After today’s particularly grueling bike ride (fighting what felt like a 15 knot headwind may be good exercise, but it’s exhausting. I only got in half my normal ride before I gave up and headed for home. Of course the wind shifted while I was contemplating packing it in so I had what felt like a 15 knot cross breeze all the way home. Nice. When I complained to a friend, he informed me it was proof that God hates me. You know, I’ve always suspected as much) I came home to find an unemployment check! Hooray!
I did the best happy dance I could manage on my sore legs, hopped back on my bike and struggled over to the bank so I could deposit the check (and get some cash for laundry and the farmer’s market on Sunday), and when I got home my legs felt like.. well, like I just biked across Hollywood while fighting a wind. Twice.
I’m hopeful that work will come soon, though – I’m starting to see more and more art department folks driving around in 10 ton trucks, which is a good sign. Those guys are back to work a few weeks before we are, so hopefully I’ll be working again before I go completely insane.
Yesterday I was so optimistic that I dumped my work bag, sorted out the stuff that I actually use, threw away the flotsam (lot passes, commissary receipts, half-finished crossword puzzles, band-aids, old call sheets, candy bar wrappers, broken bits of old headsets that no longer work), and then took the bag outside and hosed it down, so I can now find things and the inside doesn’t smell like socks anymore. Sweet.
Then, I decided it was as good a time as any to crack open my last bottle of the wine I brought back from France (you have to celebrate the small victories, too) – the wine that I schlepped across a medium-sized country, carefully wrapped in a sweater, hid in my suitcase, denied the existence of to a customs agent (“why no, I don’t have any alcohol or food in my suitcase. That salami smell is your imagination”), and saved for just the moment I thought I’d really like it…
Was corked. What really sucks is this was the ‘good’ bottle. Oh, well. Just one more excuse to go back someday, right?
I’m going to smear myself with whatever sore muscle rub I can reach, hobble to the couch and watch whatever movie happens to be in the DVD player.
Filed under: Non-Work, bike, check, corked, Los Angeles, ride, sad, street, unemployment, wind, wine, Work
Totally Unauthorized 
YAY! An unemployment check!
Sucks to celebrate something that should have been a non-issue from the start, but hey! Take life’s victories where you find them!
Sorry to hear about the much anticipated bottle of wine… This is why it pays to drink domestic hard liquor.
We should have bought stock in Seagrams a decade ago…
Hooray! All is well with the world! I hope you are able to wash all of your smelly socks (not that I’m implying that you have smelly socks, mind you).
Yay! I’m so glad things are getting better, even with the corked wine. It’s such a great feeling to get a bag sorted out, though it usually takes a photo to Flickr’s “what’s in your bag” group to shame me into actually tidying a bag up :-)
*Fingers and toes crossed on the work front for you*
Feel for the Unemployment. My wife is drawing right now in TX and she had to go thru two appeals and she won.
Sorry about the corked. When will the French adopt the screw cap or synthetic cork? 25 years ago when I was in Germany, they wanted to go to screw caps, but the connoisseurs objected. No brainer.