Sorry, folks. No movie pontificating this week, either. I just came off two weeks of wall-to-wall work, and entered this week with free evenings – well, Sunday through Thursday, anyway. Work reared its head Wednesday night, Monday and Tuesday was spent dealing with financial aid for my son’s imminent college career, then waiting for the results of a meeting involving my wife’s school… my imagined week of movie-watching went up up in smoke. I did get one movie in on Sunday, but you won’t hear about it until October.
I won’t watch a movie when I know it’s going to be interrupted. I prefer not to approach things in a piecemeal fashion. It’s just the way I am. I’ve been told I should just let the movie run in the background while I’m doing something else, and I am aghast. That’s not watching a movie. Movies aren’t wallpaper. Not to me, anyway.
This week on “Supposedly Uplifting Quotations That Are Actually Grim As Hell”
Looking at my calendar for the approaching month ain’t doing me any favors, either. There are end-of-fiscal-year budget meetings that must be televised, and I’m also taking up the slack for some departments that have run out of budget as September approaches. Lacking some credentials, I job in at a lower rate than others. Moving my son into college will, for some reason, take five days. I’m going to try to pretend that is a vacation, which would be nice, I haven’t had one in years.
All this extra work is necessary, of course, because July and August are not satisfied with merely trying to kill you in Texas, they also have to ruin you financially. I challenge any climate denier to live in Houston in the Summer on a part-timer’s salary. They will have as much success as those people who periodically try to eat healthy on food stamps. Unless they’re iguanas and would thrive in an unairconditioned apartment, then the bet’s off.
The “Dog Days” of Summer supposedly go from July 3- August 11, as Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the Sun. August is traditionally the Silly Season in the newspaper trade, when off-the-wall stories proliferate. Add to this one of the most bizarre Presidential campaigns in… well, ever. It’s out of either a well-written Stephen King novel or a poorly written comic book. Yet there is a surprisingly wide variety of Kool-Aid out there and an unbelievable number of people willingly drinking it. There are 10-15 things on my social media feeds that make me prematurely tired every morning, and trust me – I don’t need help to be tired.
I realize there’s no way to get rid of an entire month, but I really wish there was a way for us to just all go somewhere else and let the damn month just do its thing, and we can all come back in September, when things are a little cooler, sweep up the debris, and get back to trying to live our lives as anguish-free as possible. August is a horrible, ugly imposition on us all (My apologies to anyone who was born during this month, like my mother and my brother).
There’s a lot more I want to complain about, but who cares, really? Thanks for reading even this far. Next week begins the meeting schedule anew – I’ll have exactly one evening free next week – but who knows? Maybe I’ll be able to return to a bit of what is, for me, normal. I doubt it, but strange things happen in August. Hope to see you here with better, less bitter, results.
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drfreex.com 
Yep, this is definitely a relate-able post. My own output has taken a hit thanks to not being able to put 100% into some stuff that needs to get done thanks to a few things cooking around here that stink. But I’m going to go on ahead and shut out some of the mess, as it’s not going to get better for a while and I’m hating myself for letting it get to me as much as it has.
Feh, between stuff I don’t want or need to talk about to stuff that needs to be discussed getting trampled by dopes who want to debate and not talk, it’s a weird time to be breathing. But my intent is to be the last man standing in my particular world, so I say bring it. I’ll just put on a pot of coffee and break out the brain knuckles, as deep thought and careful word placement is a great thing as shutting some people down completely.