Happy Birthday, America!

Headline of the week

French man with two asses surprises Swedish officials

“We couldn’t just send him back to Denmark. It’s actually a little shameful, there’s nothing human behind this. That’s just the way it is when everything hinges on a bunch of paper,” said a harbour worker who wished to remain anonymous.

Oh, monkey trumpets!

Even though I had it marked on my calendar, I missed my court date on Friday afternoon. I fell asleep. I chose the wrong week to stop sniffing glue - er, the wrong month to stop drinking coffee.

And I was going to get out of that parking ticket, too....

That went well

Day One recaffeinated: no sluggish afternoon.

Now, if I could only deal so easily with the neighbour who choose 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. as the time to rev up the woodchipper and get through the two hours of chipping he had to do today.

This went less well: the worst Web site I've ever seen. Even if everything worked the way it was supposed to, it would still be crap.

Giving up giving up

About three weeks ago, I gave up caffeine, mostly. Really what I gave up was regular coffee. I still down Coke Zero, about one a day.

I'd drink a cup of coffee a day, sometimes two or three if I I iced it or I'm teaching. I need something to lubricate my throat when I teach or I go hoarse after 15 minutes and coffee with cream does the trick better than something purely water-based, and it's sugar-free, which is important because my body turns carbohydrates into blood triglycerides and that's not healthy.

The caffeine never seemed to have much effect on me. I never needed a coffee in the morning to get going. I mostly drink coffee for the taste and as often as not, it's in the afternoon. Juices are out because of sugar content and I get tired of diet soft drinks. I do drink a lot of tea as well. My metabolism handles caffeine, I suppose, like it handles opiates, which also don't have much effect on me. I can take enough painkillers during a migraine to knock out a mule, but all they do is make me chatty and make the inside of my nose itch.

Why then did I give up caffeine? While the presence of caffeine didn't seem to propel me, when I did miss the fix because I was too lazy to try to learn how to make a decent pot (Elvi is the coffee master at home) and too involved in work to take a break to go get some at a cafe, I would get a caffeine headache. I can always tell it's a caffeine headache by its location on the occipital region of my head (low back of the head). I was getting tired of the headaches, which seemed to be coming more and more often.

I've stopped drinking regular coffee about once a year over the last few years and after a few days reliance on ibuprofen, I've shaken the habit easily. These last few weeks, however, have been terrible.

I've been feeling like crap. I've been going to bed at a reasonable hour - midnight or so - and waking up after seven and a half to eight hours of sleep. I'd still be tired, though, and in a bit of a daze and come 2:00 or 3:00 p.m., I'd go lie down and sleep for three or more hours. It's ridiculous how much time I've spent asleep.

Now, I have nothing but a hunch to show that this is due to a lack of coffee. I have not gone completely caffeine free, because I still drink the Coke Zero, but maybe that can a day is just enough caffeine to keep my physiology craving the amount I used to feed it. Maybe it has something to do with my allergy to whatever sort of grass pollenates in June, although I only take non-drowsy allergy pills and then only about three days a week.

Regardless, it has to stop. Between meetings at the kids' schools, teaching, faculty meetings, and four evenings filled with sports, I just haven't been able to write more than one slug line in two weeks. It's amazing how your time disappears when you sleep 13 hours a day.

I'm going to head downstairs and make myself a tall glass of iced coffee. Wish me luck.

Another swing at NSD

I find all these nifty Web sites that are too good not to share, and my old creative juices boil, and I have to let them out. That's what blogs are for, no?

Cracked was once Mad Magazine's drug-addled younger brother, but the magazine has really spread its wings since moving online. "The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses", an article at the Cracked.com, analyzes nine passages from the Old Testament and rates them for sexual and violent content - mostly violent. The sequence starts at the ninth most badass passage (these are not all limited to one verse, strictly speaking), and the best action-hero line in the whole article - "looks like someone bit off more than he could Jew" - but keep reading, all the way to number one, in which David proves how much he really wants to marry Michal. Our favourite? Number eight.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15699_9-most-badass-bible-verses.html

Are you a freelance writer? Want to be one? Freelance Folder offers a list of 20 must-read blogs for freelancers. A successful freelance career is as much business as it is writing, and these suggested readings don't overlook that. Freelance Folder is itself a blog, and is 20th on the list, so I suppose this is really a list of 19 must-reads. Best of all, this gives you someplace to pretend to work while you procrastinate.
http://freelancefolder.com/20-must-read-blogs-for-freelance-writers/

A few Web sites out there let you build your own fonts, but not all of them let you share your fonts in a gallery or tutor you on creating fonts, and even fewer still do it all as elegantly as FontStruct. Creating the fonts is easy. It's like drawing on a sheet of graph paper, but with many differently tipped pencils. It's a bit overwhelming at first, but if you watch a video that FontStruct creator Rob Meeks put together, you'll at least grasp how to use the tools at your disposal and you can concentrate on design.
http://fontstruct.fontshop.com/

Hmmm. Those seem short, even for NSD. Well, at least it clears three URLs off my desktop.

Bonus accolades:

IPMS/USA (the American division of the International Plastic Modelgeek Society) has a positive review of the Avia S-199 book. I wonder how much they'd offer a copy editor?

Distracted

I had an odd dream last night, one that starred three of my current students and possibly a man I play hockey with (possibly, because I think he was a composite character).

I met them in a Metro station, one that doesn't exist. I drove them around downtown Montreal in a car, but it wasn't really downtown Montreal and it certainly wasn't my car.

The weird part came after that. You know those dreams when you have to take a test and realize you're naked? I had what must be the other side of that coin. I had a date with one of the students. I think I parked at the top of McTavish, and as we walked toward the McGill ghetto, I realized I was only in my burgundy boxers (those are real). We returned to the car so I could put my clothes on, but the student said it was fine and got down to her underwear. Then we got a parking ticket.

I spent most of Friday looking for more paying work. The most immediate dividend was an interview for a Web community position on Wednesday. Friday, I go to court to resolve this. That must be where the dream's parking ticket came in.