Today was the second day of my vacation and I started by lingering in bed. I spent some quality time with TR. I had a bowl of oatmeal. I had a cup of coffee. I sat in the living room in the silence of the morning, drinking my coffee, and listening to the birds sing. I thought about how overstimulated our lives can be in this modern age.
Breakfast was with Bob and Tony at the Hickory Pit, followed by a walk-through at Fry's Electronics, where I picked up a SD memory card for my video camera. I also grabbed a few other miscellaneous things I thought I needed and one of those things was Neil Young's greatest hits. the Neil Young CD kind of reached out and grabbed me because Tony was talking about the song "Cinnamon Girl" while we were at breakfast. Besides, you can never go wrong with Neil Young.
After breakfast I went out to run a couple of errands and had to slow myself down because I found myself rushing through the tasks. I literally stopped myself and reminded myself that there was no reason to rush. Normally I like to knock off all of my errands in one day on the weekend since it will leave me the other day free. Without really thinking about it I had slipped into that rhythm. So I told myself "slow down, slow down, slow down" and picked up assorted odds and ends that I've been needing.
Then I headed home, unpacked the items I bought, put some of them away, and put the rest to use. I spent a very lazy afternoon doing some incidental cleaning and watching the DVR. I watched an episode of "Haven" from SyFy, I watched an episode of "Torchwood: Miracle Day" from Starz, and I watched a Gemma Atherton movie "Tamara Drewe". All of them were worth watching. I especially enjoyed the movie with Gemma Atherton. It was sort of a sweet quirky little movie, which almost always gets me. I thought the best characters in the movie were the two young teenage girls who serve as sort of a Greek chorus, observing and commenting on all the goings-on. I'd recommend it if you can find it On Demand or on Netflix.
While I was sitting in my chair watching the DVR I also engaged in a little bit of cleaning. In my bathroom there are two drawers under the sink, under the vanity - they are incidental drawers and they end up with incidental toiletries. I emptied both the drawers, surveyed all the stuff inside, threw about half of it away, and cleaned the rest and put it back. When I say cleaned I mean scrubbed in hot water and took a toothbrush to them, where appropriate. It was productive and it fulfilled the needs of my cleaning bug.
There is a Zen simplicity in cleaning. The repetitiveness of the tasks, the rhythms, the ability to fall into a sort of mindful state while you're cleaning is powerful stuff. So that was my day in a nutshell. Enjoyable. Simple. Productive. Entertaining.
I also, while I was on my errands, stopped and picked myself up a birthday present. My birthday is coming up next week, and there was an item that I've been meaning to get for several months now, but kept forgetting. It isn't a must-have but it was definitely a want to have kind of thing. It's the Kindle III. I have a Kindle II of course and I've spoken of my love for it. My II is several years old has seen better days so I've decommissioned it and stepped into the newer product. I'm going to enjoy it.
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