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in the morning i'll join the
commute to waukegan, seat of lake county government. i'll park
in the appointed lot and will enter the lake county courthouse
through one of two clearly marked entrances. i'll show my papers.
i'll take my place. i'll do what i'm told to do. i'll be a good
boy...er...citizen. i'll be grateful for the opportunity to serve
my community in this most fundamental way. i won't whine. i will
sit and wait and read one of several good books i will have brought.
i will write something to myself. i will be very very quiet.
i will sit and wait. and i will not whine... not even to myself.
my left ankle (actually, the
right) can probably use the rest. some kind of muscle strain
cut my jog short yesterday, so i finished with a walk. the walking
is fine, but that extra bounce of jog is too much. ouch. i hope
it's not the shoes. i don't think it is. i've been rubbing some
stinky ointment on the sore spot but don't believe in its powers.
yesterday i put it on right after running and it stung like a
mean old bubberdubber. my unseemly yelping scared the cat.
last tuesday i made two trips
to o'hare. first to drop off jay, then to pick up ed. this afternoon
i did it again to pick up dominic. so he's back. and that's a
good thing. it has been a quiet week. but for all of the solitude
little has been accomplished. i did read Catalyst and finish
Ender's Game and begin Fever 1793. i did walk/jog twice a day.
i did transplant some spearmint from the front of the house to
the back garden. (was that a mistake? i know it is very invasive,
so i planted it with the roots loosely wrapped in a plastic bag.
this might help to control the direction in which those roots
develop. maybe. and it smells real nice. dominic thinks i will
be sorry. time will tell.) i did spend too much time reading
(mostly silly) listserv mail. i did continue reading and savoring
hirsch's How To Read A Poem. and i did listen too much to old
Clash, Jam and XTC tunes.
today (subliminally conditioned
by that music?) i ordered a book from amazon.co.uk. total bill
£8.93 ($13.97) for a small paperback that would probably
cost 4.99 if i could get it here. this is sort of an experiment
to see what happens when a person here tries to buy something
there. amazon assures me that it is safe enough. we'll see. but
will i be surprised when i find that my credit card has been
swiped to fund the sinister designs of albanian circus freaks?
no, not very much.
so at what hour do i need to
depart from mundelein in order to arrive at waukegan in a timely
manner? on our exploratory drive a couple weeks ago, dom and
i took a little over half an hour. under non-rush conditions.
i have learned that - in lake county - the most benign roads
become snakey torture chambers at rush hour. so i'm led to guess
that a 6:45 departure will get me to the courthouse by 8:00.
am i not just a tiny bit freaked
by this business?
yes i am. so what.
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