Sweet Distraction

Producing material worth posting here is not always my top priority.  As a husband, father and pee wee baseball coach, it simply can't be.  Other things are constantly popping up that take priority.  Of course, even when I have some spare time on my hands, the quality of my posts could still be questioned (and I would be the first to question it).


Then again, even with time and a willingness to post crap, I still find myself sitting in front of my computer from time to time with absolutely nothing to say (hard to believe, I know).  I am reminded at times like this of advice I received from my fiction writing professor in college.  "Creating quality output requires quality input."  This was said to remind us to read while we write and heeding this advice has served me well over the years.


But, when you are wide awake at one in the morning because of your terrible work schedule and your wife is sleeping next to you on the bed that you don't feel much like getting up from, turning on the light to read a good book is not a viable option.  When the television remote is within reach, however, and you know that's something she can sleep through, you hope that at least one of the eight thousand channels has some quality programming available in the wee hours of the morning.


So it was that I navigated past infomercials (a word that does not get underlined in red when I type it, which scares me), took in some late night talk show interviews, caught up on episodes of Modern Family and became puzzled by the trend of NBA players wearing nerdy glasses during post game interviews (now there's some fodder for a future post, but in the meantime...those belong to us, jocks!  Give 'em back!) before I found the way I was going to end my night.


Thousands of torchlights burned in the valley and an ominous thunderbolt burst across the dark sky.  Beads of sweat broke out on the foreheads of several hundred soldiers at once as they stood along the wall and prepared for battle.  With a monstrous cry providing the signal, the Uruk-Hai marched forward on Helm's Deep.


And that's all she wrote.  Good night, everybody.