Two Too-Weak Weeks of June Jejunosity
Go ahead and try saying that three times fast.
Given that the word jejune denotes that something is empty, devoid of substance, or dull and simplistic (usually in the sense of said something's appeal, or lack thereof)...
Jejunosity, then, is merely the noun form of these—as in emptiness, blandness, or unappealing simplicity.
It isn't that June has been boring so far, by any stretch...
More like... since Athennia and I got married last month, none of the comparatively run-of-the-mill stuff we've done in the time since has quite managed to parallel that in an overall excitement sense.
But, at any rate, I suppose that's to be expected... and we still have a few anecdotes to share from this first half of the month anyway :)
On the morning of Friday the 2nd, Athennia mentioned over breakfast that she planned to ask her boss if she could cut out a few hours early that afternoon. I thought nothing of this as I saw her off to work a few minutes later and went about my day as well.
Mid-afternoon, I called Angel (our realtor) to update him on some properties I'd found and done some research on since we'd last spoken...
It turned out that he had just stopped home for half an hour because a scheduled showing of his had been canceled; and so, this was the one time (since our initial hour-long call back in May) that we talked on the phone longer than about 45 seconds...
As we bantered, he casually suggested that I write a book about Athennia's and my experience looking for property—and then he jumped in with both feet and proceeded to pitch me ideas on how I might work in vampires, time travel, a couple who has to stash a body, and all sorts of rapid-fire plot variations, like he was a one-man MadLibs book or something.
In the meantime, I usually have two loud fans pointed at me back at my desk, and so I'll typically pop out to the living room when I'm on a call... which I had done this time as well. I found it mildly odd that Riley kept popping her head out her bedroom door and repeatedly walking past me to the kitchen and back for no apparent reason...
But, I thought nothing of it otherwise; and so, Angel and I probably talked for a whopping 25 minutes or so before we finally hung up and I headed back to my desk. I wasn't there 30 seconds, when Riley asked if I could come back out to the living room real quick.
I walked back out—only to find Riley and Athennia standing there with an early Father's Day present!
And then, of course, I realized the context for Riley's behavior: She had been doing reconnaissance that entire time on behalf of Athennia—who, it turned out, had parked at the next building over, so that I wouldn't see her pull in...
...and then had lugged my gift across two parking lots and up the stairs to our door...
...and finally, had spent the last 25 minutes in the swelteringly-hot stairwell—literally listening to every word of my conversation from the other side of the door as she sat there waiting for me to hang up and go away! (No doubt bewildered that someone as introverted as I am would even be on the phone that long... and trying to figure out what in the world I could possibly be talking about!)
...And then addressing the decided juvenility of wasting such a staggering ability on something as trivial as "going back in time to have an orgy with yourself" (as I believe he'd put it).
I suspect it'd be much harder than it seems though; wouldn't it? I mean, you can't just go build yourself a time machine for the express purpose of going back to boink a past version of yourself:
Such an attempt would surely have to fail, because in traveling to the past to change the one thing that was the impetus for your having constructed the time machine in the first place, you'd alter the entire timeline and thereby negate the reason you ever built the machine to begin with... and then you'd have a nasty temporal paradox on your hands.
Besides, 19 is the age where I looked my best... but that arrogant little twerp thought he was so smart; I'd almost certainly end up punching him in the face within the first five minutes.
He unloads trucks of freight for a living and is in the best physical shape of his life though; so, he'd turn around and whoop my ass without breaking a sweat.
We really don't seem to be a good fit for each other at all! Certainly not worth the risk of, say, failing to account for gravitational time dilation during the jump, and getting puked out beyond Neptune or something. (That's not a real thing, but it sounds cool.)
Final summation? Unless you're impossibly brilliant enough to cheese the laws of physics imposed by the properties of our universe, you're better off just staying in the present and swapping DNA with someone who isn't you!
But then again, if you're the sort who'd rate yourself at that level, you're a narcissistic assclown who deserves exactly what you'd get; so, have at it! (Except you, 19-year-old me: I'm quite happy with my life; so, don't get any dumbass ideas and f*ck it up!)
Aaaaanyway, fun was had by all that day... except for some (namely Athennia). And, at the end, I got a much-needed new office chair to replace my tattered former one whose faux-leather upholstery had started to disintegrate from old age (with Penny ever-so-helpfully doing her part to hasten the process by eating increasingly-larger pieces of it as they began to flake off).
A thousand thanks to my wonderful wife and daughter :)
The best chair 19-year-old me ever got me was $39 at Wal-Mart ;)
Saturday night, Athennia made some phenomenal Italian-seasoned chicken with pesto, tomato, mozzarella, and rotini...
...And banana bread for dessert. (Apparently, we forget to get a picture of that before we killed it.)
She hadn't mentioned that she'd be baking it; and so—given that I know she's not personally all that crazy about banana bread—I expressed some surprise when she unveiled it.
Athennia mistook this as... I don't know, surprise that she could bake banana bread just in general, I guess? And, she put her hands on her hips and declared,
Hey, you married a baker!
Indeed I did.
On Sunday, Riley went over to Lou's to hang out with Taylor and Ahlina; and, Athennia happened to stumble onto Matt Walsh's What Is a Woman? documentary...
Athennia and I enjoyed the film though... which I guess technically (at least in the eyes of some) makes us despicable far-right transphobes or something, and the Bolsheviks will be coming for our livelihoods any day now.
Little do those bozos know, the wildfire smoke will get us first!
Granted, we live about 26 feet from Trenton... so, the sky usually looks more or less like this anyway—though I think the Bloods and the Crips normally share custody of the sun...
Oh well. Even nuclear winter is preferable to July humidity. Bring on the toxic afterdamp! From Trenton, or Canada, or Chernobyl, or wherever the hell it's coming from.
Athennia made chicken enchiladas for dinner that night, then surprised us with dessert yet again: a homemade cherry pie, complete with vanilla ice cream and some good ol' "Dairy Whipped Topping" (which is what happens when you don't want to spend $9 on a can of brand-name whipped cream).
But, Riley just loves "Dairy Whipped Topping."
And, everyone knows "Dairy Whipped Topping" goes great with pie and ice cream alike.
Is it even a genuine dessert without "Dairy Whipped Topping?"
No, I don't think it is. "Dairy Whipped Topping" is a must.
Friday the 9th, our internet went out just before 4:00 P.M...
We pay Comcast for an "always on" connection; so, they made sure to keep it shut off until about 10:15 that night.
This of course prevented us from accessing Netflix to continue the last season of Breaking Bad; so, we went through my movie library in search of something worthwhile... and ended up convincing Riley that she'd find Real Genius to her liking, despite it being as old as I am :)
Saturday, we went to my parents' house for dinner: My dad grilled hot dogs, sausages, and barbecue chicken; then, for dessert, we had pound cake with strawberries...
...along with some fresh sticky buns we'd picked up at Fritz's Bakery on the way over.
Athennia enjoyed her time with Hannah, as always; and Riley and I got outside to play some soccer with Olivia :)
Riley went over to Lou's again on Monday and Tuesday to hang out with Taylor and Ahlina.
I spent the majority of Tuesday afternoon porting my long-forgotten vampire novel to \(\LaTeX\)... the "industry standard" typesetting engine I've been using for forever now, but apparently hadn't yet started using, the last time I wrote about vampires more than 12 years ago.
Athennia called out of work with a killer migraine Wednesday and Thursday; so, we took it easy and ordered pizza from Bambino's Wednesday night, and then she felt up to making slider burgers for dinner Thursday evening.
But, the highlight of the Thursday had to be my shower, for sure...
I kicked things off with my typical "shower M.O."...
Get the shampoo going...
Build up some suds with the bar soap and apply them to my face...
Blindly grab my washcloth to conclude with a refreshing exfoliating scrub...
Everything was going great; but then, I stepped back under the water to rinse, and absent-mindedly flopped the washcloth over my arm momentarily as I finished... which sent some stray water droplets flying across my skin and made some of my arm hair sort of cluster together into what looked like an amorphous dark mass (without the use of my glasses or contacts).
I actually chuckled to myself at just how much it looked like a bug. Then I stared at it for another second and decided, "Yeah; I really don't think that's all just me."
I squinted—and brought my arm a little closer—and was treated to a big bite of a reality sandwich...
My body promptly shot my veins full of enough adrenaline to pick up a mid-sized sedan and hold it over my head. Then Pede and I shared a dialogue that went something like this...
Me: <flick!> GET the @#$% offa me!
Pede: Fine; but I'm gonna chill right here on the wall then.
Me: <splash!> GET the @#$% off the wall, too.
Pede: Fine; but I'm gonna hang out down in the tub. Forever.
Me: <kicking a wave of water at him> Oh my God! GET OUTTA HERE, you little bastard!
Pede: (finally gets snared by the whirlpool circling the drain, and realizes his centipedal wiles are no match for its centripetal force...) NOooo-Oooo-Ooo-Ooo-Oo-Oo-O-O-o-o-o.o.o.o—
And finally, on a more serious note...
As I finish writing this post, I have headlines coming into my news feed that Daniel Ellsberg has passed away at the age of 92; so, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate a true patriot (if such a thing is worthy of commendation) and a humanitarian who was beyond one in a million:
Daniel is of course most well-known for having leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers documenting the United States government's egregious misconduct during the Vietnam War; but, his laudable pursuits continued throughout the entirety of his life...
He had a doctorate in economics, for example, and did some serious work that went on to ripple through the field of decision theory through the '70s and '80s. And, more recently, he'd co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation and was (both as an individual and through the FPF) an early supporter of WikiLeaks and a staunch defender of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, inter alia.
Rest in peace, Daniel. You will be hugely missed but never forgotten.