A Day Deep in the Doldrums

Actually, my trusty Internet connection was down this morning, so it is a few hours later than when I originally penned this tripe:


Sorry I haven’t written in a while, a couple of days at least, but today was just one of those days I’d sooner crawl back into bed then greet it with a fake smile and that Ozzie Nelson way of seeing things. Nothing went wrong, mind you; nothing right either. It all just went.

Not that this is going to be good or anything... just a note to let you know I'm still out here.

Just a few minutes ago I turned in that big project I alluded to a week ago or so (Remember the 58 sections? Well, there ended up being 64 and it took forever).

From when the project started until now, however, it has encompassed all of my life--the entire thing--so now I think I’ve got post project depression, an empty feeling that I should be doing something because for the past two solid weeks I’ve been in a constant state of “doing something,” like that buzzing feeling you get after a rock concert, where you can still feel the vibration of the speakers throughout your body.

I’m like that. Maybe I’m burnt out (or is it burned?). Maybe the 360 pages I wrote for this one chapter (of five that I will eventually complete… of which two are already done) finally got to me. Sadly, it isn’t interesting, like I’m solving some world problem. It is 360 pages of mostly mindless repetition that is almost as confusing as it is monotonous.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep. That’s probably it, but I did well this weekend, overall. Both Friday and Saturday night, I didn’t hit the hay until nearly 4am both times, but I got to sleep into almost noon. Well, Saturday, I was up at 9am because Kara had a meeting, but the second she was home, I was back in bed for another couple of hours. It’s been like for the past two weeks. I would actually nap in the middle of the day, just like Matthew and Natalie…but the days that I have the kids home with me, I’m not so lucky with the naps.

That’s where “Mother’s Little Helper” comes into the fray, and I must say that I'm quite addicted. The house is adequately stocked with enough two-liter bottles of Diet Coke/Diet Pepsi to host one heck of a Church Sunday Social, and every time either company offers a sale at the local grocery store, I stock up, usually getting the ones that have some kind of artificial flavoring—either lime or vanilla. The lime flavor from either brand both taste like cough syrup and I only buy it if they’re out of vanilla. Since only Pepsi offers it anymore (Coke decided they weren’t interested in the flavor game a few months back), it has my latest carbonated beverage of choice.

I can’t take a drink of a diet-soda with vanilla flavoring without remembering all of the good times I had at FenderBenders, a little 50s-style restaurant in Glendora that I used to frequent. It was kitsch, chock full of all of the things you’d expect to see in any diner in 1956, say, and I think it gave my generation the wrong impression of what the 50s looked like. Everything was red, chrome, vinyl and smelled like bubble gum… well, that’s probably pretty accurate. Anyways, the place opened in June 1988, but since I was on vacation with the folks (Wyoming, Montana, etc. that year), I didn’t first go there until July 12. What did I eat, you ask? Well, the aforementioned vanilla coke, of course, but I also had a BLT, fries and a hot fudge sundae. The whole thing cost me exactly $7.00. Don’t ask me how I know all of this… I just do, and if I told you, you’d never look at me the same way again. The last time I went there was in September 1991. It was the last time all of my high school friends were together at the same time. The following day, we all went to college and on our separate ways.

Well, that’s not to say that I didn’t have a good time at FenderBenders with my vanilla cokes, right? You’re probably asking yourself, Ryan, exactly how many times did you enjoy a vanilla coke at FenderBenders? Okay, since you asked, I’ll tell you. I went there 10 times in 1988 alone, if that gives you any kind of estimate of what sort of creature of habit I am. Oh, and if you dated me, went out on a date with me, or saw me on a date with someone else, odds are really good we were sitting in a booth at FenderBenders and I was having a vanilla coke. Those poor girls.

Seriously, I’m not going anywhere with this… and if you’re a new visitor to my site, really, rest assured that there’s usually more yuks than this. That, and I sometimes have a much better point, or at least some sort of goal to write towards.

Well, maybe tomorrow will be a better day. Of course, now that I turned in this latest chapter, tomorrow, I get start on another one. Yippee.

Jeez, go to bed and quite wasting your time reading this.




Okay, for those of you just dying to know: How did I know the exact date I first ate at FenderBenders? How did I know exactly what I ordered and exactly how much it cost? Well, as anal-retentive as you might think I am now, I was more so when I was younger, and I kept a ledger book of everything I spent all though high school, from December 30, 1987 (first purchase was the book, of course, for $5.31) up until the five burritos I bought at Taco Bell for $3.19 on February 10, 1992. It’s a lot of fun now to look though the book and remember the fun times I had, but mostly I just flip through the pages shaking my head in disbelief that I was so fastidious and peculiar.

Nerd is the word I think you may be looking for.

Not much has changed, it seems.