hiatus 2007: when I became a man
The 2006-2007 Shitsacking Season has kicked me in the balls with tremendous force nearly every day. In fact, even outside of work it's been a challenging and exhausting year. And the next 5 weeks may be the hardest of them all. I think on Tuesday I am scheduled to kill a man at 10 am and then tell his family about it on a conference call after lunch.
5 more weeks of working Saturdays and Sundays, staying late every night, having a pit in my stomach, making the Anxious Hans face, and gasping for sweet air at the end of the day.
But then, and here comes the good part, I go on HIATUS. For June and possibly half of July, I will be free. Free to do what I want, any old time. The dark side of the HIATUS period is that the real possibility exists that I get laid off when HIATUS starts, in which case HIATUS becomes BYE-ATUS. I have a one year contract and it's expiring, so if they wanna dump me they can. No questions asked. Some of my friends probably won't be back next year. And it could definitely happen to me as well. (5/3/07 edit: I didn't get laid off! Some friends did however.)
But I am not worried about that. All of my available brain units are focusing on two things:
1) Surviving the next five weeks.
2) HIATUS, bitches.
During HIATUS, I will be on the dole. This completes the Bungle legacy -- now my entire family (mom, pop, sis, me) has been on unemployment at one time or another. $350 a week is what I hear. We should be OK because I am making decent dough throughout May. America, expose for me your glorious teat and I will suck it contentedly for two months straight.
So the question becomes, What will I do on HIATUS? Somehow I only started thinking about this the other day. And now I can't stop thinking about it. It's like 6 straight weeks of Christmas. It's fucking unprecedented.
Here are some preliminary thoughts. I invite you all to weigh in on these and suggest more of your own (10 GP's for every suggestion that I actually implement).
-Get in shape -- not bloody likely. Even if I have 16 free hours a day, I will probably come up 15 minutes short of the 15 minutes of non-sports-related exercise I'd need to make a difference.
-Rediscover my love for basketball and play it 3 or 4 times a week. Get good at it again. Possibly ride my bike around the city, playing on different courts and using the experience as a launching pad for a story about how the sport has changed my life over the last 24 years. Most likely I will just play once or twice a week and not write any such thing. I'd still be satisfied.
-In a related idea, get my bike up and running and ride that shit all over the place. Explore the city. Check out some cool things I never checked out before.
-Smack it up, flip it, rub it down, oh no.
-Spend a couple of afternoons at the bar. Sipping beer, talking shit. Maybe go to that beer garden in Queens. Hey, take the day off. Join me. I just need to clear it with the wife.
-Go to a couple Yankee games alone and sit in the bleachers. The last time I went to a baseball game alone was in 1987, when my friend Herm was supposed to meet me on the 59th street subway platform and didn't show up. I tried calling him but he didn't answer, so I just went and sat there at the game and it was still a good time. Later I found out that the reason Herm hadn't shown up was that he'd been in a terrible bike accident that left him with a big (and sexy) scar on his face.
-Take a class, better myself in some measurable way
-Count down the Final Days of Barker on The Price Is Right
-Read three great books (suggestions, please)
-blog like a rabid badger
-Spend time with Baby Bungle -- as of now she is all mine on Mondays and Fridays.
-Grow a moustache. This is as inevitable as your own approaching death. It will happen. It's out of our hands now. The universe has spoken, and it wants it to happen. As you should do whenever you are reaching for greatness in life, I even did a trial run last weekend. I had a pre-stache for about four hours, including our Sunday softball game. The game was great (recap, anyone?), and so was the pre-stache, as you can see here:
I'll think of more later.
It's gonna be a hell of a summer.
5 more weeks of working Saturdays and Sundays, staying late every night, having a pit in my stomach, making the Anxious Hans face, and gasping for sweet air at the end of the day.
But then, and here comes the good part, I go on HIATUS. For June and possibly half of July, I will be free. Free to do what I want, any old time. The dark side of the HIATUS period is that the real possibility exists that I get laid off when HIATUS starts, in which case HIATUS becomes BYE-ATUS. I have a one year contract and it's expiring, so if they wanna dump me they can. No questions asked. Some of my friends probably won't be back next year. And it could definitely happen to me as well. (5/3/07 edit: I didn't get laid off! Some friends did however.)
But I am not worried about that. All of my available brain units are focusing on two things:
1) Surviving the next five weeks.
2) HIATUS, bitches.
During HIATUS, I will be on the dole. This completes the Bungle legacy -- now my entire family (mom, pop, sis, me) has been on unemployment at one time or another. $350 a week is what I hear. We should be OK because I am making decent dough throughout May. America, expose for me your glorious teat and I will suck it contentedly for two months straight.
So the question becomes, What will I do on HIATUS? Somehow I only started thinking about this the other day. And now I can't stop thinking about it. It's like 6 straight weeks of Christmas. It's fucking unprecedented.
Here are some preliminary thoughts. I invite you all to weigh in on these and suggest more of your own (10 GP's for every suggestion that I actually implement).
-Get in shape -- not bloody likely. Even if I have 16 free hours a day, I will probably come up 15 minutes short of the 15 minutes of non-sports-related exercise I'd need to make a difference.
-Rediscover my love for basketball and play it 3 or 4 times a week. Get good at it again. Possibly ride my bike around the city, playing on different courts and using the experience as a launching pad for a story about how the sport has changed my life over the last 24 years. Most likely I will just play once or twice a week and not write any such thing. I'd still be satisfied.
-In a related idea, get my bike up and running and ride that shit all over the place. Explore the city. Check out some cool things I never checked out before.
-Smack it up, flip it, rub it down, oh no.
-Spend a couple of afternoons at the bar. Sipping beer, talking shit. Maybe go to that beer garden in Queens. Hey, take the day off. Join me. I just need to clear it with the wife.
-Go to a couple Yankee games alone and sit in the bleachers. The last time I went to a baseball game alone was in 1987, when my friend Herm was supposed to meet me on the 59th street subway platform and didn't show up. I tried calling him but he didn't answer, so I just went and sat there at the game and it was still a good time. Later I found out that the reason Herm hadn't shown up was that he'd been in a terrible bike accident that left him with a big (and sexy) scar on his face.
-Take a class, better myself in some measurable way
-Count down the Final Days of Barker on The Price Is Right
-Read three great books (suggestions, please)
-blog like a rabid badger
-Spend time with Baby Bungle -- as of now she is all mine on Mondays and Fridays.
-Grow a moustache. This is as inevitable as your own approaching death. It will happen. It's out of our hands now. The universe has spoken, and it wants it to happen. As you should do whenever you are reaching for greatness in life, I even did a trial run last weekend. I had a pre-stache for about four hours, including our Sunday softball game. The game was great (recap, anyone?), and so was the pre-stache, as you can see here:
I'll think of more later.It's gonna be a hell of a summer.
Labels: hiatus
posted by hans q. bungle at 01:38
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