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It's a good thing cows can't fly.

It was four o'clock the first time I woke up this morning.  May as well have been noon for how awake I felt, which of course spurred a sharp frustration that kept me from falling back asleep until 5ish.

Imagine my unbridled joy when, some two hours later, my eyes snapped open to the sounds of shouting beneath my third floor window, followed by the clanking of what I can only surmise were very heavy metal tools being tossed around onto the pavement.  Then came the distinctive, incessant beeping of a giant truck inching its way backward.  All of which was made to seem a whisper compared to the earth-shaking pounding (seriously, the bed moved) that began as the public works crew thoroughly (and, I suspect, with gleeful disregard of the neighborhood's sleeping denizens) pulverized the sidewalk in front of our building. 

So much for sleeping in. 

To make my morning even more fantastic, my laptop refused to boot.  Seems stuck in some sort of start-up repair cycle that resists all attempts at system restores and memory diagnostics.  Which is just peachy, because all the work I did last night is now tucked away securely beyond my reach.

And now there's a torrential downpour outside my window.

Maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll be crisped by an errant thunderbolt on my way to the gym.  One can only hope.

UPDATE: 

Well, I wasn't struck dumb by lightning, but I still managed to get shit on.  Literally, shit on.  I was about a block from the apartment, crossing the street, when SPLAT! came a warmth on my knee.  The rain had all but stopped, and my first ridiculously optimistic thought was that I'd been hit by a freakishly large, hot raindrop.  Not so! I discovered as I looked down to see the brown and white remnants of an avian breakfast running down my leg.  A quick survey revealed a similar splotch on my shoulder.

Brilliant.

Going the distance.

I had geared myself up for a seven-mile run yesterday, but found I could only suffer through just under five.  I think the lack of sleep finally caught up with me.

Last night, though, I was in bed early and managed to fall asleep without much trouble -- a blissful exception to what's become a particularly frustrating rule since June.  I'm hoping today to hit that elusive mark, as the farthest I've managed is six and a half. 

During the summer between my junior and senior year at Cornell College, I lived in Glendo, Wyoming -- in a trailer park, no less -- with two of my friends (who are dutifully serving as groomsmen two weeks from Sunday).  We ran a concession stand on the reservoir's main beach and worked shifts at the marina's docks.  In between gassing up boats, filling snow cones and making nice with the locals, we had a lot of time on our hands.  So I focused on running.  By that July, I was averaging seven miles a day, six days a week.  Burned through my shoes pretty quickly on all those gravel roads, but running 42 miles a week was amazing.  Especially in a state park.

At the moment, I'm doing probably 20 miles a week.  I mean, I'm no spring chicken, so if I can get to 30 I'll count it as a major accomplishment. 

Even the meat heads are paying attention.

Louis Gates may be ready to "move on," but folks in Boston (at least the guys at my gym this afternoon) are still talking about the incident in Cambridge involving the Harvard professor and the police officer who mistook him for a would-be criminal entering his own home.

The black Harvard professor.  The white Cambridge police officer.

I can't help but wonder how the situation would have played out differently had the cop been black.  Would Professor Gates have reacted so viscerally?  What if Professor Gates was white?  What if they both were?  And I wonder, too, if Professor Gates had not been a Harvard professor?  Or even a professor at all?  What if he was a construction worker?  How would that have factored into this confrontational dynamic?

Tempting to focus simply on the obvious racial variables and ignore the gaping class divide between a beat cop and member of Cambridge's intellectual (and financial) elite. 

Not that I'm poo-pooing those racial variables, but still, I suspect what happened between those two men is more complex that it seems at first blush.

At the Feast of St. Joseph.

 

   

Of course we found the street party right after we'd eaten.

And breathe.

For Christmas, the Girl bought me a gift card for a massage at the Boston Bodyworker.  Why I hadn't scheduled it sooner, I have no idea, but I was glad to have it this morning.  45 minutes of deep tissue manipulation left me feeling like a wet noodle -- the masseuse asked if I was OK as I stood with a dazed smile and bleary eyes -- but with the wedding three weeks from tomorrow (!!!), that's exactly what I needed.

This is one of the all-too-rare weekends we're actually spending in Boston this summer.  I think that makes a grand total of three since the start of June.  To take advantage of the reasonable (if not quite seasonable) weather, we're heading into the North End -- Boston's Italian district -- in search of cheap eats and familiar flavors.  Hopefully some kayaking on the Charles tomorrow. 

Can't entirely escape the wedding planning, though.  Several Excel spreadsheets beckon for attention -- who, what, when and where from that Thursday to Monday.  How The Big Day turned into Five Big Days is a bit beyond me, though I feel comfortable laying at least part of the blame on our families.  What can I say?  They like a good party.  Why just one when you can have five?

Between playlists, gifts, programs, menus and, of course, the vows, we're still going very much uphill. 

Not that that's unusual.  I guess after a while it starts to seem like a normal rhythm.  I almost forget what it's like going to bed without juggling guest lists and reservations and budgets.  Will there be a post-partem when we wake up as Mr. and Mrs., I wonder?  When there's nothing left to coordinate?

With any luck, it will be a relieving sort of bewilderment -- with nothing to do but enjoy the beach.

To the root of the root of myself.

Truth is, I've been hiding. 

I'm 27 years old.  I'm getting married.  And, despite two degrees and a resume that suggests I can find my ass with one hand and a treasure map, gratingly unemployed.

What happened?  Nothing particularly novel.  In fact it was pretty much as I expected, except on a Tuesday instead of a Friday.
 
My secretary -- who had worked at the firm for over a decade -- was thanked for her outstanding work with one month's notice.  Management had to tighten the belt, what with the economy and all.  (Apparently that didn't include the annual summer party; two days later an all-office email went out detailing that year's cocktail cruise in the harbor.)  A few weeks later, one of the other secretaries asked if anyone had talked to me about who would take up the slack after she transitioned out of the office.  As she pointed out, someone would have to take on the work I had been generating for my own secretary -- which wasn't much, but still. 

So there I was, a week left with my secretary and nobody had said a word to me about who would take over that aspect of the workload.  Added to the puzzle was the fact that the partner who shared my secretary had been setup to transition to someone else.  But not me.  Which led us both to suspect the obvious: that I'd be let go at the end of next week.
 
So I emailed the the junior partner I worked with all the time, and asked if it was odd that nobody discussed with me what would happen after my secretary left.  He offered to ask our executive director on my behalf, knowing I was afraid I knew the answer already (he and I had talked about my being worried about my job before). 
 
Ten minutes later I got a call from the director asking me to come down to his office.  I walked down to find our new managing partner waiting in his office.  The obvious very quickly became the blatantly obvious.
 
There just wasn't enough work to go around.

I knew this to be the genuine truth: I had been begging for assignments from every department for half a year.  Family Law had been booming (a recession-proof business if there ever was), but even that wasn't enough to keep my days full.  They gave me a check for the rest of the week, explained my severance package, and told me they'd be happy to help me find a new job and give me good recommendations.  (I have since taken advantage of those generous offers).  They said I could be done that day if I wanted, or I could "finish out the week quietly" if there were any assignments I wanted to wrap up first.  I probably would have stayed until Friday and finished everything -- but they used the word "quietly" repeatedly, and I'm enough my mother's son to take offense at the underlying suggestion. 

I have a feeling that had I not asked the junior partner, they would have just waited until that Friday to let me go -- which was the trend they had set with the other layoffs.  But I took the high road and came in the next day to wrap up some research and facilitate the orderly redistribution of all the files and assignments I had. 

When the Girl asked me that night how my stomach felt when I thought about it, I realized -- I wasn't sick over it.  Vaguely embarrassed (which would get worse before it got better), even though I knew there was nothing to be ashamed of in this economy.  But not sick.
 
The fact is, 95% of the time I hated what I was doing.  I'd been depressed -- existentially -- since my first month on the job, and the fact that I was making reasonable money was very small comfort.
 
"I want you to know it's OK to feel relieved," the Girl told me.  Reason #873 why I'm marrying her.
 
That's exactly how I feel: relieved.  I mean, relieved in a conflicted sort of way -- I'd have preferred to find a new job while I still had one -- but still, in an unexpected way it has been liberating.  And the fact that I've had cards and notes from some of the partners expressing solidarity and support... well, that felt good.  At least there's not a black mark on my resume that I'll need to explain.

I went a couple of weeks before I told my closest friends about the situation; even longer before I spread the news among former law school classmates, many of whom were likewise tossed from sinking ships.  And I'm not particularly inclined to admit just how long I requested my family keep it under wraps, such was the depth of my embarrassment. 

Well, I'm over that.  Shit happens.  There are worse things than losing a job that you hate.  And hey, at least it's summer.

I've eased into a fairly healthy routine over the last several weeks.  I take the Girl to work in the morning and spare her public transit, then come back to a couple of hours of job hunting.  (Sufficient to say that my resume, like one friend of mine in particular, has been around the block.)  After that period of forced optimism, I clear my head with a run.  Or a workout at the gym.  Or both.  I'm consistently averaging 6 miles, and Boston was made for running.  I'm reading good books and catching up on my Economists.  I'm volunteering with the Massachusetts Service Alliance as a community grant reviewer, and I've been appointed to a 3-year term on the board of directors of the Cornell College Alumni Association.

Unemployed but far from idle.

Basically, I feel good.  And completely open to any opportunity.  And ready to start writing about it.