THE LAST FIVE ...

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- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

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Thursday, May 22, 2003 - 5:54 p.m.

It may take you the whole weekend to read all this

I find it very depressing when I see an announcement for a movie coming out on DVD, and it's one that, when it was released in theaters, I was very interested in seeing it, but never got around to it. It reminds me how little I get to the cinema.

But I suppose I have a little extra money to show for it.

Which I just put into all those DVDs I've bought and have yet to watch (nevermind the ones I've yet to open).

OK, so no update last night, and I'm sure you were all sitting on the edges of your seats anticipating which of my five senses I decided to spend Wednesday focusing on. (It clearly wasn't my sense of sentence construction.)

Frankly, I think I'm getting bored with the exercise of spending a day focusing on a sense, but if I carry it through as I intended, it's all over tomorrow. And I'm away beginning tonight, so there won't be an update until Monday night, at the earliest, anyway.

Yesterday in my groggy try-to-sleep-for-another-hour-while-Casey-showers-eats-and-gets-dressed state, I chose as Taste Day.

And the first taste we all experience in the morning is ick. I don't think you need a tiny little book to suggest spending a few moments when you wake up on your sense of taste � I think we all realize it on most mornings.

But right after those first few minutes of orientation, when we're shaking off sleep and sometimes laboring to get out of bed, there's the pleasant gooey minty freshness of toothpaste. I love that tingling sensation that lets you know everything's clean and you're supported by the confidence and assurance that you can talk closely with people or french your girlfriend without them pulling away.

Breakfast for me is usually simple (boring, some would say) and routine. I don't vary much, unless I'm eating breakfast out, when I might peruse the menu more thoroughly. But on work mornings, it's usually cereal or, the only variation I tend to consider, an English muffin. So yesterday, I had Cheerios. I love the simpleness of the toasted oats, and they're healthy too. With fruit punch, they're almost like a snack (and I'm not above having some when hunger strikes at 10 p.m.). The best time to have them, as I did yesterday, is within days of opening a new box. The top half of a box worth of Cheerios is the tastiest and freshest that they get.

Still hungry before heading off to work, I cut off a few slices of monterey jack cheese and broke out some crackers. Jack is entrenched in my Top 5 Favorite Cheeses, and it might be in the Top 3.

Minutes later, more toothpaste. I hate leaving the house in the morning without brushing my teeth as one of the last things I do.

For lunch, I reheated some leftover Annie's mac and cheese, and even microwaved days later, it's the best from-the-box mac-n-cheez there is. Because it was a rather small portion, I snagged a tiny bag of Doritos (why do I always want to spell it with an E? I'm not Dan Quayle) from the machine in the kitchen. I love the unhealthy spicy cheesiness of Doritos, yet they leave one of the worst aftertastes known to man. That's when the stash of gum I keep in my drawer comes in handy.

Later in the afternoon, I discovered one of life's better pleasures: Ben & Jerry's ice cream cake. Cookie dough ice cream, too. [Sound of gurgling and drooling, a la Homer Simpson.]

Back home last night: Melted mozzarella, crunchy crust, juicy green peppers, tomato sauce and a deliciously crunch-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside edge � homemade pizza (with storebought dough, but don't judge us) is so satisfying.

Which brings us to today, where I wondered how I'd focus on my sense of sight. It's hard, because in a way I'm always aware of it � everything I see, or everything my eyes pick up, even if my brain doesn't actively register them, in some way affects my actions or emotions. I think in that way, my sense of sight is the one of which I'm most aware, the one on which I focus more than any other. So, for the purposes of this "sense a day" exercise, I'll explore the boundaries of my field of vision. I'll sit here now, live at 5:24 p.m. on the East Coast, stare at this bottom line of my SimpleText document as I type, and see what my field of vision can pick up without me moving my head or, if I can discipline myself well enough, my eyes.

On the far left, I can see a black object that I know is my CD case. If I didn't already know what it was, I wouldn't be able to identify it beyond something black, about the size of a CD jewel case. In reality, it's a CD wallet, but the inch-and-a-half width of it is not discernable in my peripheral vision.

Closer to the center beyond the CD wallet is my bottle of water, then my yellow highlighter, lying next to a red pen and a blue one. A small spiral notebook sits open next to the pens, with my Simpsons page-a-day calendar further back on the desk in front of my Chicago Cubs plastic cup that serves as my pen holder. To the right of the cup is a three-picture frame with my photos of Maine's Pemaquid Point lighthouse and New Jersey's Barnegat Light on either side of a drawing of an unidentified beacon. That about covers my desk up to my left hand. I have an L-shaped desk in my cubicle, with my computer centered where the two extensions meet. It's like I'm looking at the point of the L from the inside.

Above those items on my left are things tacked to the wall, things I can identify because I know what they are in my mind, but again I cannot discern just from my peripheral vision. Above those is a shelf, its contents beyond comprehension. Hanging on the wall behind the lighthouse photos is my calendar, with a Simpsons poster to its right and partially obscurred behind my monitor. Other various things are scattered on the desk near the base of the computer: Mets and BlueClaws baseball schedules, a blue stress ball, a weird woven potted plant holder thingy that Casey brought over sometime for some reason.

To the right of the computer is my Jeff Manto BlueClaws bobblehead doll, a framed photo of me at the Grand Canyon in 1999, my black phone and tape dispenser. Just in front of those, on a particularly clear space on the desk, sits my mouse. Further to the right I can see a hint of manila folders. On the walls hang some basketball cards that came with my Lego basketball players, a few baseball cards, a picture of Julie Bowen Casey gave me. To their left are several sheets of paper with phone lists for my magazine and the rest of the company. There's also a shelf on that side above the desk, but its contents are just blobs to me without turning my head.

One thing this exercise does is give me tunnel vision. My eyes are trained on the glowing screen, mostly white because of this document and the web page up behind it. The computer's white as well, along with the desk (an off-white), the calendar to the left, and the phone lists on the right. It's all very bright, as is the harsh light from above, and my eyes are, frankly, beginning to ache.

It's now 5:36, and I consider that enough of a focus on my sense of sight. In 20 minutes, I should be free to go, in 30 minutes, I should be on my way to Boston. I'll try to remember to spend tomorrow � or one of the other days � focusing on my sense of smell, and you may get to hear a little about it come Monday night or Tuesday. If you miss me in the meantime, you can check out some of the ol' archives. Hell, you've got 763 other entries to play with. Too many? OK, fine, I'll suggest some:

� From two years ago Sunday, this gives you an idea of what I'm up to as you read ...

� According to my stats page (through Wednesday), my 250th entry is my most-read effort (410 hits), but that's like saying a greatest hits collection is a singer's most popular album � it's just taking the best of what's been done, so it's expected to do well ...

� Second on the stats page is this one (398), but that's merely the result of all those Google hits for "crappy kids drawings" and has nothing to do with what I wrote, other than putting those words in the right order ...

� So that makes the Duffman entry (277) my most popular original work, but I attribute much of that to the Simpsons fans and their Googling. I'm not complaining ...

� The John Madden Sex-A-Strator� (273) is right behind it, though, with my 500th entry a bit of a ways back. I don't really count the "/index.html" and "/" pages (basically just the dano.diaryland.com hits, which have 3956 and 3903 respective visits) or the older pages in considering which are my most visited entries...

� Finally, we'll give a little love to the two pages at the bottom of my top 50 stats list: this one and this one, both tied at 47 hits through Wednesday and, interestingly both dealing with the same weekend trip to D.C.

Enjoy.

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Yeah, sorry I have to be all legal on you here, but unless otherwise indicated, all that you read here is mine, mine, mine. But feel free to quote me or make fun of me or borrow what I write and send it out as an e-mail forward to all your friends, family and coworkers. Just don't say it's yours, you know?