Not-So-Smooth Sailing

Panama City Beach - The Gulf Coast states are in for a wet weekend, with 20 mph winds from the east whipping up rough, 4- to 5-foot seas. Saturday's forecast for Panama City Beach calls for a 40% chance of scattered thunderstorms, increasing to 80% chance of t-storms on Sunday.

The best part of all this? I'm not there!

My plans were to go scuba diving this weekend with my friend Mike C. and others, leaving after lunch today for the five-hour drive down to Panama City Beach. I emailed the forecast to Mike on Thursday, but he simply replied, "you'll be getting wet anyway." So I packed up all my dive gear last night - BC, fins, snorkle, wet suit, regulator, etc. - and brought it all to work expecting to leave from there for the beach. However, Mike called me in the morning, saying that, gee, the weather is starting to look awfully grim, we're not going to have much fun anyway, let's cancel the trip.

Hard to argue with his logic. The weather's all the same once you're under water, but getting out to the dive site in 5-foot seas and thunderstorms is no picnic.

So it appears that I now have an unplanned weekend in Atlanta on my hands. Now, I'm not very good with unstructured time, but there is a lot going on this weekend. There's Game 3 of the Red Sox-Angels series this afternoon, and Round Two of the Presidential debates and Game 3 of the Yankees-Twins tonight. Tomorrow there's a full slate of football games, including Georgia-Tennessee, as well as Texas-Oklahoma, USC-California and Florida-LSU, not to mention Game 3 of the Braves-Astros series. And if I ever get sick of watching sports on TV, there's the six or seven unread back issues of The New Yorker that I packed in my suitcase for this weekend, not to mention an equal number of The Economist. And I have at least a half-dozen books that I've bought at various times this summer that I've been meaning to read someday.

Of course, if I want to get out of the house, there's Friday night, and Saturday and Sunday morning, services at the Zen Center. And I can start that new membership at the karate/kickboxing place. Or I could join a gym and go work out. Hey, I could go shopping (ka-ching!)! Or running!

The house could definately use a good cleaning - a ceiling-to-floor scrub down. I saw the first hints of mildew on the grout between the shower tiles this morning, and you definately want to stay on top of that. Plus the leaves all over the patio and driveway are just begging for a good leaf-blowing.

I could burn some CDs and make some room on my hard drive. I can finally get around to setting up the stereo and hanging the pictures. There's two ceiling lights that need their bulbs replaced.

I can go to PetSmart and pick out a puppy or a kitten (maybe one of each) and take home a pet or two! Maybe I'll meet a girl there and fall in love, and we'll get married! We can raise a family and then retire up in the mountains and spend our golden years together in a cabin somewhere. The kids will come visit us with their kids, and we'll watch our grandchildren grow like weeds and wonder where all the time went . . .

First things first, though. For now, I'm just gonna watch the Red Sox game, and take it from there.