The Grind

There's a chill in the house this morning, so I'm sitting here at the kitchen table enjoying a hot cup of hazelnut coffee and making my way through the first round of my daily internet rotation. This may be my last pot of coffee for awhile, though. My coffeemaker is about eight years old, slow to brew a pot, and is sitting on the counter hissing like an angry cobra. It's never done that before...

I keep thinking that summer is on the way, and it'll be here in spades before I know it, but damn, does it have to be 43 degrees outside? And yeah, my bedroom window hasn't been closed in weeks. I've paid off my sleep deficit these past few days, but having my big bare feet sticking out from the end of the covers on the bed was enough to wake me up early this morning, and I'm either too stubborn or too lazy to go put some socks on, so I'm up and about.

I'm also kind of hungry, but being too lazy to put socks on means that I'm feeling too lazy to cook right now, too. The good thing about coffee is that it takes away the hunger, so if I drink the whole pot, I probably won't eat until I get to work tonight. Although... I have English muffins, eggs, cheese, and ham in the fridge. A home-made egg mcmuffin sounds good. Hell, I even have hash-brown patties in the freezer.

Why do I even bother talking about it? We all know that I'm going to sit here drinking my coffee and surfing the internet, avoiding the kitchen altogether, except for refilling my coffee cup a time or two.

While I'm here, I want to apologize for my lack of interesting posts lately. I went back and read some of the stuff I've been writing, and it seems extremely dull. Sorry about that. But I have an excuse--my mind has been elsewhere all week and I'm trying to keep this blog from sounding like the diary of a 13-year old girl with a wall full of N-Sync posters.

But enough about that.

I don't know what it is, maybe the fact that it's been so windy the past couple of days, but lately I'm all about daydreaming about sailboats, sunsets, and the Caribbean. And remembering why I'm here in Vegas in the first place--to get out of debt, to save some money, and to eventually buy a sailboat. At times I find myself really missing the ocean, and the sensory overload that comes with it--the sound, the smells, the way the sunshine on my face feels different out on the ocean than it does in the middle of the desert. I don't think I'll ever get over the thrill I get whenever I'm driving out in California and come over a hill and see the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean for the first time in months (or years). I'm amazed at my ability to remain in control of my vehicle and keep driving, because I just want to stop and stand there in awe.

But luckily, in this day and age, the internet is available to feed my addiction and help me remember my only-recently discovered purpose in life. I can find things like this, or this, or even this, which to these forty-year-old eyes is even better than p0rn.

On a sad note, I also got word this morning that Captain Jim, the first person who ever took me sailing so many years ago, (on his beautiful old-school 60-foot schooner), passed away on Tuesday. Truthfully, I had been sailing before, but as a passenger, not crew. Captain Jim not only let me 'drive' the boat, but insisted on me spending as much time as possible at the helm. When I wasn't attending to those duties, he taught me all that he could about sailing in general, and life aboard a schooner in particular. It was a very eventful weekend, and not only was it a wonderful trip to Catalina, but somebody out there was foolish enough to pay me to write about it. (It starts on page 120 if you feel so inclined to read. I cringe when I read it, thinking my writing was so bad back then. But I've had lots more practice since then).

Anyhow, between the sailboat pictures that keep me motivated, a great lady to daydream about, finally extricating myself from the quicksand of debt from the past years, job satisfaction, and my new-found abilities at the poker table, it seems that I've got much to be happy about these days.

My complaints are small in the grand scheme of things. If only I could keep that in mind on a constant basis...

Mikey