Change of Pace/ Fore!

Things have been shaken up a bit for the Kid lately. See, I'm changing jobs. My old company encouraged me to come back and join them, and I've decided to do so. I've had a good run at my current company, but this was a good opportunity that I just couldn't pass up.

In my thoroughly extensive experience with accepting job offers (this is the third time I've done it), the new company always wants you to start right away. Things are happening. We need you to get in here and hit the ground running. The world is going to explode in 24 hours, and ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT! You know what I'm talking about. And, while you may be Jack Bauer, I am not, and I think the urgency, by and large, is a bunch of hooey. Since I got out of college last century, I haven't been off of work for more than a week in one stretch. OK, maybe about 10 calendar days. Either way, it's not a very long time, and I want a break. So, what with some vacation time at my current job and not starting right away at the new/old company, I'm not going to start until the 17th. I'm VERY excited about that.

People keep asking me what I'm going to do with my time off, and the question is positively pregnant with expectations. Am I going to travel the world? Build an addition on the house? Finally solve the mystery that is Amelia Earhart's disappearance? In a word, no, no, no. (Yes, that's one word. It's just repeated three times.) What I am going to do is relax. I don't want to go on trips or do anything particularly strenuous. I'm staying at home and chilling out.

I do have one thing I want to do with my time, though. I'm going to try to play golf at least every weekday until I start the new gig unless my body can't handle that much golf in such a concentrated dose. Or unless I just decide that I want to stay in bed or something. I broke 90 for the second time ever earlier this year, and I'm hoping that I might manage to do it one more time during the next couple of weeks. I'll keep you posted. Seriously, I will. I've decided that I'm going to write something about all the rounds I play before I start the new job. So if your eyes glaze over and you end up face down and drooling on your keyboard when I start talking about golf, you might want to stay away for a while. Otherwise, I'll be talking at you again soon.

Providing a marvelous segue (Look at that word. Don't you just love to see it in print? I certainly do. It's very cool, as far as words go. "Segue." There it is again! But I digress.) between working and my golf-filled time off, my last "working" day at the current gig was playing a round of golf in an outing that I had set up with the clients. It was marvelous, and we even played at a course that is one that I would almost never pay to play because it is too expensive. We played at Westfields. I had played there once before when I first started playing, and I shot a 75. On the front 9. So you could say that I got my money's worth if you think of it in terms of dollars per stroke. But I loved the course, which is just lovely, if quite challenging. So I was excited to play there again. This time I shot a 95 for all 18 holes. My normally wild driver did a good job of keeping the ball on the course off the tee, and I had three blow up holes that kept me from breaking 90. It was a marvelous Fall day, and ... well ... I'm looking forward to getting back out on the links tomorrow.

Have a great Monday. Hit 'em straight.

P.S. If you'd like to join me for a round in the next couple of weeks, let me know. I'm probably up for it.

Ahoy, maties!

Arrrrrrrr! In case you didn't know it (and really even if you did know it), today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I fully expect you all to toss lots of arrrrrrrrr's in for the rest of the day, along with ... other pirate-like patterns of speech.

P.S. Notice they seem to have written a book about me on that link? Maybe I can sue them...

You Have to Read the Whole Thing

I just noticed this post over at Consumerist. The thing is that I only saw the first two sentences in the headline in my feed reader:

"Do It Yourself: Annoyed with Toy Companies Trying to Poison Your
Kids?"

I immediately thought it was odd that this site would post a DIY article about how to poison your own kids once and for all, since those toy companies can't quite seem to do anything right.