Rainy Days and Mondays

Over the entire weekend, we had on and off rain showers.  It would be sunny, then the clouds would roll in and we’d get rain for 10-30 minutes.  Sometimes it would be really heavy and there was even some thunder at times.  It was really annoying because it was like the weather couldn’t make up its mind.  I keep thinking about adapting a line from Yoda that appeared in one of the three real Star Wars movies “Rain or Rain Not”.

In some ways, it seems like a metaphor for my life right now.  Well, not a very good metaphor but just the aimless part where it can’t figure out what to do.  If you think of rain and sun as moods, then it fits as well.

We did get out to the symphony on Friday night.  The show was supposed to start at 8 but there were storms in the area so they didn’t even really let us in until a little before 7.  This is an outdoor event so you bring everything you need like chairs and such so you had everyone hauling stuff in and finding a place to sit.  Since it was a Friday night and the weather was dicey, the crowd was way down and that was a little unfortunate because the solo pianist was incredibly talented.  And the rain held off for the entire night which made it a very enjoyable night.

I get classical music isn’t everyone’s thing.  I had to acquire a taste for it as well but I find I really enjoy just sitting back and letting the music flow around, over and through me.  Without lyrics, I can make up pictures to parts of the music based on how it sounds (yeah, I do that, hope it doesn’t sound too weird).  Just the way a piece can be slow and soft and then just build and build as more and more strings come in and the pace gets quicker.  The depth of sound that can be created amazes me at times.

The rest of the weekend wasn’t very eventful.  With the on and off rain, there was really no way to get Rocco to the park.  Every time we thought about going, another burst of showers came through the area.  He never understands but he does a good sulk when he finally realizes there is no trip the part in his future.

So I found another series of “teen fiction” to read.  This one takes places in a fictional realm so it isn’t a true dystopian future but it’s a pretty bad place to be living with war and evil kings and the like.  I do like the escapism part just because I try to imagine what life would be like in these fictional worlds.  But there are times when those stories do more to drag me down than lift me up.  I can get too wrapped up in the characters and I’m the guy who likes the happy ending.  Good vs evil and good always wins with no conditions.  My problem with this series is that the books don’t really link together.  I mean they are describing events that happen in this world but the main characters in the first book barely appear in the second and it wasn’t like they finished the character arcs in the first book.  Plus, the second book takes place at roughly the same time as the first book so we already know certain things that are going to happen.  It defeats the purpose of having a big build up when we already know the outcome.  The only thing we don’t know is which, if any, minor characters are going to die.

I’ve come to really hate books where a character is taken prisoner or is in some ways enslaved and that seems to be a popular theme in these stories.  I know it gives you the thrill when they break out and possibly take revenge on their captors but, too often, it just drags on for far too long and I just don’t like reading about someone being trapped in a situation.  It just seems so hopeless and I end up feeling that way.

Or that could just be my reaction to work where I do feel trapped from time to time.  The higher up and big thinkers keep telling us that there is a future and that it would have to include the kind of things I work on.  Of course, they’d tell me that whether there was or wasn’t a future so it comes down to do I trust them.  But I will get to 30 years in another couple of years (and, yes, that makes me feel really OLD) and there are some perks associated with that so does it make sense to leave or just ride it out and see what happens.

Speaking of old, my birthday is tomorrow.  I got a card from Pop on Saturday.  Mom was the type who wrote all the important dates in the calendar at the beginning of the year so he’s living off that.  Mom was the one who picked out and sent cards and Pop can’t really see so he had his helper pick out a card that he signed.  I called him yesterday and it almost felt like he was making an excuse in case I didn’t like it which made me a little sad.  I honestly didn’t even have an expectation for a card so anything that he was able to do was a bonus.

The problem with birthdays is it just gives me another reason to look back over the past year which I don’t want to do because this year certainly won’t rank in my top 10 years of my life.  I also don’t like all the “what are you going to do” questions.  Here’s the reality.  I’ve got a lesson that night and I have to work on Wednesday so I really don’t want to go to some big fancy dinner on Tuesday.  I couldn’t even really get motivated to find a place to go this weekend.  I’ve got people at work bugging me to decide where to go for my birthday lunch and I don’t have a clue.  I should point out that this is my general opinion of birthdays and not something I’m more down on this year.  I don’t know.  Once you reach a certain age, they don’t really have a lot of meaning to me.  This is going to sound weird but I have to think about when someone asks how old I’m going to be.  I don’t know it offhand so I have to do a quick subtraction to figure it out.

Anyway, that’s probably enough of this.  Tomorrow is Tuesday and the rain is supposed to stop and we are just a few weeks away from our State Fair which is something I live for.  Don’t they say that the sun will come out tomorrow??