Skateboarding.

So last night was my short night off.  Tonight's my loooooooooong night off.  And I'm pumped on it.  Got off work at 4pm, don't work again until 330pm tomorrow afternoon, so that means I'll be up until the wee hours tonight.  Just like I like it!

For those of you who don't know, I used to skateboard.  I know, hard to imagine, right?  Chubby, goofy kid like me on wheels?  Not the most obvious pairing.

But growing up in Elma, there wasn't much to do after school.  Instead of taking the usual small-town teenager route of getting high, drunk, or both to kill time, I went skateboarding.  I still consider the hours spent skateboarding with my homeys in Elma some of the happiest of my life.

The Middle School bank.  The Mormon Church.  The Credit Union.  The High School steps.  These were just a few of our local spots back in the day.  Occasionally we'd make it down to Aberdeen High School or the Aberdeen skatepark.  Even more rarely, we'd make it up to Olympia to skate the Evergreen campus and Garfield Elementary.  Good f___ing times, man.

Before you ask, no, I was never very good.  But that didn't matter much.  It was fun.  And when you get right down to it, fun's really the name of this whole big game, right?

Anyway, I've spent the better part of three hours tonight watching skateboard videos on theberrics.com.  The Berrics, for the record, is a private indoor skatepark in LA, built, owned and run by skate legends Steve Berra and Eric Koston.  As far as I can tell from watching the videos, it's where basically every pro skateboarder in the whole friggin' world goes to hang out and just skate with friends when they're in LA.  Just watching these videos has reminded me how much fun it is to just hang out and skate.  Skateboarding itself is fun enough, but even when you're off the board, hanging out with other skateboarders is rad in itself.  Just take a peek at some of the videos from The Berrics to get a taste.

Long story short, I want to start skating again.  And if I can scrape together enough money to buy a new skateboard without feeling guilty about spending the little dough I have on a new skateboard, I fully intend to do it.  I know what you're thinking:

"Colin, do you really think taking up skateboarding again is the best use of your time?  I mean, you're 23, make very little money, are a bit of a free-loader, and have been a college grad for more than two years (and without much to show for it)!  Don't you think it's time you grew up a little and got yourself, you know, a haircut?  And a real job?"

Yes, readers, I think that all the time.  I need to do something with my life.  But skateboarding's fun!  And it's relatively cheap, not to mention good exercise.  C'mon, get behind me on this!

Believe me, I think about my future ad nauseum; a healthy, youthful distraction like skateboarding isn't going to screw up my priorities.  It's just gonna make me happy.

Enough about that.  Here's what else I did today:

• Worked 8 hours at the bookstore.
• Made dinner for Megan and Chris.  I'd been thinking about taking a culinary trip down memory lane for a while; tonight was the night.  Fishsticks and tater tots, baby!  All of us were reminded of childhood.
• Drank 3 Piggly Wiggly Diet Colas.  Currently working on #4.  Booyah.
• Read more of Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.  The book is terrific, but I've been reading it super slowly.  I shall finish it soon, I promise.  Some sort of report will be posted.  Get psyched.  (If you've never read/heard of Johnson, pick up Jesus' Son with a quickness.  You won't regret it.  Best active writer I'm aware of, hands down.)
• Other stuff I can't recall now.

Okay, that's all for now, folks.  I want to quickly point out that I won't be posting boring day-in-the-life stuff like this everyday.  I'll get back to the more interesting content soon enough, I assure you.  I just need a few days to properly prepare all my Earth-shaking ideas for presentation.  I hope you'll bear with me.

Until next time: Have fun, Everybody.

[Stuck in my head today: "Hang Wire" by the Pixies.]