productive, productive off day...started just before ten this morning, which meant a full 8 1/2 hours of sleep, or so.

got a walk in this morning. bought some needed things. went to the library. ate lunch. had a brief phone conversation with the i-cubs radio guy. got only one mid-day disturbance from work. vacuumed and swept and scrubbed floors. connected with des moines-based former coworker for get-together possibilities next week. made a high-quality dinner. listened to the i-cubs. watched the c-cubs. visited with the down-the-hall intern. studied fantasy baseball trading possibilities. [i need an infielder due to the injury to barmes. trying to get ensberg. i've got a surplus of outfielders - patterson, wily mo, berkman, pierre, mench - and i don't want to give up feliz. i'm starting uribe and feliz at 3B/SS this week, and my only other IF option is dallas macpherson. kent's locked in at 2B. this parenthetical is far too long.]

it was the typical off day - lots of errand-y things, but in a restful way. my first scheduled off day since 5/10, although i did get last weekend in [a busy one, to be sure, but a pretty restful one].

i don't read so much, although i should. i picked up this seemingly-fascinating book, a fan's notes, by frederick exley, this afternoon. i probably won't finish it, because i finish about 20 percent of the books i start, but i've got four days worth of two 90-minute bus trips a day coming up. [i read digital fortress, a not-very-good dan brown book, over this time last year. i'm not embarrassed to admit it.]

so anyway, a fan's notes reads like bukowski on sports. drunk man likes the new york football giants.

from the second page of the book:

"Each weekend I traveled the fifty-odd miles from Glacial Falls to Watertown, where I spent Friday night and all day Saturday in some sustained whisky drinking, tapering off Sundays with a few bottles of beer at The Parrot, eyes fixed on the television screen, cheering for my team. Cheering is a paltry description. The Giants were my delight, my folly, my anodyne, my intellecual stimulation. With Huff I 'stunted' up and down the room among the bar stools, preparing to 'shoot the gap' ... [more active football verb descriptions] ... All this I did amidst an unceasing, pedantic commentary I issued on the character of the game, a commentary issued with the patronizing air of one who assumed those other patrons incapable of assessing what was taking place before their eyes. Never did I stop moving or talking. Certainly I drove a good many customers away. Most of those who remained had seen the show before and had come back for more, bringing with them the morbid fascination which compels one to stare at a madman."

reminiscent of "I sat down at the bar. 'The name's Bukowski. Whisky on the rocks,'" no?