The plan was to leave for the Poconos at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. A relaxing long weekend with my family in the woods – I’d get reading done, get the opportunity to absorb my running death and think about my divergent future plans. It was going to be nice.
Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Today I’m in work, complete with a failing unit and the associated night club fire drill – the one where everyone runs for the door, gets stuck trying to escape and is incinerated. Furthermore, I stepped on some girl’s foot in volleyball last night. While I think she took the worst of it, I woke up with an annoying sprained foot as well. At least I’m already too injured to run, otherwise I’d be really annoyed that I became too injured to run playing volleyball.
So I traded a peaceful vacation for work and a sprained foot.
Wah, waah, wah, sniffle.
Anyway, two words of the week this week. I’ve been brewing these for a while. First, we have strictures stolen from a preening friend’s away message. Second, there’s meritocracy a social concept that should be employed everywhere, despite my opinion that there’s a negative connotation to the word. You know who gave it that connotation? Stupid people, that’s who.
Words 
I had a bizarre dream about you last night. You had just gotten engaged to a girl nobody had ever met or heard about. I’m trying, even now, to place who the girl actually is, as her likeness must have been plucked from some aspect of my life, even if just a face on the subway: blonde, kind of plain-looking, in shape.
Anyway, a bit later in the dream, I walked into a restaurant/cafeteria — very casual place, with picnic tables, might have even been a beer-garden or something — and I stole what turned out to be your mother’s seat at a table full of other Goshen mothers and gals of many ages (it was some kind of all-female gathering). She’d gotten up, and by the time she came back, I was there, and (without realizing it was Eric Furst’s mother, since this woman was NOT your actual mother, whom I’ve seen pictures of) I responded with something along the lines of, “You snooze, you lose.” She stalked off, upset.
Later on, I apologized to her, explaining that I didn’t realize who she was. You were there at that point, sans fiancee, smirking in the background. And then I woke up, I think.
The smirking part is pretty accurate.
By the way, my middle name is Jonathan. You have something of a streak going now.