This was supposed to be a low-stress day of maintenance. I’ve needed one for the last two weeks, at least, and it started out fine. I slept until almost noon, which still didn’t give me eight hours, but was enough for one night-slash-day. And I spent a good hour or two reading (rereading, that is, Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury, a book I probably last read at least thirty years ago, maybe forty, but which I picked up again this week because there is a “sequel” of some sort available).

The day was floating along about the way I wanted it to. I didn’t want to leave the house, but I did make my daily trip to the post office. I could have waited until tomorrow, when I have to go out anyway, but I wanted to get the two Netflix DVDs in the mail before the last pick-up, so that they get them Monday and I can get something else.

The two movies, by the way, couldn’t have been more different from each other. They were David and Lisa, the stark 1962 psychological drama, and Because I Said So, the most annoyingly chatty romantic comedy I’ve seen in a long time (at least since Hanging Up, which I also hated). Somebody turned Diane Keaton loose, and she didn’t fare very well playing a character which could have been named “stock Diane Keaton character times ten.”

So I got the DVDs posted and came home to settle down and watch the Giants game. For some reason, the local Fox station was instead showing the endless Yankees-Red Sox game, which was still in the seventh inning when the Giants game was supposed to be starting. Needless to say, I stomped around the house kicking furniture while the game went on and on and on. By the time it ended and switched over, I got to see the last out of the top of the fifth, which meant (a) that the Giants game was exactly half over already, and (2) that I was just in time to see even more commercials.

While I was waiting for the Red Sox to finish off the lowly Yankees, I took out my frustrations on the high weeds in the garden just outside my front door. Let me tell you, they were no match for my fury and wrath, although looking out now it’s hard to see that I got much done out there. I was a little more mellow afterward, though, and settled in to watch the rest of the game. I’m still pretty pissed off about missing half of it.

So that was my day of rest. After watching the Giants finish losing to the Phillies, I watched Night at the Museum, the tedious Ben Stiller blockbuster from last year. I don’t seem to be liking the new movies much lately. Maybe I need to cleanse my palate with a little John Wayne or Katherine Hepburn. Or even a better Ben Stiller movie, like— well, I guess I can’t actually think of one I really liked. Madagascar?