The best one in quite some time, for that matter. And on the day after the Braves’ season came to a premature conclusion, it might have seemed unlikely, but hard as it may be for some people to believe, I do find quite a number of things more important than baseball.
There will need to be a party to celebrate this, I have decided.
T’was an action-packed July 4th weekend for me this year. Participated in three different parties, lit off around $200 dollars worth of South Carolina fireworks, and ran yet again in the Peachtree Road Race. I felt like I did as good as I’ve run in previous years, but was mortified to find out that I was almost an entire nine minutes slower than last year. Yikes. Regardless, it was a fun and eventful weekend, all thanks to the wonderful people around me.
I’m forced to realize that whenever I come up to Virginia, if I’m ever left by myself, I’m pretty much bored out of my mind. My parents have cooler weekend agendas than I do, and if my friends don’t answer beck and call to my spontaneous, out-of-the-blue text messages/calls, then I’m finding myself with absolutely nothing to do.
Amazingly, it was worse in the past when there was no internet access for me to usurp, but at least I had to foresight to bring an old wireless router on one of my previous trips to ensure that I had a wireless access point so I could bitch about in my brog about how boring it can get up here when I have nothing to do.
I went to the DMV, and I was in and out of there in literally less than five minutes. Absolutely, unfathomably, inconceivable.
Seriously, I walked inside, and there was no line, so I was immediately ushered to the information booth where I was given a number for my circumstances (renewing tag), along with the invoice. I sat down and pulled out my checkbook, and began writing “City of Atlanta Tax Commis-” and then my number is called. Dumbfounded, I sit down in front of the lady behind the glass, as she looks at me impatiently as I fill out the rest of my check. I tear the check off, give it to her, and she gives me my new 2010 blue tag sticker, and I’m literally like “that’s it?” and, unamused, she looks back at me, and responds “that’s it.” And then I’m back out the door.
It took me four times longer to drive to and from the place than it did to get my tags renewed.
Otherwise, life is, still pretty weary these days. I haven’t found faith yet, but I have been strangely less inclined to blurt out “GOD DAMN IT” and other supposed blasphemous terms. Yet the most extreme of my actions was that I was in my car listening to an old CD, and when Marilyn Manson’s The Fight Song came on, and the lyrics where it goes “I’m not a slave, to a god, that doesn’t exist,” I instinctively skipped the rest of the track. For some reason, it just doesn’t feel appropriate to be listening to that, lately.
I was raised Catholic, and I went to church every Sunday for pretty much most of my entire childhood. Naturally, as most things we’re forced to do as children, I disliked it, and resented it.
When I turned sixteen, and had my drivers license, my parents gave me the freedom to drive myself to church on Sundays. That lasted all about maybe three weeks before I realized that I could very easily skip church, and go be a rebellious teenager instead.
Aside from a few weddings, and special occasions, I haven’t set foot in church since.
But lately, the thought of sitting somewhere quiet and seemingly holy for just a few minutes doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.
