Woo Hoo! Three Day Weekend!

I have not had three days off in a row in some time. To be honest, I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with myself over the next 72 hours. Usually, even if I have an afternoon to myself, there's that knowledge that I have to wake up and go to work the next day lingering in the back of my mind the whole time.

That sounds unpleasant, but it's actually very useful. You're motivated to go out and do things when you know you have to go to work the next day. Like grocery shopping, or getting haircuts, or doing laundry, or getting your car washed. For example, let's say that some scumbag Staff Pro working security at a rock concert happens to discover and confiscate the glass pipe you use for drugs. (Not scary drugs...pot...) You'd have to go up to Melrose Ave. and browse the smoke shops up there to find a new pipe.

But if you have three days off in a row, here's the refrain you're likely to repeat..."Ah, it's no big deal. I'll go tomorrow." Fair enough...I have today, tomorrow and Saturday off of work - I could theoretically get any number of errands done in that time.

Today, my friend Matt is coming up from Long Beach and we're going to have lunch, which I'm sure will be the beginning of a liesurely afternoon. Then tomorrow, I'll probably watch movies all day, broken up by a two hour block when I'll think about what I want to have for lunch intensely before giving up and going to Carl's Jr.

So I'll be leaving two days worth of "stuff to do" all for Saturday, just like I used to do with Sundays in high school. You remmeber that? I'd blow off all my homework and everything else you had going on Friday night, and forget about it until Sunday afternoon, when in a panic at 4 pm I'd realize I had a massive amount of crap to get done. My A.P. U.S. History teacher used to make us read through every chapter in the whole textbook while taking diligent notes, which is a pretty useful strategy for getting kids to digest information about American History, and also for making an entire room full of 15 year olds want to murder you while your sleep.

U.S. History note-taking was always a Sunday evening activity. Sundays, in that way, were essentially the worst day of the week. Even on school days, you'd get out with enough time to have a semblance of an afternoon to yourself.

And now I'm setting myself up for a big fall on Saturday with this new three-day weekend, I can feel it already. The trash has started piling up in my room, for one, and if I don't gather it together and throw it away soon, I fear the task itself may become overwhelming. It would be easier to simply move out of this room and turn it over to LA County for landfill use.

And then there's laundry! Last week, I tried to do laundry only to discover that the dryer in our building was non-functional. But of course, you only discover that a dryer isn't working when your clothes have...already finished a wash cycle. And are therefore sopping wet.

It wasn't too big a deal, really. I air-dried most of my smaller belongings, and for pants and sheets I surruptitiously used to dryer in the building right across the way. I've heard rumors circulating that the dryer might be fixed, however (thank God for those Spanish classes as a UCLA undergrad), so I think Saturday might be the day I give it another try.

I'm sure I could come up with 100,000,000 more little stupid things I should get done, but I don't want to bore you people. My point is made...sometimes, longer periods of time off suck because you accumulate busy work you would have spread out effectively if you were more busy.