2001-04-30 - 8:31 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: Theme from "The Greatest American Hero", a very stupid TV show I saw as a kid.

Well, after a long winter of absolutely no motivation to do anything, suddenly I am filled with energy and running all over the metro area all weekend. I had to actually pare down on the things I wanted to do and coordinate things carefully time-wise to make sure I could do them all. What a change from recent weeks, in which I did nothing but sit around and put off going to the grocery store as long as possible.

The bad part (for you, Devoted Reader) is that it's making me stay away from the computer. I don't have the patience to sit on the couch all day anymore. I am out DOING stuff instead of sitting around musing and griping and reading other people's musings and gripes.

The good part is, of course, that it's nice to just do stuff and not think so much. My mind is pleasantly clear. And my internet addiction does not have the stranglehold over me that I thought it did. Apparently it's partly a function of the seasons and not purely my own weakness.

On the skate on Friday night, I was talking to a fellow skater about the nice weather. It was truly gorgeous skating weather -- not too warm, not too cold, not at all humid. I mentioned that it was nice to get off my ass and skate, seeing as how my motivation to do anything had all but disappeared over the winter.

She was very surprised to hear that, and said, "Oh, I'm so glad! I mean, not glad that you felt that way, but that I'm not the only one!"

Something about this winter was really hard on people. It's quite surprising. Another skater said that it was particularly "dreary". A few other people have also mentioned to me that they found this winter particularly difficult. Plus, when MIL was here and we had a few chilly days, she said that all she wanted to do was smoke, drink alcohol, and sleep.

It's all very interesting. I wouldn't have thought that fewer hours of sunlight and being cold all the time would have such a noticeable effect, but based on the anecdotes I'm hearing it seems to be pretty common.

Anyway, this weekend I did the following:

- Went on a city skate with the club
- Washed dishes and cleaned up the clutter in our bedroom
- Grocery shopped
- Entertained Tommy (or tried to, anyway)
- Went on the Georgetown House Tour
- Went shooting at the range (Plinkers Day! Woo!)
- Watched "The Blues Brothers", our first film from Netflix.

Comments:

At the range, I wasted about 50 rounds trying to hit an exploding target. I couldn't do it. It was 50 feet away, plus you have to hit it in the exact center (it's about 2 inches square). I probably managed to hit the target a couple times, but not the center.

All in all, it's much more fun shooting plates. They said we could bring our own bottles next time -- now we can save up our beer bottles, mayo bottles, what have you, for Plinkers Day. Yay!

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Tommy said we were vampires because we kept the shades drawn all day and never go outside. Hm....

Actually, the (light-filtering) shades are kept draw in the daytime to prevent the sun from bleaching the wood, but we open them at night if the house is clean enough to present to the neighbors.

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Well, the Georgetown house tour was just smashing. Nothing like tramping through half-million to what had to be 10-plus-million-dollar homes and gawking at people's stuff. I love this shit.

My favorite house had been decorated in a kind of South Seas/Asian Pacific motif and had a lot of live plants in it. Very peaceful. They also had a lot of fancy tiles on the floors and walls -- multicolored tiles in patterns, tiles with raised patterns. Another house had my favorite garden, which had a patio just outside the house, and then a shady, green area at the back, with a variety of flowers including bleeding hearts.

The biggest, most expensive house had a kitchen that was nearly the size of an entire floor in my house. I'm not good at judging this kind of thing, but I'm guessing it was 18' by 25' or larger. Wowie.

Some of the houses didn't have much in the way of landscaping, which seems sort of wrong to me, given how much money these people have and how little land there is to play with. You're not trying to design half an acre, for pete's sake.

Afterwards I stopped in at the parish hall for the tea that came with my ticket. My tea was perfect. I was so happy. Perfect amount of sugar, perfect amount of cream. I cannot express how pleased I was with this random cup of tea. I also had some yummy tuna sandwiches and cookies and chatted with a couple of women from Frederick.

One of the women was like me -- it's her dream to live in the city. Y'know, sometimes I feel a little attached to my house -- I do, after all, love the layout and the windows -- and my damn bulbs, and think, "Well, maybe I could put up with this for a little while." Then I go on a house tour in Georgetown. That keeps the ambition alive.

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This particular edition of "The Blues Brothers" had a bunch of deleted scenes in it, and I think it suffered for it. It dragged a bit. Plus, I'd never seen the movie before, and was expecting it to be a laugh riot, and instead I found it only mildly amusing. It seemed mostly to be a lame setup for some great blues music.

I did like the music, though. Particularly the guy on the street in front of the soul food restaurant, John Lee Hooker. I'm going to pick up one of his greatest hits CDs and see how I like it.

We watched "The Weakest Link", which Poindexter flipped to during hocky intermission. At the end of a round, she has various clever ways of saying, "Which one of you is going to get kicked off?" My favorite of these -- which was also a big hit with the players and audience -- was:

"Is there a village that needs its idiot back?"

I'm sure that one can be put to use in some future situations.

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