"But there were no battles. There were only skirmishes of vague resolution. And EVIL did not wear one face but many, and all of them were vacuous and more often than not the chin was slicked with drool. In fact, he was being forced to the conclusion that there was no EVIL in the world at all but only evil-or perhaps (evil). At moments like this he suspected that Hitler had been nothing but a harried bureaucrat and Satan himself a mental defective with a rudimentary sense of humor-the kind that finds feeding firecrackers wrapped in bread to seagulls unutterably funny.
The great social, moral and spiritual battles of the ages boiled down to Sandy McDougall slamming her snot-nosed kid in the corner and the kid would grow up and slam his own kid in the corner, world without end, hallelujah, chunky peanut butter. Hail Mary, full of grace, help me win this stock-car race."
--Stephen King, 'Salem's Lot
I've had that page marked as something I wanted to write down elsewhere since tearing through the book earlier this month. My big plans of spending all my spare time reading and writing and working out my chest to have as perfect a beach body as possible have all sort of gotten a little bit tangled and spangled and snarled and mauled by the general vicissitudes of life. Other than 'Salem's Lot, I've only also read At the Mountains of Madness and most of Stephen King's Night Shift. I keep accumulating greater and higher stacks of books on my to-read shelves and only so many on the shelf to be cataloged on my GoodReads.com member site.
The plans to work out have been thwarted by pure laziness. In the morning, after work, I usually hurt too badly to think about push ups and working with free weights and the resistance band that has gathered more dust than it has gotten usage. In the evenings, when I wake up, I usually take at least an hour to become fully alert and oriented to even think of making my muscles burn before work. However, this blog is all about redemption and writing and creativity and honesty, so I'm thinking about plans for motivation. I've already gotten myself from 230 to 180 pounds from simply watching my diet and walking as often as possible. Adding a little cardio and some weight training at night when I wake up can't be all that difficult, it's just a question of finding the time to make the motivation to do it. Besides, not too many days left before the beach. Of course, you never know, miracles do happen (which just so happens to fall in line with the concept behind the short story I'm thumbing away at on a secret portion of my blog.
The weekend was a great one. I came home Friday and got to bed relatively early on the couch after watching an episode of the Masters of Horror series. This was "Cigarette Burns," and it was not bad (but really not all that great either...kinda reminded me a little of Coldheart Canyon by Clive Barker). My uncle had come in town, so I ran to grab us some Raising Cane's chicken and came home to devour a portion before tooling around online for a while and texting Tyler while he was at work. I got back into bed and fell asleep from eleven until about two in the morning. When I was up, I was up. I eventually got ready for the Saturday plans I'd made with Stephen and Stacy, and I went out to grab some new incense from the Peace of Mind Center and then journeyed over to The Thrifty Peanut in Bossier. I bought a lot of classics and a few more literary selections than I've been grabbing this summer, mostly out of the guilt I felt from the fact that Laura's recommendations list put mine to shame as far as books with merit go. After the Peanut, Stacy and Stephen and I went to The Book Rack where I grabbed a handfull of Agatha Christie and a piece of crap I've been wanting to read for several years, the sequel to one of my all-time favorites, Lace 2.
For lunch, we hit Which 'Wich, where Stacy and I both ate chicken parmesan sandwiches before she bought me a Cake Batter Shake at Coldstone Creamery (incidentally, the sandwich I could really take or leave; however, the shake....my God! literally, heaven through a straw). After lunch, I was fully prepped to lapse into a full-on diabetic coma, so I came home to nap before we met up at Tinsel Town to see The Hangover 2, but the 8:30 show was sold out, so we got tickets for ten o'clock before sitting down to remarkably reprehensible service at Applebee's (not really eatin' so good in the neighborhood). The movie was funny, but I found myself cracking up through some of the parts that no one else in the theatre seemed to really find all that amusing. For instance, while the Chinese drug dealer sings a rendition of Time in a Bottle while their elevator climbs to the roof of a building for an elaborately set up scene, I couldn't stop laughing, and I eventually had to take off my glasses and wipe my eyes. Nobody else seemed to think it was all that funny. All in all, though, I highly recommend the movie to anyone with no overtly Christian and/or easily offended sensibilities.
After the movie, I came home and did more procrastinating and time wasting online than I did really accomplishing anything that I'd set as a personal goal for the weekend. I guess I went a long, round-about way of explaining why I've lacked in adequate posts for the past several days. The few tiny additions that come before this one are self-explanatory. Personally, I blame Tyler Smith. He makes himself a little irresistable and difficult to part from when we're actually together.
Tomorrow, I plan to come home to balance my checkbook and pray. I'll probably have to move funds from one spot to the other and write down some sort of plan because I've been ultra lazy on paying bills on time and getting everything taken care of in that arena so that I have that to NOT worry over. Maybe I'll get off of here and work out. Maybe I'll work on my short story for a bit. Maybe get in bed and try to finish the collection of short stories.
Of course, my Netflix queue does have quite a few films that will be expiring tomorrow and I've yet to watch them.... le sigh.
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