How have I been wasting time?

Summertime, the silly season, the time to waste time. Even though the seasonal aisle in the grocery store says it's Halloween, we all know it's still summer. So how've I been wasting time?

Not too well, I'm afraid. Summer's been okay, and I have been appreciating not wearing coats and mukluks and big woolly hats, and not having skin that cracks like an egg whenever I move, and I bear these things in mind when the bugs annoy the hell out of me. So that's good, but appreciating/not appreciating doesn't take very long.

Funerals and other death-related things have taken some time, sad to say, but that can happen in any season.

I've been wasting time on room-escape games. Par for the course. I do enjoy these games, which are usually free on the app store, and sometimes the translation from the Japanese is almost decent. My wife likes a good hidden-object game. So she's a treasure-seeker at heart and I'm a... guy who wants to run away from everything, I guess.

I've also been wasting time on a trip down memory lane, reading the Attack of the 50-Year-Old Comics blog. Back when I fancied myself a collector, I loved the Silver Age books the most. This blog reminds me of some books I had, and shows me some I never got. I sold my collection a long time ago and have no intention of starting up again, but it's fun to read about this stuff. Seemed so important to me back then, especially on hot summer afternoons. (A couple of years ago I was reading through Benton Grey's Greylands blog for similar material, but he seems to have shut it down for the time being, alas.)

I've done a little reading, but not too much. Started another book on World War II. Maybe you've heard of it? It was in all the papers at the time (1939 to 1945). I mean, if you're not a modern journalist, or a college student, you probably have. The book is interesting, but I keep looking to read it before bedtime and I seldom get many pages in before I'm asleep. No offense to the book; I'm just tired. I'll be glad to put in a plug, but I have to get a little deeper into it before I can tell if it's plugworthy.

I was thinking about rereading Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber, which I haven't read in decades but remember as being fun. Will they still hold up? Last year I read a book by Zelazny's sometime collaborator Robert Sheckley, a book I remembered fondly, and it was pretty bad and very dated. Had its moments, but it was hard not to think Man, lay off the drugs for a week, all right? I had a lot more tolerance for that stuff in high school and college.

I've also been working on my own book, and having spent an extraordinary amount of time hammering out the plot, I discovered a second act problem and a shortness problem. Eventually I realized that the solution to the first also would solve the second, but for a while I looked like a strange visionary of some sort as I walked the dogs, blank eyes, seeking answers from the clouds and the trees.

We didn't travel again this year, for two reasons: 1) The need to buy a new car ate into the budget a wee bit, and 2) We've yet to find a kennel we really like, and you can't ask someone to look after your two gigantic hairy dogs for a week. Nor have we found any kind of vacation place that says "Please come visit and bring your multiple gigantic hairy dogs." A few look promising until you find out that they only allow dogs small enough to fit in the average handbag. Well, Samsonite doesn't make a bag big enough for our guys.

Plus. my preferred destinations -- Bedrock City, Storytown USA, and the World of Sid and Marty Krofft -- were all unavailable this year. Phooey!

So I've been working. Not even a staycation. I'm glad to be able to work, but as a freelancer, if I don't get work I don't get paid. It's one of those immutable law of nature -- gravity, light, matter, money. And if you don't think money is one of the immutable laws, try telling high school physics teacher you're cutting his pay. You'll get an equal and opposite reaction, all right.

It doesn't bother me that fall is on the way, as evidenced by the aforementioned candy and the baby Muppet fruit I've been seeing.

I love the fall and enjoy the weather. But I feel like I just put away the Christmas stuff. Well, in four months I'll be hauling it out again. What the heck?