Have you met Popeye?

If you haven't, you should. These words of his struck a chord for me, and they may for you as well, fellow busy people:

I’m also starting to see how the pain of exhaustion helped distract me from other kinds of pain that were part of my life. It’s not as much as I’m “taking my life back” as much as it feels as though I’m claiming a life that I think part of me thought I really didn’t deserve.

He's a wise one, that Popeye.

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From another corner of our fine country, Raul writes about an evening of unexpected bonding with strangers that began like this:

After a few minutes a very tall girl with long brown hair who I would later learn was a Parsons design student, broke social convention, turned to her fellow benchmates, and said, "My God, wasn't today beautiful." At first she just got a few quiet affirmations,"yeah, gorgeous", "best day yet" etc, but then a young woman in a business suit again broke social convention and revealed personal information: "It was so nice, when I woke up I decided I didn't want to feel miserable about anything, and broke up with my boyfriend. I ditched him at 7:30 in the morning. He didn't know what hit him."

(Via Kottke)

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Sometimes the person singing a song is more important than the song itself. That is certainly true for Dustin. Listen to him sing:



and then read his story. By the way, he won the contest and will be singing the Seventh Inning Stretch at Wrigley Field in a few minutes, just a day past the 10th anniversary of Harry Caray's last singing of that hallowed song.

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Jay has done it again, this time busting the U.S. Treasury with looking to him (or a successful wager on the N.F.L.) for a solution to the growing national debt. That's odd, I thought Republicans were the fiscally responsible ones. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

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Because I'm better with pictures than words, here is a weekend photo for you: