I Am Wearing Pajamas All Week.

For absolutely no reason whatsoever I have taken the rest of the week off, giving me a four day weekend. I plan to do nothing except engage in spectacular bouts of sitting. And by this, I don't mean that I'll be "quite lazy". No, no, the events that are about to transpire can hardly be captured by a mere one or two words. The depths of my laziness result in such a profound state of immobility that scientists normally engaged in the study of wood petrification stop in to document the rare phenomenon of a perfectly stilled human, unmoving even at the cellular level. With an expression of awe they take measurements, photos and perform dozens of tests. When I miss work, textbooks are re-written, theories revised. Neighbors, mistaking my day-off immobility for some sort of neurological disorder, send cards and get-well balloons. Churches bring fruit baskets, Oprah calls. Etc...

The point being that I've rented movies, purchased beer and have settled in for a few days, sort of an in-house vacation. I'll be watching DVDs of my current guilty pleasure viewing, which is the USA show Monk. It's light fare, but there is something about the main actors performance that makes it fun. Foreign films will be viewed, pizza consumed, reality ignored.

So, earlier this week I finally heard back from the editor regarding my job interview.
We had met for lunch last week and I pitched ideas for a book review section/column in the local newspaper. She apparently liked the proposal and has recommended to her boss that they hire me. But, the top editor, her boss, has decided to put me through one more round of testing. He has requested three sample book reviews and I suppose that those will be the deciding factor. This, for me, is good news. It means that I will be judged, not on previous writing experience (as I had feared), but on my actual writing. The final decision, whether good or bad, is one I'll feel good about since the job is mine to win or lose. I guess it will be a few weeks before I can finish these and hear a response, we'll see.

I was watching CNN and I heard that schools in certain areas had "No Name Calling Week", where presumably kids were encouraged to engage in polite discussion and avoid name-calling. Here's my suggesting: why don't we follow that up by celebrating, in schools throughout America, "Toughen the Hell Up Week". It would be a week where kids could only call each other names, the more hurtful the better. This way kids will be more thick-skinned and maybe learn a very important lesson: other people should not define who you are. Ever. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that "Toughen the Hell Up Week" will go over very big, be watching for it on the news. Nobel peace prize, here I come.

Take care.