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Recently I’ve mysteriously taken to saying “yeah, right” when I agree with someone. As in “yes, correct” but it sounds almost like the sarcastic “yeah right” so maybe people think I’m actually being contrary all the time and just happen to have a deadpan delivery. Despite this fear, I’ve been unable to shake the habit.

Went exploring by Tilden on Saturday. It was fun, and we had to hack through lots of plants and shrubs since we seemed to have a collective, unconscious aversion to real trails. The downside is that I now have this rash on my forehead that might be from poison oak or sumac or whatever.

UConn played some of their best basketball ever in a whupping of #7 Oklahoma. Hoooooooo!

I’ve been feeling incredibly lethargic and unproductive lately. My new electric guitar came and it’s quite fun to play but amazingly I seem to be allergic to the coating: if I don’t wear a long-sleeve shirt, my right forearm turns all red and itchy. Bizarre. The lethargy and the guitar are uncorrelated, as I don’t even feel much desire to pick the guitar up.

One fun thing is that I’ve been playing a lot of games lately: Scrabble, Boggle, Settlers of Catan, Scattergories, Taboo, and InPursuit, with a host of people, too: Meera, Maya, Umesh, Jenny, Melinda, Judy, Steve, Koto, Christie, Jonathan, and more. One thing I kind of nostalgically miss is those old role-playing/adventures games you’d stay up all night playing with someone just for the hell of it. You’d complete a bunch of quests, your character would move up a bunch of levels (or your city would be five times bigger, or whatever), and you’d come out at the end of it tired but satisfied that at least you accomplished something concrete, no matter how small.

The problem with life is that there isn’t such a feedback system. You don’t know exactly how much more work you have to do to get to the next level. And unlike the characters in those silly games, you can’t carry an unlimited inventory, or keep all your skills in perfect shape all the time. You have to pick and choose what to keep and what to throw away (both physically and mentally), what to work on and what to let rust. And if you happen to take a wrong turn down in the labyrinth, you can’t Load Game yourself back.

Okay, so that makes life more exciting — after all, sometimes you find a treasure without having to slay any monsters — but a little structure wouldn’t hurt those of us still looking for direction.

(Egads, I’ve out-trite-d myself this time.)