SmogBlog Lives!

Yeah, so it's been a while since I posted anything. I'd like to say it's because I've been extremely busy with big, exciting things, but that's just not the case. It was weird coming back home after being away for so long, kind of like visiting high school after going to college for a while. I spent my first week back happily doing nothing. On my first day back we had a big breakfast with all the family, which was good because it minimized the number of times I would have to recount my adventures in LA. For some reason I had a devil of a time getting used to the time change coming back east. I routinely stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning watching TV. As a result of this, I now know that the Ginsu knife can cut through a shoe and still slice a tomato, and that beautiful women are waiting to talk to me for just 99 cents to connect and 10 cents a minute!

After spending the week getting used to being home and rediscovering just how potent a 5.7 liter V8 engine can be, I stupidly decided to go back to work. If you're handy with the calendar, you will notice that this decision came on the week before Thanksgiving, arguably the biggest grocery shopping week of the year. I went from three months of lethargy to working 51 hours in one week. Had I known how badly they needed me back, I probably would have asked for a raise before I agreed to come back. The guys on the stock crew now are the same bunch of losers who were there when I left, but who I assumed would by now have been rendered incapacitated by a not completely surprising ecstasy manufacturing accident. The lead knucklehead takes a 12-pack of beer out to his car and starts drinking as soon as he gets off work, even if that happens to be 9 o'clock in the morning.

I had a very nice Thanksgiving, with the exception that Katie wasn't there, and neither were several other family members, but it was nice to be home. We had our Thanksgiving at Lake Seminole park like we do every year, but the wind coming off the lake was unbelievable. Fortunately, Dad was able to whip something up, MacGyver-style out of his van, much to the amazement of the hippy at the neighboring pavilion. The food was excellent, and the ants thought so as well; they invaded our dessert table and went nuts.

The day after Thanksgiving traditionally means one thing: that retailers have not yet figured a way to start cramming holiday cheer down our throats right after Halloween. Fortunately, it is not a big grocery-buying day, but unfortunately it heralds the coming of Christmas Muzak and the arrival of Christmas trees direct from Alaska, complete with snow. Our store manager, who knows structural engineering like a barnacle understands nuclear submarine, insisted on fabricating a Rube Goldberg contraption to hang the trees up for display. It looks less like a legitimate Christmas tree lot and more like the Christmas Tree Gang is serving its sentence for robbing a stagecoach.

Life is now settling into a reasonable pace of normalcy, which is to say, boring. I have an appointment tomorrow with an advisor at USF to resolve my potential graduation, something which has been in limbo for about a year now. The ski trip is almost finalized, we'll have to wait and see how that turns out. Other than that, all is well on the East coast. I do plan on continuing SmogBlog, although with much less frequency, so please be patient.