https://youtu.be/usNsCeOV4GM






ALARM ALARM ALARM BUZZING LIKE A BUZZING THING THAT IS A BASTARD BUZZING AT SIXFORTYFIVE BECAUSE OF SNOOZING BUTTON I LATE LATE WAKE UP FROM DREAM ABOUT WAKING UP BECAUSE OF LATE AND ALARM BUZZING NOW WITH MORE BUZZING JUMP UP FROM BED RUN RUN TO SHOWER



No no, C.M. go back to bed. You're not late, just come back and you can explain when you wake up. It's okey, C.M.. You can even turn the music off if you like.




    I work at a school. It's a leetle thing, but I get a chuckle out of being able to skip work and school for this.

   Thursday, that's what we've got here. No work today. We will wait for the cable man. Allegedly, he will connect our household, by wire, to that post outside, granting us better television reception and additional channels. Well, they laughed at Edison too, so I think I'll hear this fellow out.  He's due in a few hours.  It's 7:30 in the morning now, still early, but having slept in feels pretty good.

   Outside, it's a lot livelier and a little noisier than I'm used to seeing my street.  Not that there's a lot of traffic, garbage trucks or that sort of thing.  No, I'm used to leaving around 6:30, so it's nice and quiet, empty, when I see things in the morning. 

   The shrink wrap is still mostly there on the new day as I look out my kitchen window, but there are so many people. Lots of folks moving around. Mostly kids and their moms. The school is a few blocks from here. It's usually so quiet when I see it, because I leave before their day starts, and get back after it's done. But I guess this is where those kids come from.

    So many more doggies in this neighborhood than I was aware of. People and their dogs walking around while it's still nice and cool out.

   I sit at my table, eating a nice big orange and watching the morning happen.

   I realize I' zoning out looking through my window.  Shower time is now.  Not having to rush, I can take my time and enjoy a what they call a relaxing shower.

   Boy the sky is pretty this morning.



  Heather wakes up around this time, knocked out of sleep by our two cats.  They seem to insist on using her as a wrestling mat.  Wonder where I left the spray bottle.

   Cats pushed off, we make the bed and start talking about what might be nice for breakfast.  We're out of pancake batter, so I can't set us up with pancake burritos.  So eggy in the basket it is.



   Delicious. 

   So far, this is shaping up to be a lovely Sunday morning.  I've taken my time getting up, and having something to eat, and the time expands as I ease into the big soft chair.  Hey, this Drew Carey kid hosts hisself a pretty good gameshow.


   There's that cableman.


   My wife is the one in charge of this account, she's the one set up having cable added to our internet, and it's her name on the service order.  So naturally, he talks to me the whole time.

   Well, not all of the time.  I manage to zone out again.  I love watching people do things.  In this case, it's the vaudevillian hobo going up the street getting soda cans out of the bins.  You can't tell, as I ended up having to snap the picture through the window screen, but I call him the vaudevillian hobo because of his baggy striped trousers, checked jacket, and what looks like an no-foolin' pork pie with a floppy brim.


   Nah, I shouldn't make fun of the guy.  If you've got to go around getting cans out of the trash, you're probably not doing it for fun.  This is almost medieval-type employment.  Like Sin-Eater or Fuller.

   Once cableman is done, we can leave the house.

   This is my car:

We won't be taking my car.  The Phantom Cruiser has been in dry dock for a while, we can't afford to fix it.  It does not run.  Twice a week we push it from one side of the street to the other to avoid getting a ticket on street cleaning days.  Another street cleaning morning and no ticket.

We'll be taking Heather's car.  The not-broken car that we completely did not move to a safe spot.  Our prize is a parking ticket.



   Well, it's too nice a day to kick ourselves about it now.  And besides the Autry Museum is waiting for us.

   Let's go to Griffith Park.


This is the exhibit we're here to see:


   There's a lot of streets here named for saints, this exhibit tells the story of those saints and explores the connection between the stories of those streets and the saints they are named after.  Pretty deep stuff for a cowboy museum.

   There was one piece we both liked.  It was on San Ysidro Drive in Bel-Air.  It showed one of the day laborers who worked in one of the houses on that street as San Ysidro.  This saint was a poor Spanish farmer in the 16th century who worked on other people's lands to support his family.  As with many of the other pieces, the connection was obvious, but all the more poignant for it.

   The piece on Santa Monica Boulevard was pretty hard to take.  St. Monica, was a long-suffeing lady who struggled for a long time to take care of her no-good son.  The piece was done as an prayer altar in a Catholic church and showed various mothers who had lived similar lives as the eponymous St. Monica.  These women had all lost children to street violence.  There were several candles on the altar, as well as cards that many people had written messages and left behind.



   Because I'm a jerk, I leaned over to read some of them.  The first ones I read started out like I expected, and I chuckled a bit.  You know, this or that kid wants a bike, some guy wanted the Chargers to win.  Reading the rest of them hurt:

"I wish my house wouldnt get solld and want a Nintendo DS and a Super Mario game for Chrismas"

"Dear Lord, Please help David's business  to do well. Thank you."

"See you soon!  Will I get wings too - Ricky"

It kept up, each one a harder punch in my smarmy face than the last one.  I decided I should stop reading these. I'll share the last two I read, as they made me smile:

"I love cat in the Hat"

"WILLIAM WAS HERE!"

   This part was pretty fun.  There was a screen on which was projected footage taken from around the city under a blank card like the one the saints portraits were painted on.





"We've still got a little time before the show tonight.  The Big Boy is across from the theater, you wanna go, C.M.?"

Yeah!



It was a fine way to spend this work day, treating Thursday like a Sunday.

That's what a C.M. does when he skips work and school. It's a completely fine day where I wasn't in danger, and didn't meet new and interesting people, but just a fine time for chilling my face out.