The Daily News

1   The Rolling Eyes Review, Part One: To be sure, I almost forget to write this, as my days haven't changed a bit. Yesterday I was all about grabbing as much recycling as I could and dropping it off at a local dump.

2   Jeff and I went to breakfast when it dawned on me that normally I would be giving some sort of lesson, probably a Mensa quiz to the kids. 

3  We just smiled. We dined at Mimi's Cafe, a quaint little franchise that features a Tuscan/Wine and a flirtatious but classy waitress. It was laughs, and she was a delight.

4   But every now and again I'd head back to the school. 

5   And then I'd smile. 

6   Truth be told?

7   Right now I don't miss it. 

8   The nice thing about the first week of school is once everyone gets past the dread of going back, they settle in, and a great sense of relief  happens. 

9   The classrooms get organized. 

10  The students tend to stay eerily quiet, with the exception of a few wiseguys. But things normalize almost to a routine, which is good. 

11  Jeff and I likened our breakfast out on a quiet morning to floating around in a space ship/or any ship, glancing down from the window and seeing how the civilians are doing. 

12   It all has a strange. omniscient feel to it. 

13   It is akin to when a person first departs home for college, or for any reason. In my case, I loved Chico, where I went to school. 

14  Lucentio at the beginning of Shrew. 

15   The place you are in dazzles, and you forget a bit about home, or of the people there. 

16   It's a Wizard-of-Oz thing, and very much a part of life. 

17   Have I cooked up enough lousy analogies yet?

18   Moving On, Part One: I didn't get back to reality until I went over to Caitlin's later in the day and picked up a bunch of recycling from her garage, then went home to finish getting stuff out of my own garage. 

19   We had already two toilets sitting cleanly on cardboard up on the bed of the TOOOOOOONDRA. 

20   I felt a bit as though we were going on Safari to the Animal Kingdom. 

21   I ran to the store for something or other, and when I turned to go back down my own street, I met with a bazillion cars. 

22  Turns out the elementary school near my house gets out at 2...

23  I couldn't drive down my own street because of all the parents driving up and down to pick up their kids. 

24  I knew it was probably a fifteen-minute setback, so I just went back inside and hopped online to check emails and stuff. 

26   I had thought about how impossible it is to get out of the Evergreen Valley parking lot before 3:30, even though school ends at three. 

27   And one of the first things I thought of when I first looked at my house in Sacramento was that it is right down the street from a school.

28   Fortunately, I'm used to driving through those sorts of situations, since I tended to take back roads home when I would leave EV for the day. I don't mind freeways if I am road-tripping, but during commute hours, I find them dangerous and filled with all sorts of anxious cretins. 

29  I used to drive from EV to the Piedmont area via the hills, which I have always loved. 

30   So...Note-to-Self: Don't travel or even be around the house between 2 and 2:30.

31   School is definitely in full swing. 

32   Moving On, Part Two:  My very childhood saw us across and up the street from Meadows School. Not the Meadows School in San Jo, but in Millbrae, California, where I did most of my early teen damage. 

33   Our house was about a block up from the bus stop. 

34   So traffic? Yeah, but not like what I experienced yesterday. Helen Drive is a much wider street than my Sac street. 

35   The Rolling Eyes Review, Part Two: I'm going to stumble through the mists of time to a much younger age, when I did one of my first missions of mischief. I may have been in eighth grade, but to be honest, I don't remember. 

36  One early evening I was walking down the street with a couple of other mischief-makers when we saw that a house around the block had a For Sale sign on the front lawn. 

37   I glanced around, looked to see if Old Eagle Eye's was looking out her window. Old Eagle Eyes was a gal who always kept her curtains closed, but who would also peek out at various times throughout the day. Her place had heavy, dusty curtains that had ghostly tears in them. Naturally the neighborhood kids considered her a witch. 

38  The house that was For Sale was right next to the house of Old Eagle Eyes. This made it a much larger giggle than a gaggle of thirteen-year old mischief makers could stand. 

39   I led the charge. For Sale signs in those days were WAY lighter than the heavy four-bys we see today.The signs back then were more like political signs made of thin wood. 

40   Easy to rip off and run. 

41   We did, and I found myself headed straight for the main lawn at Meadows. 

44   With no fear whatsoever I planted it into the lawn, and we stood laughing, because it looked clearly like someone was selling the school. 

45   Amazingly, it was still there in the morning, when school buses dropped kids off for Meadows AND picked kids up to go to the local high schools. 

46   It didn't last, long, but it lasted long enough for us to see the reactions of ALL the kids that day. I don't know that I have laughed harder since.

47   We did a series of of other For Sale Mysteries, grabbing signs and putting them on successive houses, putting six signs on one guy's lawn, things like that,  but none would ever top the posting of the school's wish to sell. 

48   So.

49   Fond memories. 

50   This is again a shout-out to everyone going through the school thing right now, or perhaps next week. 

51   Back-to-School is officially in full swing. 

52   Long season because it divides. There is Back-to-School sales for clothes, books, binders, paper, long-lines and parents annoyed by all the different things different teachers demand as essential to their classes. 

53  It's a racket.

54  And after all this stuff blows over, there is the actual Back-to-School night, usually one of the longest days of the school year. 

55  And I don't miss it. Sorry. But I don't. Maybe it's because of the traffic at midday, or maybe it's because I've too much to do, but right now I don't miss it. 

56  AnywayZ...

57  Tomorrow's Friday champs. You made it!

58  Gottago.

59   See you again.

60   Peace.

~H~