My default TV watching habit is to at least check out the NFL Network to see if anything interesting is on. Usually there isn't, sometimes there is (such as the America's Game series, which is unbelievably good). If you watch much NFL Network, you can't help but see a bunch of commercials for Fathead. Fatheads are life-sized posters of NFL players that stick to your wall, which would be truly awesome if I were 11.

The reason I bring up these commercials is a throwaway line that they slip in to let you know why you can only get a Fathead online: "Too big and real for stores." Haven't you always wandered around stores thinking, "Man, why hasn't store technology proceeded to the point where we can sell things in here that exceed a particular amount of bigness and/or realness?"

Yesterday should provide a nice nutshell of what I have in store for the summer:

• 6:30 a.m.: alarm
• 6:40: quick breakfast
• 6:45-8:15: gym (including walking time, etc.)
• 8:15-8:45: showering, morning routine, etc.
• 9-12:45 p.m.: Bar review class
• 1: home from lunch and a short break
• 2-7: studying Torts, including an hour and a half of practice multiple choice questions
• 7-8: bike ride along Huron River
• 8-8:30: quick shower and microwaved dinner
• 8:30-11: drinks with friends
• 11:30: fall asleep to Scrubs on WGN

The main variations to this schedule will be that lots of evenings will have a DVD, TV, or more bar study instead of drinks; I won't always be studying Torts; I'll probably mix up the bike route a bit; and sometimes the Cubs or White Sox will be on the West Coast.

I had big plans to do a lot of blogging from home last week, but my parents' screwy emachine literally would not let me log in to Blogger to post. So it goes.

My mom called me home from Massachusetts a day and a half early because Dad had a fever and that was a problem, but it turned out to be largely a false alarm. So it was another week hanging out in hospice, reading, doing puzzles, and mostly just being bored.

Then on Friday and Saturday, I went to the University Honors College reunion at Pitt. This was a really cool event. The UHC turned 20 and invited alums from that whole time (and even its prior 10 years as an honors program) to come back and see its newish renovation project and to see how old everyone's gotten. I was thrilled to catch up with some people I hadn't seen in nine or 10 years, and to see some friends who I've only seen very intermittently lately. There was some talk of having this event every several years, and I hope those plans come off.

My lovely vacation continues here in Billerica. I should note that while most normal human beings would of course pronounce this bill-AIR-rick-uh, the locals say bəl-RICK-kuh. Then again, the woman in Dunkin Donuts this morning asked me a question that I couldn't comprehend in the slightest, and on the second try (plus context) I identified as "creme and sugar?" But I'd swear that the first time she said it, she didn't use a single phoneme that I normally associate with those words.

Yesterday I biked the nine-mile roundtrip on the Battle Road between Lexington and Concord, saw the Old North Bridge, and then went to Grindhouse, which was awesome. Today I got up ridiculously early to bike the Minuteman Bikeway, which is a 21-mile roundtrip from Bedford to Cambridge. That may have been a bit ambitious, but I can still walk, and I do have feeling back in my hands and wrists now.

Then I went to Lowell, which was kind of a history expatriate homecoming. You see, as a grad student in U.S. social history in the late '90s, there was no avoiding the Lowell mill girls--Yankee women who worked the Lowell textile mills in the 1830s and 1840s. Not only were they women working outside the house way before that tended to happen (especially for women from good families), but they were also proto-labor activists of sorts. Taking all these facts together, any good U.S. social historian gets their panties all in bunch and swoon at the mere thought of the Lowell mill girls. My complete and utter boredom in the face of phenomena such as the Lowell mill girls should have told me something early on in grad school, but I guess I was a bit thick about these things.

The biggest threat to my tranquility the last several days has happened every time I get into the driver's seat of my car. There are two distinct problems, and I'll treat them separately.

One is that I hate Massachusetts drivers. Now, I'll admit that every place has bad drivers, and every place thinks it has the best drivers or the worst drivers. Michigan is no slouch here--this probably has to do with the state-wide delusion that the state legislature has banned the use of the turn signal. It hasn't. I looked it up. I'll also note that as I believe Anna Karenina said, all good drivers are the same while all bad drivers are bad in their own way. The Massachusetts version is that drivers turning left here have the right of way. And by "have" I mean "aggressively assert". They'll put up with 25 mph meandering country roads, but they'll be damned if they'll wait until no one is bearing down upon them before taking their God-given right to turn left RIGHT NOW.

Two is 25 mph meandering country roads. The roads here are a mess. If you want to drive around here, you should know that all roads are required to change names every mile or so, and you usually won't be informed. Any numbered road is required to move to a different road periodically, and you may or may not be informed. You know how most state roads will reassure you every so often that you're on that road? Not here. If you assume you're on the correct road just because you were on the correct road and have continued to drive straight, you will probably end up at least 10 miles in the wrong direction. Mapquest and Google Maps will not help you. Sure you can print them out, but every time the directions say "Continue on x", add 10 minutes to your expected travel time for you to figure out what that should mean, then figure out the hard way what it actually means, then struggle to find a place to turn around. Oh, and despite that struggle, I've decided that Massachusetts is no longer the Bay State, but from here on out will instead be the U-Turn State.

For all that, don't feel too sorry for me, because I'm still having a heaping helping of relax-y goodness.

I think I could live in North Billerica, Massachusetts, forever if it were always May. If anyone ever hears about them cancelling winter in New England, please let me know and I'll act accordingly. I'm here visiting Tim (USC roommate, not Michigan roommate), but mostly I'm here to unwind. You see, I graduated on Saturday, and then I have to face another week at home starting on Monday and bar prep starting the following Wednesday. So 13 hours on the road yesterday and 11 more on Monday seemed like a small price to pay to find somewhere where I could hide from life for a little bit. Tim is very busy with school stuff this week (being both a teacher and an M.F.A. candidate), so I'm largely on my own.

So far so good. Despite not seeing any other bikes anywhere at all, the town is very bikeable and I put in about three miles going to the Post Office, Starbucks, lunch, and a little bit of exploring. I also spent several hours in Starbucks reading the first half of a book that I've been meaning to get around to for years. Now I'm back at Tim's fabulous new townhouse, on the deck overlooking the Concord River. I can hear a few birds, one distant lawnmower, and the natural river flow back here, and that's about it. In fact, I should wrap this up and get back to that shortly.

As I mentioned, I graduated on Saturday--hooray!! I still have some independent study obligations that will carry into the summer, but unlike most of my slacker classmates (I don't mean they're all slackers; I mean of the ones who are) it's not my fault because the work I'm supposed to be doing is just now becoming available. Other than that, the tests are done, the papers are in, and now I just have to pass the dreaded California bar.

But in the meantime, I'm off to Lexington and Concord tomorrow, and hopefully Newport and Pawtucket on Sunday, and a whole lot of relaxation in between.

Oh, and I should mention, finally, that it's been a good couple of weeks for the Wright men in generally--last Wednesday my brother became the junior planner for Lancaster County. I suspect that life among the Amish will never be the same again.

So last weekend I went to College Park, Maryland (nice campus, sketchy town, really sketchy "Fundome" which appeared to be neither fun nor a dome) to TRASHionals, which is the national championship of popular culture quizbowl. Despite a slow personal start, I came on later in the event, and I had the good fortune of attaching myself to one of the best established teams out there. The bottom line is that after 17 years of organized quizbowl on the high school, collegiate, and open levels, I finally found myself on a national championship team. W00t!! How great is that--Ray Bourque, Jerome Bettis, and yours truly. OK that's ridiculous, but still.

In other news, we're in the middle of finals period right now. Tax was Wednesday and I'm in the middle of my Bankruptcy takehome. That should be over by the end of the weekend at the latest, and that will leave Copyright. Next Saturday is graduation. It's a busy time.

And yet somehow in the midst of all that, I've been concentrating more on the NFL draft than anything else. Seriously, I think I need help. I've been reading everything I can find on it for weeks. Thank God the thing is over by the end of the weekend or else I might never get anything done again.

My draft thoughts? The Steelers draft at #15, and the guys I would really like to see fall to that spot are Patrick Willis and Alan Branch. Because I don't think that's going to happen, I assume like the rest of the world that the pick is a CB, an OLB, or a trade down. But with a new coach (although the personnel department hasn't changed), I have much less of a feel for what the Steelers might do than in any other recent year. Of course, I had no idea we'd get Santonio Holmes last year, so who knows. I do know that I'd love to see Brian Leonard come in and be a Mike Alstott type--playing some FB, some TB especially at the goal line, and being a threat to catch the ball out of the backfield. Every mock draft I've seen has him going to Philly--usually in the second round, but occasionally in the first. So my one actual draft prediction is that Brian Leonard will not be an Eagle next year.

As for other teams, I'm most fascinated with the Lions, who should have a real sunk costs problem on their hands. Do you take the best prospect in the draft, Calvin Johnson, despite spending 3 of 4 first-rounders on WRs, or do they avoid it? I say they should do it unless they can extract as king's ransom for it, which is a possibility. If they can trade down with Tampa or Atlanta and pick up two additional second-rounders, they should be able to fill a lot of holes in a hurry. Since this is what logic dictates, I'm curious to see how Matt Millen screws it up. The Redskins, Broncos, Ravens, Colts, Bills, and Patriots should also be fun to watch, because they are teams that draft either particularly well or particularly interestingly. The one thing I do know is that I'll be planted tomorrow, way more interested than anyone should be.

Some extremely brief reviews of the Netflix I have watched relatively recently:

This Film Is Not Yet Rated: Snarky documentary, a bit full of itself, but makes a good point about censorship and the movies.
Boyz N The Hood: Don't quote me boy, I ain't said shit. Long overdue viewing.
The Weather Underground: Shadowy film, hard to get ahold of, just like its subject. Watch it only if you're particularly interested in the subject. I was.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: Most entertaining movie I've watched in a long time. Kilmer's best work, and possibly Downey's too, and that's saying something.
Control Room: al-Jazeera documentary. Probably one too many documentaries in a short time, but I was bored.
Thank You For Smoking: Very funny, and treated the lead character with more humanity than I expected.
Shaun of the Dead: Closest competitor to Kiss Bang squared. Can't wait to see their new movie.
Mean Streets: Exactly what you'd expect from early Scorcese/Keitel/DeNiro, except maybe 10% less fun. Still solid.
Black Sunday: The Super Bowl X footage was probably the most entertaining part. But I'm a Steeler fan.
Bottle Rocket: My favorite Wes Anderson film, which is to say 2.5 stars out of 5.
Beyond the Sea: Before this movie I didn't know much about Bobby Darin; now I know way more than I needed to.
Ray: I'll take the Johnny Cash movie of the two, but that's probably more of a musical preference since they're almost exactly the same movie.
Wake Up Ron Burgundy: They had about 1.5 funny movies worth of material when they made Anchorman; still, if you like those characters and that humor, you could do way worse.
Avalanche: I'm clearly out of good '70s disaster movies and am scraping the bottom of the barrel. If they get any worse, I quit. Note: If you ever make a disaster movie, establish the physical space and where everything is, or people won't understand what's happening when the disaster hits.
The Fall of Fujimori: Really interesting and even-handed documentary about a country (Peru) and a leader I didn't know much about; also notable is that it's the first movie I've watched Netflix's new streaming "Watch It Now" feature, which is particularly good for documentaries, comedy concerts, and anything where the appeal is not particularly visual, since you're watching on a computer screen.
Reality Bites: Irony (n.): a movie soaked in pop culture retro kitsch becoming retro and kitsch itself; doesn't hold up particularly well; Winona still chooses the wrong guy.

So it goes.

I had been thinking I'd write something about what I'd been reading lately (short answer: not much), but instead I find myself writing about something I read a long time ago.

I was in 10th grade when I picked up Cat's Cradle. I had read a lot as a kid, but it was mostly young children's books, sports books, Stephen King, and a little bit of Robert Heinlein. Vonnegut was one of the first "serious authors" I ever picked up just for fun.

You know how the things you experience at a young age will always stay with you in a way that things you experience as an adult tend to come and go without leaving quite as deep a mark, because you're already in some sense fully-formed? Because of that feeling, I know that no book will ever be as influential in my life as Cat's Cradle has been.

I can't adequately summarize the reasons why that's true, but I know that it has something to do with cynicism, absurdity, and learning (as the bumper stickers tell us) to "question authority". By reading about Bokononism, ice-nine, and all of the wampeters and granfalloons and foma out there, I learned how ugly and ridiculous the world could be--but also how full and rich and complex the world could be if you started looking behind the happy bullshit. I still think about granfalloons every time someone talks about patriotism and loving one's country, and I constantly go back and forth about whether foma are harmful, useful, or both.

I have re-read Cat's Cradle more than any other novel, and I expect to continue re-reading it every few years for the rest of my life. I've read many of Vonnegut's other novels, and they have all mattered to me to some extent (except, strangely, Slaughterhouse-Five, about which I never understood all the fuss), but those first 150 pages that I read will be the ones that stick with me always.

Also, the line "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut," from Back to School kills me every time, even if it's totally ripped off from the Marshall MacLuhan bit in Annie Hall.

When I was growing up, Easter was a major day on the family calendar. Along with Christmas Eve, it was the day we knew there was no wrangling out of church. Plus there was candy. In fact, there was candy well beyond the time when it was age-appropriate, because Mom has always been a sucker for holiday traditions. At some point, though, Easter became that random Sunday in April or occasionally March where everything is closed and it takes me way to long to remember why. The past few years I've been much more aware of Passover observers around me than I have of Easter.

While that's still true (prepare for groaner), I still had a really good Friday. I woke up with the idea that there were 5 or 6 discrete tasks that I had to accomplish, and I set out to do them and got them done with plenty of day to spare. That was remarkably satisfying, putting together a mental list and checking them off one by one. I even had time left over to read for one of my classes and to watch two of the three Netflix that had been laying around for a couple of weeks without turnover. It's funny how some of your best days are the ones where nothing earth-shattering happens, but you just mow through tasks that had been accumulating for a while.

I sometimes wonder if the people who named Red Delicious Apples were delusional or if they were just being ironic. But in neither case was it total, because they are definitely red and they are totally apples.

You know that great quote from one of the Godfather movies about how every time he thinks he's out they pull him right back in? Ann Arbor is the exact opposite of that. I was riding my bike around all last week and then again on Monday and thinking, "hey, this place isn't so bad." Upon hearing me think that, the weather gods decided that what we really needed over the following 72 hours was severe thunderstorms, a 60-degree temperature drop in 36 hours, snow, hail, and winds in excess of 50 miles per hour. Tomorrow's forecast calls for a 70% chance of frogs, with intermittent locusts and death of firstborns toward evening.

I drove home again last weekend. Still no change with Dad, which is amazing in and of itself. One moment left me wondering whether to laugh or cry, though. The nurse had brought in lunch and then left, and Dad just stared at it for a couple of minutes without moving. He does that a lot nowadays, blankly vacantly staring off into space until something gets his attention. I asked him if I could give him a hand with anything, and he instantly shot back, "Suicide." That could have simply been quick wry gallows humor; at least I hope it was.