I thought of that great Otis Redding song Dock Of The Bay for no particular reason.

Do you ever love somebody and they love you, but the two of you just don’t connect? That song to me represents that frustration. (I’m not disputing any socio-political interpretation one may have for that song. This is just my personal take.)

I’ve been up for about 2 hours. I want to sleep some more.

Right now I’m thinking of all the things I ought to be doing, like giving clothes to the Goodwill, throwing out junk. It never ends, the Ought To’s, I mean. But the loneliness right now is all I feel.

The desire awakens

The skin becomes electric and charged

Was that a kiss I felt on my neck, a slow caress of my back, as muscles relax, and prick hardens?

Your hand there has skill. And you know how to tease and take pleasure in my begging.

I am yours Mistress.

There is the Robert Frost poem, of course. One of my favorite poems by Frost. Then there is the heat and the cold I use to manage the pain and discomfort of the pinched nerve.

Tonight I swam, then showered, shaved, headed home. Now I sit, ice on my shoulder. I am watching The Great Train Robbery, the Michael Crichton film of his novel about a train robbery in Victorian England. When one is as hopeless an Anglophile as I am, this is like a trip to Disneyworld for an eight year old.

The ice feels good. This natural satisfaction is a lovely feeling.

Cricket today, Sri Lanka vs. South Africa. I saw some of it. South Africa has had a disappointing series, but they played well today. It is tempting to assign a value to a team, based on its nation’s history. Never mind apartheid is a thing of the past. The team reflects all of the races, tribes, and creeds of the nation. And I have a story for every other nation in the mix.

Thursday at BJ’s I was talking cricket with Mohammed, the Bangladeshi clerk. He likes India. They are very good. I’m beginning to recognize good play now.

Cricket is fun.

Hope all of y’all are having fun,

Sorta half-asleep. Wishin’ I was some place else. A bed, perhaps.

The sky threatens rain. The clouds are beautiful.

The World is crazy. Or maybe just this country. It is going to take a century to undo the damage done by The Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in 1964 and the Leftists at Columbia in 1968. My latest e-mail from the University of Virginia indicates that the vultures of the Left are not through ripping the flesh from the carcass of academia. A National Collegiate Athletic Association Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship might keep the grousers, critics and malcontents happy for a little while. And definitely keep them from looking too hard at the cultural Marxists who run Mr Jefferson’s University. The old shell game of bamboozling the rich continues.

Somebody has to do something about the size of government. It will collapse of its own weight.

Stop using terms like bureaucrat to describe government employees. People react to the term and lose sight of what it costs to pay for government. We can’t expect our Senators and Representatives in Virginia to downsize the Federal Government. The government employees and federal contractors keep these guys in office.

Unless that changes, we’re doomed.

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What am I doing up? I am sleepy. I sit here half watching cricket, half-browsing through Amazon.com looking for pine tar soap, Russian Orthodox liturgical music, cricket paraphernalia. Why? Back to bed.

I swam tonight, 2050 meters, a mile and a quarter. I showered, came home. As I sit here, with ice on my aching muscle, drinking a cup of hot tea, I contemplate what it means to be happy. All I can think is that the love of family and friends is of paramount importance. I love them. They love me.

After a longish workout, there is always that endorphin release. Losing time in the pool, means the endurance level is not quite where it needs to be, until tonight.

Sex is merely a remote thought.

R.B.A. is my son. We gave him three names. He was born on 25 June 1976, the Bicentennial year. He is a good man today. I could say much, but I can’t and won’t because I’m just sitting here enjoying the morning sounds of what may be crickets and the rumble of the refrigerator compressor. Dawn is breaking. The sky is an incredible shade of blue, like cobalt almost.

I will text RBA’s mom in a short to let her know I’m thinking of her too.

True Love never ends. So I’ve heard.