Six For Saturday

It’s been a week of dreams, anticipation, and some surprising news, followed by a Saturday awash in working hard and reading a very interesting (if disturbing) book. Now I’m in my pajamas and robe, finally sitting down on the couch to sum up my week. Oh, and it snowed today for a little while. In April. Sigh. Luckily things turn in time for Easter in two weeks. I’ve already been through one snowy Easter. I don’t want another one. Here’s to another Six For Saturday…

1. For someone who prides himself on almost never being sick, this was a week of, well, being sick. It has to be  something harsh to make me sit down with a blanket over me, still shivering with a cold sweat. I’m not sure if it was the flu or what it was, but it definitely hit me hard. I didn’t miss any time from work, but on Thursday (my day off) I certainly would have called in if I had been scheduled. It’s finally subsiding but there’s still work to be done with my sore throat. All in all, I’m thankful it wasn’t as bad as my wife got, as she is still dealing with a recurring, hacking cough that has kept her up three nights in a row.
2. I’m really getting into Little Bee, and it’s making me glad I chose it for my book club’s book of the month for April. There’s something to be said for quality writing from alternating perspectives that keeps the suspense up as well as tells a realistic tale of love, loss, and love again. It’s pretty graphic in places, but a great read. I’m down to the last 80 pages.
3. The baseball season started, which gives me reason to watch sports again on television, and to get into my fantasy baseball season as well, which is shaping up to be a good (if long) one. It’s something else to talk about around the water cooler at work, too, so that’s another bonus.
4. With all this talk about the 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, it reminds me of the lead up to the event, the drug overdose in Rome that made me sure he would try again, and try he did. I wondered back then why so many people were ready to believe that it was an accident until he finally succeeded on the next attempt. It saddened me at the time, that someone so talented would be so tortured, but listening to the lyrics over these past 20 years has been an eye opener. He was severely depressed for a very long time. What he needed was help.
5. Speaking of anniversaries, I had two dreams this past week about high school (it’s my 20 year reunion in 3 weeks), and I saw myself speaking in front of a group of my peers in both of those dreams. Then the alumni liaison from the school sent out an email asking if anyone from our class wanted to do the sermon at vespers on that Friday night. I felt like it was a sign, so I offered to do it. To paraphrase U2, God truly does work in mysterious ways.
6. I finished the review/edit of the first third of my new novel. It’s still very much in the preliminary phase, but I’ve started writing on it again. Because it’s going to be a series I am working really hard on making sure I have a lot of rope to pull when I get down to the end of this first book in that series. I’m really starting to get into fleshing out the characters as I am introducing new ones at the moment. These new characters will be instrumental in other areas of the series, but for now these are just introductions. I’m definitely keen to write some more tomorrow since I have an unexpected day off from work.

Sam