Triangle

I have been working extremely feverishly to try to get caught back up to a "good" space in terms of my work after having fallen behind due to several "emergency" add-in work associated with poor planning of others during last week that had thrown my own routine for accomplishing my teaching and research out of kilter and shot my schedule all to hell.   I have been working late, late into the evening (usually 2am or so) every evening since last Thursday including during the weekend to catch back up. After an especially rigorous push all day yesterday, I am now about 95% back into a comfortable, predictable schedule for MY work.  This allowed me to go to bed at a much more reasonable time of around 11:30pm, so I had better sleep and it felt good. 

When the klaxon sound of my alarm awoke me at 5:00am this morning, I was in the midst of an exceedingly pleasant dream.  Actually, it was a memory, that was converted into a dream of sorts.  It was a memory as it was of an actual event that I remember vividly, yet it was very much a dream as I could see not only those around me, but also myself as well as if I were a character in a television show or film.  My wife and I had driven over to her parent's house, and it was so extremely hot that it was one of the very few times my in-laws ever turned on their air conditioning.  It was coming up upon my my mother-in-law's 80th birthday (that would have made my father-in-law probably 82 at the time). 

My wife was taking her Mom shopping, and I was going to spend the afternoon with my father-in-law.  After my wife and mother-in-law left, I remember they were actually still backing out of the driveway.... my father-in-law immediately suggested I go fix the two of us a "good stiff drink".  I dutifully complied with the request. :)  He was in a whisky sort of frame-of mind, so I mixed each of us an appropriately "stiff" whisky and 7-up and threw a few ice cubes into each drink as well.  

My father-in-law always sported a bushy mustache his whole adult life.  And, for the last 15 years or so of his life, his mustache was pristinely and vividly white other than the area around his nostrils and the tips of the mustache which had a slightly amber hue from smoking his pipes.  I always admired how white his hair/mustache had become.  As I have stated before, I think I am forever destined to remain the silvery, blue-grey color of a steel-wool pad, for it is how it seems to run on my side of the family.... and that will hinder my ability to pursue a post-retirement option as a "Santa".  

Well, what my point was before I got side-tracked, was that we were both eager to start talking, and also eager to sample our drinks, and we both took rather hearty, deep drinks from our tumblers, and we both loudly guffawed when we lowered our glasses because each of us had considerable droplets of the drink hanging from the ends of our mustaches due to our rather zealous consumption.

We sat and talked politics for a good 45 minutes or so, sometimes being guided into different topics by the news channel playing in the background.  We both dug out our pipes and and began to compare and share the pipe tobaccos we had with us.  With both of us tending towards a preference for the more robust pipe tobaccos, we both settled into having a bowl of a deeply dark, unadorned burley.  Filling our pipes, we ignited the leaf while continuing to discuss all manner of things related to daily life. A bit later, we started to watch a few episodes of the black & white, half-hour version of "Gunsmoke" on tv and as the afternoon progressed, we refilled our tumblers a few more times and had a few more bowls of pipe tobacco.  We grew ever more comfortable and contented.  We talked about the various character actors we knew and recognized from the episodes and just relaxed across the afternoon, feeling content in our day, and feeling a strong camaraderie.  

We both were a little towards the tipsy side by the time our respective wives returned from their shopping spree.  It was a pure, carefree, and enjoyable afternoon.  And, watching it in my dream felt wonderful but upon awakening its memory instilled a bit of melancholy in me. The loss of my friend, and the seemingly insurmountable task of trying to find a way to experience a similar feeling of being carefree in the current time, felt a bit like a yoke upon my shoulders.

* * * * *

By 5:10am I was pounding out what became 10.5 miles (~17km) of effort on the damn treadmill. During the first half of the run I listened to my Pandora channel that is called "Crosby, Still, Nash, & Young" but in the time since I created it, it has morphed into a rotation of CSN, and CSN&Y, but also includes heavy doses of Croce, Chicago, James Taylor, Cat Stevens,  Carol King, and Todd Rundgren.  During the second half of my run, I watched and participated in the daily Mass from Monday of the Capuchin Chapel I like that is streamed daily (I have to watch a day behind as their morning Mass is typically at 9:00am.).  

 * * * * *

As today is a cyber-only day for me at work, I was able to be washed, dressed, and seated in my home office, with my iced coffee by 7:45am to begin cyborging away.  I look about the shelves on my walls, and see my beautiful pipe rack and glass "canister" humidor of pipe tobacco in front of me and realize I am really not much closer to knowing if I have a plan or path I am going to attempt to follow.  One side of my mind just wants to dive in and splurge to my heart's content.  One side has me continuing to search for a moderate yet still pleasing path, and the third side (I must have a triangle shaped brain) just says it is too much work and too much risk and that probably I should just stay in the lane of being devoid of my pipes.  

Speedy lunch break done for the day. Back to work.  Striving to be a bit AHEAD by the end of the day.

PipeTobacco