Based on my calculations, it’s been about 12,037 days (give or take a few) since the sexual encounter that started my life. I’m still not sure how I feel about the planet Earth, or the human experience. Eating is nice. Bathing can be fun. Putting on clothes is hit or miss. Definitely not keen on work.

I’m wrapping up the last day of my third-to-last week of work in my current profession (Unix Systems Administration). The end can’t arrive soon enough. No-one seems to know what to say to me, around the office. I wander by my coworkers’ offices and try to chat, but they give me lifeless smiles and keep their bodies pointed toward their keyboards … bad body language. Maybe they’re just jealous I get to escape?

Of course, I’m just escaping to another kind of work, another way to avoid having to grow my own food. One of my co-workers summed it up well, a few days ago. “My wife says that I still haven’t figured out what I want to do in life, but she’s wrong. I know exactly what I want to do: nothing.”

Better get back to it.

I have kept this secret for a while, since people at work know about this blog (although I doubt they look at it), but I can now safely announce that I’m going to law school. I’ll be a “1L” at the University of Colorado, starting August 21.

So please, everybody, do whatever you can to injure your necks or get sexually harrassed in the next three years so that I have some clients when I get out. Much obliged.

A wooden boat exquisitely crafted to look like a Ferrari. Dang. Video here.

If you’ve ever wondered about the relationship between radio waves, the color yellow, and Depends Undergarments ™, this diagram is for you, courtesy of XKCD.

I found this excellent column about the mind of mass murderers like Cho, or Klebold, at www.time.com: Link

You know, I have to admit that I’m not a very *good* blogger. I’m inconsistent. I’m required to be consistent as an employee, as a husband, and as a father - that’s about all the consistency I can handle.

Recreational activities (like this blog) don’t get that level of commitment. I guess that’s the difference between me and Will Wheaton. That, and the fact that my part on Star Trek, The Next Generation, was cut during the pilot.

All of which is to say that I don’t think I’m going to do any more cartoons for a while. When I drew the first three, I thought, “Hey, maybe I can draw a lot of these and have a successful web comic and/or submit them for print syndication.” (Eight years ago I did, in fact, submit 6 weeks of a daily comic strip for syndication.)

But doing that really doesn’t gel with my other goals at the moment. Drawing isn’t, actually, all that much fun. It’s the initial creative process, and the positive (usually) feedback from the readers, which make cartooning enjoyable. So, right now, it’s not the thing to do. Oh well. That’s not to say, of course, that I won’t change my mind.

Sorry, folks, I wasn’t able to get a cartoon out for this week. I’d hoped to do one every week, but my “tiredness” turned into an absolutely mind-numbing case of insomnia. You would think that would give me plenty of time to draw, but I spent most of the time lying in bed trying to sleep. My bad. Am I out of the weeds? I don’t know.

I am out of the weeds. Sleep is good. Soooo good. - SF

According to the Boston Globe, (link) a woman is suing two doctors for the cost of raising her child because one failed to abort her child, and the other failed to notice that she was still pregnant, much later.

“Mommy, do you love me?”
“Well, you know, now that you’re here, sure.”

I hope the woman had enough forsight to factor in the cost of massive therapy for her daughter. Something tells me she’s going to need it.

I have a recommendation. Don’t turn 30. In fact, stay away from 29, too, just to be safe. If you’re reading this too late, well, I’m very sorry.

I reached my 29th birthday without any significant physical problems. I was never gifted as an athlete, but also seemed to be blessed with a degree of robustness. I could eat what I wanted, and do what I wanted, and never worried about getting fat, sick, or injured.

But several months before turning 30, things began to change. I’m starting to feel like the used cars I buy. Here’s a list of stuff that’s broken (and definately out of warranty) in the last two years:

1) I’ve gotten approximately 58 cavities and had two teeth removed.
2) I can no longer eat spicy food. Water gives me heart burn, now.
3) I’ve gained 20 lbs. (But then, who hasn’t.)
4) The formerly 20/10 vision in my right eye is now 20/11,436, and I have so many floaters that the view from inside my head looks like I’m snorkeling in a toilet bowl.
5) I injured my knee in a risky snowboarding maneuver known as “going in a straight line”.
6) I broke my hip.
6) My shoulders and back pop when I raise my arms over my head to put on my glasses.

At this rate of system failure, I’ll be having walker races in the hall of my nursing home by the time I’m 40.