Story of the Week -- April 23-27

Anatomy of a Day Off

I'm a little off. It's Tuesday now, and I'm back at work after 5 days off (7 if you include the weekend.) It's the longest stretch of days off I've had since I was in Israel. If you remember, I got home from that trip and proceeded to report everything I did. I'll spare you that this time. For the most part.

Because I was away, and because not much was going on, and because I'm tired of writing about horrible tragedies, I didn't really have a good story of the week. But I'm getting ahead of myself. It's all part of my Friday.

Though Friday is my fourth day off in a row, it's the first of the four that I plan to spend almost entirely at home. The other days I've been busy apartment searching, going to Met games or otherwise gallivanting in the city. But today is a full day off.

I wake up around 10, because I was out kind of late Thursday night in the city. I got home around 10:30 or so and then had to catch up on Grey's Anatomy. With May sweeps on the horizon, Grey's is becoming more like a daytime soap opera every day.

Speaking of daytime soap operas.....just kidding. Didn't watch any of those. I was up in time for The Price is Right, though. A day off favorite. It used to be you had to have a fever over 100 to be able to watch the Price is Right on a school day. Now you just need a spotty, inconsistent freelance job. With any luck, however, the end of my days as a freelancer will coincide with the end of old ladies kissing Bob Barker. This is Bob's last year on The Price is Right, truly the end of an era. Good of him to hang around long enough to break Richard Dawson's record, though.

Because I can't do just one thing at a time, I've also got my hands on the Friday New York Times Crossword, and a cup of coffee. This week's Friday puzzle is challenging but not impossible. I've gotten better and better at Fridays, mastering the art of staring at blank spaces long enough until something suddenly clicks. Also the art of turning an errant "H" into a correct "N" and other such alphabetical acrobatics.

Satisfied with 3/4 of the puzzle done, I moved on to phase 2 of the day - catching up on Sopranos and Entourage. Then I tried to write a blog about the whole Curt Schilling Bloody Sock story. In case you haven't heard, announcer Gary Thorne said Sox catcher Doug Mirabelli told him the sock that Curt Schilling wore and bloodied to pitch game 6 of the 2004 ALCS was really painted. I was going to examine why Red Sox fans are so protective of the legends behind their World Series win that year, and can't be satisfied and let the games speak for themselves. In other words, who cares? I clearly didn't care enough. So I stopped writing it and moved on to other things.

Like an hour or so of grading SAT Essays online for The Princeton Review (at a $1 each, at least I could feel like I was making a little money on the off day). These are 25-minute timed essays and are riddled with grammatical, spelling and fact errors, and the worst part of it all is I can't penalize these kids for any of them. And I don't understand why high school juniors don't know the difference between a play and a novel. Hamlet is not a novel. It's a play. And just because you read it out of a book doesn't make it a novel either. Novel is not another word for book. Also, The Raven is a poem (not a novel, not a short story), Nelson Mandela is not an African American, and that thing they hold in a courtroom is a T-R-I-A-L, not a TRAIL.

Rant over. It was 2pm, time for a shower, lunch and a trip to Walmart, Best Buy, and Sam's Club, the veritable triumvirate of consumer excess, to stock up on everything from shampoo to nuts. And bottled water. Etc. Next came a visit to Concordia to fix a light bulb and a cabinet hinge for my grandparents (and to drop off some of the nuts) and a quick stop for beer en route to my final destination - HD baseball, beer and Chinese food. The ultimate in lazy Friday evenings alone.

And before you know it it's time for bed.

What's that? You want your story of the week back? I'm working this Friday, I'll get you your story.