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April 16, 2004

What a gorgeous freakin’ day! Sunny and warm, with everything greening thanks to last night’s rain. One can’t help but be reminded of the classic, epic Onion headline: Area Students Prepare Breasts for Increased Springtime Display. I feel happy about not working today, and will soon be applying for my unemployment-check-mandated two weekly jobs. When I get home, I will work on Sarah’s bike. When she gets home, we will go on a run. Then I will take her out on a date. There is the possibility of beer and nachos, as well as a movie. Make that the Strong Possibility.
My bike-trip-related cold feet of the last week are slowly warming, due mostly to Mom’s revelation that she regrets not having done more adventures in her youth, and to the realization that due to Jane’s poor health, our apartment may cease to be such a steal sometime soon. Also, despite the lure of science-teacher jobs in McFarland, and the Russ Feingold Senate Campaign, this is a good opportunity to skip town.
(This was always my favorite thing about State St.in high school: I could come down here and be certain to see people I knew. Already I’ve run into Sean’s school chum Lena, and I just saw Avital Livny and her mom across the street. I wonder what her brother Jon is up to…)
Yeah, a good opportunity. Whether it’s the stress of a new school (for Sarah) or the stress of continuing unemployment (for me) or even the stress of bike trip prep and apartment liquidation and social uprooting, but we have both been having strong feelings of dread, of big impending badness. Tuesday morning at four am, a loud noise startled us both awake: all the windows in the house were rattling and shaking in their frames. First thoughts: A-bomb, earthquake, plane crash…? Turns out that what had woken us was a house explosion over on Division St., by the G-L’s house, across from the park Robin and I played frisbee in back in the day.
Also, I just got to the cataclysm chapters A Short History of Nearly Everything: meteor strike, Yellowstone National Park eruption, both long overdue, and both capable of worldwide and total annihilation without warning…Jiminy Cricket! Add in the political situation, in which Our Dear Leader seems determined to court apocalypse on as many fronts as possible… It seems like an uncommonly good time to enjoy the parts of life and the world that are still sweet and unsullied, and let the future take care of itself for a little while. After all, the world could quite literally end today or tomorrow, utterly without warning, and without any of us being able to do anything about it, so why the hell not go on a frikkin’ bike trip?

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