Self-flagellation comes next.

This post is becoming increasingly outdated each day, but I'm certain now that I made the right choice.

On Monday, the weather was gorgeous. (The weather is here. Wish you were beautiful.) It was sunny, clear, and over 70 F. I debated working late (getting some actual labor done) -- briefly. The day was far too nice to waste, kind of like that day in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I went home, opened a beer, and sat on my porch and read the afternoon and evening away. I also ate my dinner out there. Ahh.

That changed on Tuesday, right at lunchtime. Halfway through the four or five minutes it takes me to walk uphill to the dining hall, clouds moved in and the wind picked up. I ate, checked on a couple sites on campus, and went back to my office. In an hour, the temperature had dropped six degrees, and it kept going. We've had clouds and rain since then, with no easing off until this coming Monday. Yep, it seems I made the right choice to relax on Monday.

However, the initial impetus of this post was that on Tuesday (and again yesterday), I spent a couple of hours shoveling dirt and weeds out of the curbs and off the sidewalks along my street. (I had done my side of the block last summer; now I'm clearing in front of the unoccupied lots across the street.) Tuesday, I stupidly forgot my work gloves, so I started getting callouses and generally roughening my normally soft palms and fingers. I also got several cuts and scrapes on the backs of my hands (from pruning that mulberry between the sidewalk and the wall, which stubbornly refuses to die after repeated cutting), so now my hands look more like a "real" man's hands. I felt that it could've been considered penance for my "wasted" afternoon.

Hmm. Time to load up my palms with hand creme. ;)