I'm cheating and starting this before going to bed.  I know...

that my leg will not permit a walk tomorrow unless there is a miracle of healing between now and then.  I think I'm going to just take the rest of the week off and try to resume on Sunday, even if I feel better in a day or two.

I was going to use my last birthday gift massage on Sunday, but now I'm postponing that for at least a week, maybe two, to try to resolve this first.

Because I was trapped here in my room for most of today, in spite of plans to the contrary, I had a lot of time for reflection.  In 1992, my birthday present from my then wife was a demand for a divorce.  We'd been separated since February, technically, although she didn't move out until June.  But for whatever reason, she chose my birthday to call and let me know that she wanted to end the separation and get the divorce. 

That was also the first of a number of years that I spent my birthday riding my mountain bike one mile for each year of life thus far, with one extra mile added on at the end.  I kept that up for at least eight years or so.  Now I only wish I could jump on the mountain bike and ride 53 miles and one more to grow on.  Maybe in a year or two I can start to approach that again.

I reflected on the different things I've done in this life.  Marrying twice.  Having no kids, by choice.  Not that I didn't want kids, I just never felt that either of my wives and I were in the right place in our relationship that children was a good idea.  Considering how badly both relationships ended, I was right about that. 

I went into the military right after high school.  Before graduation, I'd worked in fast food (Jack in the Box and McDonald's at different times, different parts of the city), regular restaurants as a busboy and as a waiter, as a shipping clerk for an office supply firm, a porter at a bowling alley, and I also got paid to keep score for bowling leagues and tournaments at that same alley.  I'd worked in a rare coin shop as well.

During my time in the military, I worked part-time jobs once again at McDonald's outside of two different bases I was stationed at.  I worked at a roller disco in the Miami area, as a floor guard and as a disc jockey (did the same gig in a Biloxi Mississippi roller rink in the 80s).  I worked as the clerk in an adult bookstore, selling magazines and sex aids, along with selling tons of quarters to the guys who went into the movie boothes in the back.  When I took the job, I made it clear I would never go into those boothes, even if someone got sick and needed help.  I'd dial 911 and point out the location, but I wasn't going back there.  Nasty things happened back there.

In South Korea, my one part-time gig was working at the base's "club" as the weekend DJ, hauling a box of 500 albums back and forth from my barracks room to the DJ booth in the club.

In Las Vegas, I found part-time work in commercial radio, as a FM DJ for an adult contemporary music stations.  At an all news station as a reporter/news anchor/writer/editor and I also produced and engineered a sports-betting talk show and the station's broadcasts of Angel baseball games.  When the sports-betting talk show moved to another station I went with it for awhile, but juggling three part-time radio gigs was too many.

In the years I worked at Crossroads, I worked part-time at a bowling alley behind the counter, renting out shoes, selling games to open-play bowlers, and selling a ton of lottery tickets.  I worked part-time at H&R Block, doing people's income tax returns and teaching others how to prepare returns.

Truth be told, I spent most of my adult life working a full-time job and at least one part-time job almost the entire time.  With the exception of the post-Crossroads years while I was going to school to finish my degree of course.  During that time, I did a lot of part-time work, with a few full-time contract assignments thrown in.

After all those years of working full-time and part-time all of the time, it's no wonder that even though I'm nowhere near physically able to work just yet, I don't really desire to go back to work anymore than part-time.  After all that work, it comes as no surprise.

Here's a word of advice to those of you who are working.  Don't moon your boss at the office.  The courts just ruled that if they fire you for doing so, the firing will stand up.  That's what happened in the case of a broker who worked for a company named Wanger Asset Management.  His company was purchased by BofA and he felt he was going to get the shaft in future compensation.  So he expressed his feelings.  At first they weren't going to fire him, but the big boss in New York City insisted he e canned.  He sued and lost.  Then the appeals court upheld his loss.  FWIW, doing what he did cost him a bonus worth $2 million.  Perhaps he will finally put this behind him.

Bill Clinton spoke for 48 minutes last night at the DNC.  I wonder how long he was given as a time period and how far he went over.  Fortunately, I wasn't home and where I was only football and baseball were on television.  Were Will Rogers still alive on that day, I know what he would have said about Clinton's most famous, lengthy speech.  He said it about another speech at another convention when he was covering conventions for radio.  "That was the famous Chinese politician, On-Too Long".

A woman in Arizona got stung by a scorpion and was going to ignore it, until she started to get really sick.  She was advised to go to the hospital and she did.  They treated her with a scorpion anti-venom that the hospital paid about $3,800 for.  Two vials of this $3,800 anti-venom.  The real sting came with the bill from the hospital, which is listed as a not-for-profit.  $39,562 per vial, and a total bill of more than $83,000.  Given how her story has gone viral, the hospital is "working to adjust the cost of the high, out of network bill".