Exhale

"I've got a story that's almost finished
Now all I need is someone to tell it to
Maybe that's you"
--The World You Love, Jimmy Eat World

I'm on the verge of this nice week-and-a-half vacation, and almost able to exhale completely. After two weeks of no sleep, endless hours of work, extra shifts and whatnot, the end of today's football session means two half days Monday and Tuesday (like 10-3, I can't wait) and then lots of time off. Back to work on Monday, January 3, which happily seems like a long way off...
Obvious highlight of today's football schedule: Chargers wrap up the division with a stellar display in the snow, a 21-0 shellacking of the woeful Cleveland Browns. Drew Brees attempted just six passes the entire day, completing four of them (one to my main man Gates, resulting in a 72-yard touchdown). LT was over 100 yards again and scored twice, and Donnie (another pick) and the rest of the defense did another great job. I really can't believe we're going to the playoffs, playing so well after such an awful 2003 and a tumultuous off-season (Rivers and Manning and all that). Speaking of Manning, we head to Indy next week--should be a nice test for the defense, and a good warmup for the playoffs.
Got to play some guitar yesterday for the first time in a while, jammin' through some Sister Hazel with Phil, and following with some original stuff later in the evening. Haven't been writing nearly enough of late, so hopefully that will be one byproduct of the vacation time.
The highlight of yesterday's activities was a morning visit to Union Rescue Mission, an outreach spot near downtown that was having a toy and food giveaway. Stu, Steve, Draudt and I got up nice and early to head over there, arriving around 8 and taking care of a bunch of manual labor-type tasks. We moved palettes of food from a warehouse to a truck, drove the truck around to the lot where the activities were going to take place, and then unpacked everything. Walked around all the tents and temporary housing situations in the neighborhood and got to chat with some of the locals, which was a very enlightening bonus of the proceedings. Driving into the Fox lot every day, the first thing I see to my left is what looks like a run-down city street, used in countless movies and television shows. I don't even think about it when I drive by, because it's there every day, and so walking around this area yesterday, it took a long time for me to grasp the reality that this was no movie set. Real people sleep on the streets every night. Real people don't have anything to eat. It was quite sobering to walk around and know that I've lived 99% of my life completely insulated from the sad, sad situations of people like this everywhere. I still need time to process and realize what it means, but I know I'm not doing enough. One guy in particular had my ear (and that of Steve and Stu) for almost 15 minutes, talking about education and work and getting ahead in life. Our assumption is that he works at one of the local shelters, reaching out to individuals in the neighborhood and giving them hope for the future. He knew a lot about a lot of stuff, having apparently done a little bit of everything in his life: football, track and field, fighting in the Vietnam war, earning a masters degree, working toward a doctorate, bodybuilding, doing some camera work for Comcast. Seems pretty remarkable. I don't come across people like George (that's his name) in my daily life, so I'm again reminded that I need to act somehow on the experience gained yesterday...
I love the first lines of the song above (off the new J.E.W. disc, of course), providing an optimistic look at a budding relationship (at least that's how I'm choosing to view it). I don't know about the story being almost finished, but it's cool to think about sharing it with someone. Then a new story begins, right? Heading to church again tonight--I have thoroughly enjoyed the past few weeks at Bel Air, especially the Christmas concert last week--and I don't have to worry so much about sleep when I get home, which will be such a relief. Of course, last Sunday night I had to return to work to finish up an edit session, and I ended up with a half-hour of sleep, so anything's gonna be more productive than that.
Final thought, this one on baseball: thank goodness the Padres aren't playing "moneyball," because I don't really understand what the Dodgers are doing with all these deals. Finley, Beltre, Green, Penny, Brazoban, Ishii--all gone? Why? It's not like they had their most successful season since 1988 or anything. Jeff Kent is not the answer. Neither is Javier Vazquez. We'll take our Woody Williams acquisition any day of the week. Off to church, hopefully a decent amount of writing will ensue this week, because of my free time. We'll see...