And "at the beginning" is not helpful

I don't know where to begin. Elvis Costello's "Accidents Will Happen" starts with those words, and I can guarantee what I come up with will not be as good as what he did.

Plain and simple, my summer is a mess. There's no coherence to anything. I should preface this (See, I told you "at the beginning" wouldn't help) my noting that it still hasn't been a full week since I've stopped working. I finished report cards about 6 days and 12 hours ago, so maybe I should give it time. There's just a heap of emotional baggage, with my wife's 50th birthday, my kid going away to college, that kind of stuff.

In that spirit, I'll start with some miscellaneous bits. First, and least important, I was given what we used to call a slug back in the day. It was something that looks and feels just like a quarter, but is in fact a Philippine Peso, worth about 2 cents. That's a good racket. Pass off about 100 of those little suckers and you can almost buy a tank of gas.

I've been trying to ride my bike some, but the weather has noot been particularly cooperative. When I start evaluating routes by how much shade there is, you know things are bad. Though I have gotten out a few times, I am having to resort to my least favorite form of exercise- swimming.

Anybody who tells you swimming for exercise is fun is lying. Don't get me wrong. I love to splash around in a pool when it's hot and I can do a pretty spectacular jackknife splash (years of practice trying to soak the lifeguards at the town pool). But swimming laps? The most fun thing about that is not drowning. But it is the only kind of outdoor exercise you can do when it's over 95 degrees. This year, having failed miserably in my preparation for the mini triathalon I did 2 years ago, I am swimming round and round the outside of the pool so I don't stop to turn around. Hopefully I'll be better able to handle a 400 meter open water swim with that kind of preparation.

The one thing I have been doing is, once again, trying to clean my desk. This is a bit like trying to keep a lawn free of crabgrass, or kind of like that arcade game "Whack-a-mole." Whenever it looks like I have the thing under control, I find another pocket of stuff I have no idea what to do with. I do not know why there are tweezers, a bicycle tube and reflector, a replacement ski goggles lens, a rainbow pencil. and a varsity softball letter all right in front of me, mixed in with important papers. There isn't a filing system in the world designed to handle that.

Time to go to dinner. Back to it tomorrow.