Dearest Rachel –
The box with the camera and its accessories sits on a TV tray at the foot of the bed, like it has all weekend. The memory chip I ordered separately (remember when it was just that batteries weren’t included in a toy we would get for Daniel for Christmas or his birthday?) arrived on Thursday, but I haven’t had enough office time to actually study what needed to be done to complete this thing’s assembly. And according to the packaging, I have but 24 hours from setting it up to registering it so that the warranty kicks in – which will probably be pointless anyway, given what I spent on it, but I still want it covered. Some I want to spend a little time on this setup process.
Unfortunately, today is Monday. Now, nearly everybody reading that last sentence over your shoulder will agree with me about it, but not the reason why I say it. Unlike most other people, Monday at the ‘office’ is a relatively short day; Daniel and I have to leave the house early in the afternoon to grab dinner before heading over to church to set up and take our posts at Sparks. As a result, even if I were to bring the camera with me to the ‘office,’ I wouldn’t be able to dedicate enough time to it to ensure that it’s set up and running properly.
It’s not as if this particular Monday doesn’t have its own set of unpleasant duties that folks associate with the beginning of the week, even if the work day is going to be short. Even before I head out, I have to make sure that Daniel knows that he has to write payments for his insurance and income tax installments, while I have to make arrangements to have our tax preparer paid for their trouble, now that the returns have been filed. Yes, I know the deadlines aren’t until later in the week, so this unpleasantness is imposed rather than inherent in this Monday, but that’s the point of beginnings; get the difficult part out of the way rather than letting it linger, hanging over your head for the entire day or week or whatever.
Oh, and no, I’m not ragging on you for your tendency toward procrastination; I’ve always been that much different from you in this regard – although, while I prefer to get the unpleasantness out of the way right away, I can certainly understand not wanting to face it at all if at all possible. Speaking of which, I’ve got to get going for now…
***
Over the last week, I’ve been to the gym only three times now, but at least I’m putting in a bit more time whenever I’m there; ninety minutes over two separate sessions (as the treadmill automatically goes into cooldown mode after an hour, forcing me to walk away for a moment and come back), which turns out to be enough to burn just about two thousand calories. Hey, if it’s already going to be too short of a day at the ‘office’ to work on the camera, I might as well get in a full course of exercise – or at least as much as I can without aggravating my ankle too much.
And with that being mentioned, it looks likely that Lars and I will be walking indoors this week; the next couple of days show a strong indication of rain. This means that we’ll probably be walking on flat surfaces rather than uneven gravel terrain, which hopefully means I won’t be dealing with the kind of ankle issues I was the last time we were out and about. No guarantees, of course, but the possibility remains. Granted, this means that there’s at least one other day I won’t be doing much in the way of working…
Likewise with Wednesday, as Kris will be coming to clean up the house. I’ll probably enlist her to help with the bedroom, so it will actually look the way I want it to for when I finally do get on with filming, so that’s something. But that basically writes off three out of five days this week, or so it seems. Not to mention, whether or not I take her out to lunch (I think all of us look forward to that, and we’ve skipped that the last few months), there’s also the possibility that I have to stop by the attorney’s, as a few things have surfaced of your parents’ (specifically, your mom’s) that I wasn’t aware of when your estate was wrapped up, which may be something I can do at the tail end of one of the days I’ve already written off, or I’ll have to write off the better part of yet another day this week.
So, while it looks like I’m going to be hard-pressed to get on with learning about how to us this bit of equipment, at least the days that get in my way have the virtue of being short – especially today, since we can all stand to have a little less in the way of Monday, wouldn’t you agree, honey?
Of course, either way things shake out, I could stand to have you keep an eye on me as I deal with whatever I need to. And while I’d ask you to wish me luck as well, that might be a whole separate topic going forward, so I’ll leave that for another time. Talk to you again soon enough.
Letters to Rachel 