At the overlook

The latest cycle-of-days puts us on the threshold of that recurring respite we call a weekend.

This one's different.

My wife and I have served notice to her parents, our spawns and the dogs that we'll be spending the next two days as we like, perhaps even irresponsibly. We may drive to Waldo for fried bologna or we might stay home to do laundry and watch football, but whatever we do there's to be no drama and no stress -- we insist.

See, this may be the last conventional weekend we'll have together for a while -- but that's not a bad thing. On Monday morning, and for the first time in thirty months, I'll get up, leave the house and go to work at a regular job.

I didn't call it "a real job" because my consulting work is as real as can be. It simply hasn't produced enough income.

Last week brought me two (count 'em) job offers, a relative embarrassment of riches considering the hundreds of dry holes I've drilled over that past two-and-a-half years. One offer was to manage a cell-phone store less than five minutes from home, the other to work at a somewhat-more-distant motorcycle shop specializing in used (salvaged) parts for a particular marque.

For a variety of reasons, I declined the former and chose the latter. My fundamental distaste for mobile-phone addiction notwithstanding, lacking other options I would've been willing (if disappointed) to descend into retail hell. The moto-parts business is friendlier to me, of course, and I found this small, independent shop intriguingly funky and appealingly warm.

I also saw it as a chance for me to acquire new skills, useful if the current economic downturn becomes a free-fall. Add an 11-mile commute down two-lane country roads and it was a no-brainer.

I haven't punched a clock in almost 30 years. I won't get rich, especially working part-time for the first few months. I'll have Wednesdays and Sundays off, which (combined with the shop hours) will let me keep pursuing my photography and consulting.

So that's what awaits me on the other side of this weekend. For the next two days, though, I'm going to revel in each and every moment.

A long ordeal is behind me.