A Pyrex Beaker Filled with Foreign Coins

(Listening to Bruce Hornsby's album Spirit Trail)

It is a humid, overcast, unproductive day. It is like a sensory deprivation tank. My simple, low-cash life continues. I got off work, and then I sought to put the $22 remaining in my wallet to the best possible use. This is how it broke down:

$10 in gasoline at $1.939 per gallon, leaving $12

a bag of onions, $1.99
cheap Food Lion white bread, $.91
a surprisingly large package of chicken thighs, $3.08
a package of paper towels (three rolls), $1.50
one oilcan of Foster's Special Bitter, $2.19
one 22 oz. Samuel Adams Boston Lager, $2.09
Total, including tax: $12.28

I didn't have 28 cents, so I used my check card, draining my bank account a bit lower. But I still have cash! I can get $12 worth of pigs' feet or that insipid, radioactive pimento cheese spread that North Carolinians seem to be so fond of.

I doused a few of the chicken thighs in Old Bay and baked them. I swilled down the Foster's (refreshing but forgettable). I checked my email, and I learned, to my astonishment, that I don't have a real job yet. The mighty American economy is still quite unaware of my existence. I ate the chicken without really tasting it.

My heavens, I have an exciting life. The wife is out of town on business until tomorrow. I guess that means I can run around the apartment with scissors and stay up late.

(Listening to Enrique Granados's Cuentos de la Juventud)

Now, I'm on to the Sam Adams. A better beer. Hoppy aroma and palate, nice bitterness on the finish. This was one of the first legitimate beers I drank back in the time of the Great American Beer Renaissance. My college buddies and I started to realize that there were beers out there that didn't taste like dishwater, so we tried all kinds of microbrews and imports. I remember it very fondly. We would start an evening with a microbrew, often Bell's (still a favorite on those rare occasions when I have access to it), some other American beer, or perhaps a fascinating Belgian. After we meticulously portioned it out, savored it, and commented on it, we got trashed on Natural Light. I can't believe that was ten years ago. Mercy, I'm getting old. I appreciate life so much more now. I wish I could have those years back. I'd travel more. I'd still get drunk. I wouldn't have stolen that canoe. That's another story. Yes, I really stole a canoe.