Days Off

I don't know why the dialogue of this otherwise-palatable techno-fable of pending planetary doom and extraterrestrial friendship bugged me so darn much. It just seemed weirdly repetitive. It was like the screenwriter had a certain verbal tic that he fell back into whenever he placed the characters in a tough spot. But as always in the movies, the end is affirmative.

 Driving on to the ferry is like the moment when your vacation really begins.

It seems no one wants to go to the Flea Market on Independence Day. Maybe the holiday makes us crave something NEW, as our forefathers yearned for a sparkling, untested form of government in which they could drive around and pick up those hot colonial chicks. We don't want someone else's old picked-over system of self-rule! We want our democracy with an an extended guarantee, lit with brief sodium explosions and sternum-bashing fusillades of canon fire, not dusty, chipped in the corners, and half-price with no returns.

So at the Flea Market today, the tables are empty, the castoff free marketeers away enjoying some well-earned air conditioning. Pickings are slim.

And then we see it.

My options for producing even mediocre-quality entertainment shrink like parents in a Disney movie when illness confines me to bed on my day off. Fortunately, a little good news from the outside world cheers me up a bit.

From the Monarch ski area near Salida, Colorado comes this exciting moving picture with soundtastic synchronized musical effects! This footage, from a trip with my sister, bro-in-law, and nephew, unites the once-disparate genres of professional daredevil ski video, dance tune video, and home movie.

When Jen decided to move across the country, I fired up the InterTubes to get more information on this distant mysterious land known as "Oregon." Technology puts lots of information at our fingertips, but can it help answer the question of what will happen to your friendship after your friend packs up a van and heads off into the sunset?

It's the first day of snowboarding season, and nothing, not even shirt-sleeve warm weather, a constant depressing drizzle of rain, near-zero visibility due to fog, and an unfortunate lack of snow can stop us from hitting the slopes. And by hitting, I mean literally hitting. Hard.

In a last warm spell before winter chills the ocean, I pack up the camping gear and head back to the beach for one more surfing trip. Although I initially only fear the few remaining creepy campground people in my vicinity, a far more sinister development - no decent waves to ride - proves even more troubling.

A pleasant autumn walk around town takes a grim and ghoulish turn.

My friend Jen is moving across the country soon, so in preparation, we hold a yard sale. She needs to divest herself of some of her dead mom's former possessions, and I'm trying to unload some items I just haven't used recently, like my adhesive glow-in-the-dark stars and my Avenging Unicorn Play Set. As the day gets longer, we grow increasingly desperate to get rid of every single item we can. Bonus: see if you can catch the  math error.

With a new surfboard in tow, we set off for a last camping trip to the beach. But nothing, neither the season nor a short ride atop a breaking wave, lasts long.

There's nothing like having your birthday fall on your day off. But when your day off falls on a weekday, there's also no one around to come out and play. The sludgy, fertile ribbon of oil-slicked green trickling through Our Nation's Capital beckons.

A few mid-week days off afford the opportunity for a surfing getaway. Unfortunately, surfing and carrying a camera - or for that matter, carrying a camera and surfboard while trying to open a door - prove vexingly difficult.

It's 6 AM Sunday morning, and my 24-hour shift at the firehouse is at an end. Coffee cuts through the grogginess a bit, but what really gets me moving is knowing that in 48 hours I'll be back here and on duty again. Time is bleeding out of the world. First, the drive...

It's a race to see who can start their vacation first... and beat the rest of the family to the best bedroom in the rented house.

After hundreds hours of painstaking labor, Bob lowers his intricate remote-controlled sailboat into the ocean.