Why did I schedule a meeting on a Friday afternoon? Why would I only have done this when the weather forecast looks amazing? Why can’t I just blow off the meeting and call in “sick”? This meeting better go smooth and end quickly or I’m going to have to beat myself to a pulp for doing this to me.

Been spending a lot of time at various pools and gyms lately as the billable hours have gone into hiding. Made it to two pools today alone – one for laps (indoors, near the cube) and one for relaxing and tan-line maintenance (home). The cube dwellers’ business has been very slow – which hurts because I’m paid on billable hours, not salary. Don’t really want to be a full-time solo practitioner again (yet?) and I’m reluctant to take on too many part-time clients until I’m more certain of what I’ll be doing in the next few months.

We’re coming up on two years since the radiation started, and my health is as good as its going to get. The safety job has been going on too long, and while it added some stability to both the income stream and the resume that had been lacking in recent years, I think it has outlived its purpose. Time to get on with a career-type plan, or win the lottery, or something like that.

As part of my underachiever profile, I’ll admit to a tendancy to become complacent. That was probably one of the reasons Prozac scared me so much – it made the complacency obvious and downright dangerous. And yes, I was on Prozac for a while in 2003 – I was a single 39-year-old with a cancer diagnosis and no employer benefits – I’d consider myself (and anyone else in the same situation) a freak if I/they hadn’t been depressed and anxious.

Gotta find some motivation somewhere. Gotta move on.

You Have Great Physical Powers and an Iron Constitution

The …in bed is assumed, of course.

Who would I be to argue with an ancient mystical order? The chinese busboys have spoken.

Thank you Scotty – warp speed Mister Sulu.

After twelve days of slowness resembling a drug-induced fog or bad science fiction timewarp plotline, things clicked, the relays reset, Big Brown delivered a new modem, three lights shone bright green, and wham, we’re back up to broadband speeds. Time to see what this sucker can do.

The day is staying good, despite the absence of that pesky cabana boy with my coffee.

Breakfast with friends, a stroll through the zoo, then a hike down the Bayside Trail at the Cabrillo National Monument. Amazing views on a beautiful autumn day. Exhausted but happy.

The morning swim sucked. Walked over to the pool around 6:15 and had the place to myself. The air was just crisp enough to cause a bit of steam coming off the water (my favorite combination of temperatures) but I just wasn’t into it. Got through a few laps and decided it wasn’t in the cards. No point forcing myself. So I moved over to the hot tub and watched the most beautiful sunrise I’ve seen in years while the jet pounded on my back and shoulders. If there just would’ve been a cabana boy standing by to bring me coffee and a muffin it would have been the perfect start for a Sunday.

Brought my underachiever status to new lows today. Left the cube early to get a swim in at one of the outdoor city pools. This was important to me because: a) it’s the last day of summer, b) the weather was absolutely beautiful, and c) the tan lines have been seriously fading.

Also, after a week on the after hours pager electronic tether, my attitude has also been seriously sucking toward the cube, and the easiest way not to say something you regret is to not be there to say anything at all. And in case you’re counting, there were only two weeks off since the last time I was leashed up; due to attrition we’re down to three people who can handle the pager.

I had brought some work home with me and probably planned to actually touch it, but after the swim I got home to find little Pongo all alone in an electricity-less apartment. Short walk to sniff and mark, and then back to the pool (the casa pool this time) for additional tan maintenance. Call it fate or karma or evil conspiracy by California’s energy providers, but that work just wasn’t meant to be done.

If I didn’t know better I’d say my former ISP was engaging in a little old-fashioned retaliation. If I were more paranoid I’d say they deliberately failed to release my phone line so my new DSL provider to start my new service. If I were more cynical I’d say they came up with their response to my solution in about thirty seconds and just kept me on hold for an entire hour to because they needed to have someone listen to their muzak.

But I’m still on dial-up and will be for at least another week or two, so I just sit here biting my tongue and thankful that that’s all they’ve done to me so far I’m just tired and these are all just unfortunate coincidences.

I thought steroids were supposed to make you bigger and faster. Promote growth and allow you to reach previously unattainable levels of performance. Sure there are some side effects, but hey, no rewards without risks, eh?

So what’s wrong with “Apollo on Steroids“? Take a dream that’s been allowed to stagnate since the 1970s and promise to drag our technological capabilities back to where they should have been in the 1980s. But be careful, because it will be hard work to get to the 1980s; the current plan doesn’t even get us there until 2018. And let’s be realistic: the timeline will slip.

So here’s our proposal. Fire the slugs who came up with this great leap backward, get the government out of the business and let the private sector take over. Take just half the salary savings and the proposed $104,000,000,000.00 in spending and restructure the piles and piles of cash into a series of prizes (tax free) for the first private sector individuals or teams to make certain milestones: first new footprint on the moon, first thirty-day stay on the moon and first locally-distilled drink on the moon are all worthy steps forward.

Personally, I’m pretty sure someone in the private sector can figure out a way to get there cheaper and faster, and even safer, then NASA apparantly can. At least I hope so. People need real challenges to move forward, not silly returns to past glory.

I don’t normally have the attention span to follow up on my posts, but YAYYYYY!!!!! Woof, woof, woof!