because my wife is usually right up to speed. To give an example:

We've all heard of file sharing, music downloading services, and other fun internet based bypass routes around copyright laws. You know, things like Napster. I never got into that, mainly because I'm not that computer savvy, but also because, as a writer by profession, I have a certain respect for copyrights. Anyway, my wife is not a writer, has no such qualms, and is more computer-knowledgable than I am, so she found some free file sharing services and set them up on our home computer the day after we lost our CD collection in our stolen car (which is a whole 'nother story altogether!).

Yesterday, she sat me down and showed me how it works. Today, I have a dozen great tunes that I'd thought I'd lost forever, unless I shelled out the dough to buy the CDs again.

We had some fun last night. She showed me how to search the file sharing service, how to set up the server, how to select songs for download, how to connect to the system, and then we sat down and looked for our mutual favorites. I didn't expect to have a good time doing that, but I did.

And then she showed me that the same system can be used for movies and TV shows. Never again will I have to be without Star Trek!

From the Mouths of Babes

I've mentioned here before that I have kids, and it's appropriate since there is very little out there that's more fun than a 5 year old and 3 year old. Provided, of course, that they're on their good behavior.

When that happens, the entertainment is endless. Last night, my wife and I were puttering around our place, tidying up, doing dishes, and other sundry fun chores, and we had the TV on for background noise. It was showing some documentary about a ballroom dance program at an urban elementary school; I don't know the details because I wasn't paying much attention to it. But my kids were entranced. The show had music, and dancing, and young children, and it had my kids' attention.

Pretty soon, they were trying to ballroom dance around the family room. My older daughter was leading, and the younger was following with enthusiam to make up for her lack of rhythm and balance. It was adorable. I made sure to get the digital camera, and send pictures to the grandparents. I already had an email back this morning, from my Mom, that she had the nicest surprise in her inbox at work today...

The funny part, to me, is that about half the housework never did get done. We both had to stop, to watch the kids dance and laugh and sing. When we put them to bed, we told them how proud we were of them, and how much we loved watching them dance. It's definitely something we want to encourage. It's a sense of uninhibited fun that neither of us has, but that can only serve the kids well in their lives.

Spare Change

As a kid, I liked collecting all sorts of funny things: interesting leaves, funny looking pebbles, every brand of bottle top I could find, whatever. These days, I've pretty much outgrown that. My wife still gets on me about never throwing things away, but for the most part, I try to focus on what's important. I do have a coin collection, though.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not a valuable collection. There's nothing there that's worth more than the face value, and face values are mostly pretty small. It's just a collection of odd coins that I've come across over the years.

I started with Bicentennial quarters. You remember those. They're the ones with the drummer on the back, and "1776-1976" stamped where the date should be on the front.

I also have some half-dollars. Two are actually special; they're from the mid 60s, and from the look of the edge, they may actually be silver half-dollars. The third is a Bicentennial coin, with Independence Hall on the back.

The Post Office stamp machines give dollar coins in the change, and from those I have some Susan Bs from each year they were issued for circulation: 1979, 1980, an 1999.

My favorite coins are the foreign coins. I have a Honduran 20 centavo that someone gave me in change once, thinking it was a dime, and a Spanish 10 peseta that I got the same way. I also have a Russian 5 ruble coin, a Polish 1 zloty coin, and a 20 eurocent coin.

I think the only ones of any value, though, are the pennies. I have eight or ten wheat pennies, from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, as well as a 1904 Indian head penny. I even have a Canadian Centennial penny.

And that's about it. I'll admit, it's a pretty childish collection. But then, I take a certain childish pleasure in keeping what are, here in the Midwest, some pretty unusual coins. Besides, they look cool.

I Started Something

Back in college, I used to write. Mostly bad poetry, but also some very good short stories. About 10 years ago, I even started a novel. I guess everyone says that, sometime: "I'll write a novel one day," or, "I'll make a movie." It's that Andy Warhol 15 mintues dream that we all have.

So anyway, mine was to write a novel. I started it, and like most people who start novels, I never finished it. I never really got beyond writing a few scenes, actually.

But I never throw anything away, and more to the point, I never delete a file, so I found the disks the other day. They were stacked up on top of my desk hutch, and covered with too much dust. I brushed them off, and warmed up my old laptop which I haven't used in a while because it's too slow but had to use for this because my desktop hasn't got a floppy drive.

On the second disk, I found the dozen or so short stories that I wrote in college. I started reading them, editing them, and generally enjoying them. I felt ten years younger.

I don't think I'll do anything with them, but it was fun to relive an old hobby for a while. Who knows, maybe I will finish it one day, now that I've found it....

I Found the Time,,,

...to curl up with a good book. I don't often get a chance for that, but it's something I love to do. It was one I hadn't read before, and it definitely wasn't happy, but I also couldn't put it down. Since those are things I look for in a book (especially the first and last), I was in reading heaven.

The book was Nevil Shute's On the Beach, about the world post-atomic apocalypse. It was written in 1957, and parts of it are definitely dated, but the story itself has held up well.

It set in Melbourne, Australia, at the beginning of 1963, just about a year and half after the nuclear holocaust has wiped out the northern hemisphere. The war wasn't planned, grew out of a local conflict in the Middle East, and some of the bombing was done by accident, because no one knew exactly what was going on. In many ways, it would fit right into the modern world. We learn these details later in the book, as the characters talk about them amongst themselves, trying to make sense of what has happened, and what will happen.

What will happen is this: the wind pattern is following a normal shift, and carrying the radioactive dust and fallout into the southern hemisphere. There is no way to stop it, and no way to survive it. Everyone in the book will die, of radiation sickness, by the end of August. It's Australia, so that makes it the last winter, and the last springtime, and then goodbye. Radiation sickenss is a nasty way to go, so the Australian government made cyanide suicide pills available through pharmacies. None of this is hidden in the book; Shute doesn't play us that way. Rather, he writes about people's reactions, desires, and eccentricities in the face of absolute doom.

And in that sense, the book grips you. You read of the American submarine captain, who has convinced himself that come September, he'll go back home to his wife and kids in Mystic, Connecticut, and the Aussie girl who falls for him, and the Mary, the young wife who won't face what's happening, and her pragmatic husband, Peter, the naval officer who wants to be productive more than anything else, and John Osborne, the scientist who buys a racing Ferrari and gets out on the motor circuit... These people are like us. They have desires and hopes and dreasms, about home or the garden, or winning the Grand Prix, and suddenly they have to face the loss of those dreams, and everything else.

So what do poeple do? I won't tell everything. I will tell you that I couldn't put the book down, and I actually cried at the end. And that's a good read, to me.