Time (not) well spent

I've officially decided to bail on On The Road. I decided that life is too short to spend it reading a book you don't like. Apparently I also thought when I decided not to read The Grapes of Wrath in 10th grade -- the first book I never finished for a class. I'm now reading Anderson Cooper's memoir Dispatches From The Edge which makes me feel a little bit cheap, but it's a good book!

I also spent today weeding the driveway (yep, you heard that right, the driveway.) Our driveway is old and cracked and has a lot of weeds growing up through the cracks in the pavement. Well, it'd gotten so bad and overgrown that it was bothering me even to look out the back window, so I spent a good hour this afternoon sitting on the driveway manually pulling up these weeds and chucking them into the wheelbarrow. The task is basically Sisyphean, because they'll all grow back within a couple of weeks until such point that I decide to spray pesticide on them. That, of course, will never happen as I just don't think it's a good idea to spray poison in an area where Anna plays.

While I was doing this, the neighbor boy came over and jokingly gave me a bad time about how bad the grass behind our house looks. And I mean, he's right, I haven't mowed it yet this year. That's mostly because is just pisses me off because it's a large hill that goes down to a railroad track. It's not even my property -- it's owned by the railroad -- but I'm expected to keep it up. Actually, the only expectations are those that I choose to internalize from the fact that everyone on the block keeps theirs mowed, but I still think it's a pain in the ass. Well, no sooner was I done weeding the driveway than I was out back mowing. And it sucked, let me tell you. I'd have been better off buying a sheep or two.

The grass clippings look pretty bad, but now it's done and it won't have to be done for a while.

That's my exciting life. Weeding the driveway and mowing knee high grass.