a good Friday

Today the office closed early for Good Friday. When the head parter at work sent out the email on Tuesday advising us of the early closing, I blinked in confusion for a moment before I realized, "Oh, yeah, Easter is this weekend, isn't it?..."

I've obviously strayed a long way from my roots, when Easter inevitably involved a wide assortment of church services leading up to the big day, and a big fabulous gut-busting meal to celebrate the big day.

I haven't done a Lenten fast (or any other type of fast) since I left the church in 2004. I can't say that I miss it much. Thoughtful Lenten fasting is probably therapeutic for many people, but I never feel like I "got" the fasts in the way that I wanted to. A fast inevitably yielded frustration and feelings of failure when I didn't keep it as completely or honorably as I had aspired to. Maybe I had fasting performance issues.

At any rate, I had a relaxing Friday afternoon at home. Today has been a good Friday. There was no hymn singing or Psalm reading. I did a little laundry, sorted the recycling, and burned a CD of eclectic waltz music to take to the contradance tonight for the halftime break. I look forward to seeing everyone dance to the assortment of music I picked out in 3/4 time: selections from Madeleine Peyroux, Over the Rhine, Norah Jones, Jon Brion, and Cowboy Junkies.

On Monday the new session of boot camp kicks off. This time, I wisely chose to join the 6 pm class instead of the 6 am class. Though I showed up diligently for each 6 am session last time, I felt like my sleep never settled into a groove, and I spent most of the six weeks stumbling around in a strange sleep-confused haze. It'll be a rush to get from the office in Midtown to Grant Park by 6 pm — but at least I'm usually awake at that hour already.

This time I want to focus on my eating, keeping it clean. My main personal goal for this year was to introduce some integrity into my eating habits, and keeping the boot camp required food diary this time will be a good way to try that out. Sometimes I'm amazed that I'm 32 years old but still manage to eat like an unsupervised 8-year-old for weeks at a time.

-- Oh, one more note: I just published a new poem to Ephemera. This one's a perfect springtime poem. And if you read it in just the right way, you will end up laughing out loud.