Runaway Saturday Grab Bag

I keep a somewhat non-standard daily schedule during the week. I get up around 5 a.m. to get showered and dressed and grab a cup of coffee before heading to catch the VRE. Door-to-door, between driving to the train station, parking, waiting on the platform, riding the rails, and walking from the station a few blocks to my office building, the commuting takes about an hour and a half. I get to my desk around 7:30 a.m. and work my eight hours and head out around 3:30 p.m., which puts me back at my own house around 5 p.m. This workday routine is the way it is for a couple of reasons: I live fairly far away from my job, and I don't want my kids to be babysat or daycared for 12 hours a day. Those represent conscious, deliberate decisions on my part. I chose to live somewhere far enough out that we could have as much house as we do and not go broke, just as I chose to work as far in as I do for mainly monetary reasons. And I want to engage with my children as much as possible, and chose to arrange as early a quitting time at my gig as possible. I bear sole responsibility for this state of affairs, and I can't be too bitter about it.

And yet. Almost every day as I'm walking back to the train station around 3:30, I see people out for a jog, or a bike ride, or a brisk walk with their dogs. I feel like I'm bending over backwards to be finished with work by 3:30 just so I can begin my longish homeward commute and get to my kids a couple of hours before their bedtime. Sometimes I really want to know who these people are who have painstakingly arranged their own schedules just so that they can get in some cardio in the middle of the afternoon. And other times I don't want to know anything about them other than whether or not I could get away with punching them in the face.

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Parks & Rec was back this week after a weird hiatus from the Thursday schedule, and my wife and I thoroughly enjoyed the double dose of episodes, even if one of them was the out-of-season Halloween installment. But the cause of legitimate bouncing-on-the-couch joy was, of course, an actual promo for Community, with a for-real return date of January 2nd and everything. NBC's been known to renege on things like that before, but still, I remain stupidly optimistic about the Re-Harmon-ing of my favorite show.

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Also, I recently ordered the commemorative character figurines from the Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas episode, which I've been coveting basically since 2010. They were initially pretty expensive, but all I had to do was wait three years and then they were on clearance at like 90% off (read: were approximately fairly priced considering they are cheap PVC novelties).

I thought I would have to break out the "90% off" in my own defense when my wife found the package and opened it herself, but she was super-geeked. If nothing else it gives us motivation to start hauling out the Christmas decorations as soon as the Thanksgiving dessert plates are cleared, so that we can find a place to display Robot Britta and Drummer Boy Troy.

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Also-also, have I griped here yet about the fact that the box set of Community Season 4 is exactly the same retail price as Seasons 2 and 3, even though those two were regular 22-episode seasons and 4 was a truncated 13-episode season? That is an extremely bogus form of rubbing salt in an old wound, you guys.

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Wow, I really was not expecting this to end up being mostly about Community but it kind of got away from me there a bit. These things happen.