So yesterday was Brandon's last day.

He was in remarkably high spirits, laughing and joking, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that he has completely fucked his life up.

We all went out to lunch at a Mexican joint, where Allison asked him some of the tough questions that had to be asked, like what exactly his plans where. "Well" says Brandon, "I got a party to plan..."

"You're going to ... plan a party... that'll take ... ummm"

"Well I also got some projects planned: Crystal left this big round table that her grandfather made. I'm going to take off the, the linoleum and engrave some playing cards into the wood, you know, and cover it with plastic or something, and then I'm going to have Poker Night!!!"

"Oh I see" says Allison.

Granted, there's nothing classier than a poker table with playing cards engraved into the top, but linoleum? Who the fuck covers a tabletop with linoleum???

"Also there's this new video game I want to try out and- "

"Oh, so you do have some serious plans then." I cut in, which made Scott laugh.

Since his house is being foreclosed upon and he's no longer paying the mortgage, Brandon sees no reason to throw himself back into the daily workaday grind. Enjoy a well-earned rest. He says he doesn't plan on looking for a job "for another month or so"- waiting for that busy holiday hiring season, no doubt, where all the good jobs are. In fact now that he's unshackled from the responsibilities of being a responsible person, he seems to view his post-Crystal future as being a non-stop whirlwind of parties, poker nights, and debauchery. New girls every night! Beer and porn! He's almost salivating with anticipation!

Admittedly, I'm no expert on the feminine psyche, so I'll have to put it to any female readers out there. What about it, girls? If you were to meet a guy who: doesn't have a job; is in the beginning stages of a divorce which is already getting ugly and only looks to get uglier; who is in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings; who will run out of cash the moment the first child support payment is due; who will be homeless just as soon as the bank can arrange foreclosure; who displays such utter disrespect for his wife and the mother of his child; who has no ambitions beyond making a poker table- if you were to meet a guy like that, assuming you are not a crack whore with a side hobby in crystal meth, is your first reaction going to be "Dude! I want to party with YOU!!!"?

Anyway, I don't want to sound too harsh, because I do like the guy. And certainly, this is a major transitional point in his life and he is entitled to his moment of sunny optimism, and to take some time to contemplate the direction he wants his life to take. But it's hard to watch someone you care about make a series of such staggeringly bad decisions- decisions which will have major negative consequences for the rest of his life. He can carry on in such blithe disregard of reality for only so long, before reality asserts itself with all the sublety of a croquet mallet to the back of the head.

So I wish the poor delusional sap the best of luck. Friday was his last day at work, and on the same day it was reported that unemployment hit ten percent.

Monday Brandon gave his two weeks' notice at work. This took us all by complete surprise- none of us had had any inkling- I should point out that Brandon has worked with us for about seven years. He's generally well-liked around the office- a bit of a goof-ball- but competent enough. He has a wife and baby to support as well; Crystal doesn't work (and neither does young Bryden, for that matter). So naturally we were all astonished! What is Brandon's deal??? As your reporter here, I undertook to find out- and the answer astonished even me! Heartbreak! Betrayal! More twists and turns than a python at a cat convention! And plenty of pure comedy gold, if, like me, you are entertained by the spectacle of people behaving like jackasses.

Tuesday, Brandon and I went out to lunch (Chinese).

"So you really quit your job????"

"Yep."

"Whatever for???"

"I'm sick of working with Scott."

"You got anything lined up?"

"Nope."

Brandon added a few remarks about Scott's unreasonableness- apparently Scott was of the idea
that Brandon should, I don't know, do his job instead of texting all day, and we walked up to his car. Except it wasn't his car- it was Crystal's. "Where's your car?"

"Gone."

"Gone? Gone where?"

"Just gone"

I was starting to get a bit irritated at his gnomic responses by this point, but once we got in he began elaborating: "Bankruptcy court's taken it. Yeah we filed last month."

"What???"

I'm matey enough with Brandon at work of course, but I wouldn't say we're close personal friends, and his personal life is one of those things we've never discussed (as heretofore I have had absolutely no interest in it).

"We're going to lose the house too, of course."

"What??? Oh wow... that sucks... what are you going to do?"

"Oh, find an apartment I guess. I'll probably start looking over the weekend.... What Crystal doesn't know is that she's not coming with me."

"What!!"

The bombshells were tumbling out now fast and furious! One revelation after another!

"Yeah, I'm leaving her... My God she's so fucking stupid."

(This actually wasn't much of a revelation. Crystal is dumber than a sack of walnut shells)

The next day at work I learned that the Plan was to move to Cincinnati the day after his last day at work. Apparently it turns out Brandon is seeing some little chickadee down there who he met on the Internet- CLASS. I guess he's been seeing her for months- and she's the reason he always calls off on Mondays. "Yeah, she'll let me stay there till I get back on my feet!"

"So you're just going to up and leave Crystal? With no job? In a house that's being foreclosed on? .... What is she going to do???"

"Oh, I don't care"

Delivered with a cold complacency and calm impersonal contempt. He speaks as though it's the normalest thing in the world.

A word about Crystal. I don't want to be mean, but ... well, oh okay. You talked me into it. Crystal is no prize. She is homely as a turnip (and about the same proportions), dull, ignorant as a plank, and while not actually trying to be hideous she is about as drab as she can possibly manage. She lacks any grace, wit, spark, style or flash. To be fair, it's not like she let herself go after her marriage. Truth is she never had it going on to begin with. She is not without her good points, though- she doesn't have a spiteful or malicious or vindictive bone in her body. I've never heard her say anything mean-spirited about anyone. Possibly this is because she doesn't have the imagination to come up a worthwhile zinger.

Now, personally I myself would never want to be married to Crystal, and if I found myself in such an unfortunate predicament, I too would take steps to remedy the situation, so I can understand Brandon's motivation here. But the fact is that Brandon is married to her, and he
did so under his own free will, and there's a right way and a wrong way to end marriages and
it seems to me that skipping out in the dead of night without warning, leaving your wife to fend for herself, with no money, no job, in a house being foreclosed upon, is a pretty shitty way to do it. And to consider that he's leaving his infant son in the bargain adds a whole order of magnitude of shittiness to it.

The next day at work Brandon is all "best night's sleep I ever had!" I try to ignore him.

"Yeah. I slept in the car with a bunch of blankets!" "Wasn't it a little ... cold?" "Well yeah but NO Crystal!!!"

The next day at work Brandon is "So do you want to see some pictures?"

He's got a bunch of photos on his computer of his house, ransacked. Turns out Crystal left. When he was at work. Crystal took all her clothes and personal effects, of course, and the baby, and all the baby's accessories, and all the food out of the 'fridge and all the food out of the freezer and all of the cleaning supplies and a fair selection of furniture and the microwave oven and the kitchen stove and the dishwasher.

She also took the dead-bolt locks out of the front door. This is turning out to be our own personal Jerry Springer show!

"Good for Crystal!" I thought. "Wow jeeze!" I said.

"She left the table her grandfather made. I wish I could see her face when I send her the video of that table going up in flames!"

I have no idea where this malice came from. Even Brandon admits that the stove and dishwasher and locks were bought by Crystal's family. Brandon seems to be under the impression that these photos will help him when they face off in court: "yes, your honor, she took all her things when she left!"

The next day at work I learn the Plan has changed. Brandon is no longer planning on moving
to Cincinnati; with Crystal out of the picture he's going to stay in "his" house. Since he's in bankruptcy apparently he doesn't have to pay his mortgage ("Free rent!" he says with thumbs up. "What a fucking scumbag" says Allison) They won't kick him out for six months, maybe a year! He is looking forward to all the fun he is going to have! I wonder what happened to the Brandon I used to know. It's like he's having a mid-life crisis, but he's only 27 or so... Kids today!!!

He doesn't seem to have any idea how much he's fucked his life up. He seems to think maybe he's going back to a simpler time, before he was married, before he had a kid.

It's like he wanted to hit the reset button, but instead he hit self-destruct.

First the first time in living memory I got a tax refund check in the mail! Generally of course I have to send the IRS bucketloads of cash, confident in the knowledge that the government will blow it like a crack-addled spend it wisely on ... um, something or other which is probably pretty important. Now I know that generally speaking, folks get refund checks in ... ? ... well I guess probably in May or something. I wouldn't know. I never get refunds. But I got one of them automatic six month extensions, because the fact of the matter my record-keeping these days has gotten somewhat lackadaisacal in this era of mp3s- I write stuff down of course, like on the back of envelopes and things, and I ALWAYS put the envelopes ... someplace. I don't know. Long story short I got an extension because I really had no idea what I had paid in estimated taxes, and even with the extension I couldn't really recall so I just kind of guessed.

Turns out I must have misunderestimated what I had paid, because I got a refund check for a full two hundred dollars above what I was expecting! This is one of the benefits of slap-dash record-keeping. Now, I've never really thought of the IRS as the kind of bureaucracy which would say "excuse me, but let us give you a little more money" but I'm an open minded kind of guy and I'm always perfectly happy to be enlightened.

Also: Daylight Savings time starts. Why? What are they saving it for?

Lately the Internet here at my house has been out- I tried everything I could think of to fix it, of course, but seeing as how "everything I could think of" basically just entails my turning everything off, waiting a couple minutes, and then turning everything back on again, I was unable to restore it. So! Looks like probably what I ought to do was call Time-Warner! Off to the phone! The number to call? Mmm, okay, I don't got any phone books of course.... Time-Warner's not on my speed dial these days... kay, I'll just look it up on the Interne- oh.

Surely they put their number on the bill, but as bills don't make very memorable keepsakes, I don't generally keep them handy. After much searching, I did manage to track one down- a bill retained only because I had jotted a note down on the back of the envelope- and called and (after punching a bunch of phone menu buttons, telling the Time-Warner Phone Computer all the details of the nature of my problem) I got through to Beth, a very nice young customer service representative, to whom I had to tell all the details of the nature of my problem.

"Okay!" Beth said, "What I want you to do is turn everything off, wait a couple minutes, and turn everything back on!" Perhaps unsurprisingly, this worked no better then when I had tried it before. "Okay... " says Beth, never at a loss for ideas, "this time turn everything off.... and unplug the coax cable, wait a couple minutes, plug it back in, and turn everything back on again."

This time it worked like a charm! No no, just kidding, of course! Beth was clearly at her wits' end by this time. After all, we had turned everything off and on several times now, to no effect whatsoever. "Um, I think we're going to have to send someone round...."

In unrelated news, I've found the time recently to do the dishes, sweep the apartment, clean the cat-box, read a book, do three loads of laundry, mop the floors, do some more dishes, fix something to eat, do the dishes resulting from fixing something to eat, clean the bathroom, start another book, take a nap, and generally tidy things up a bit.

Saturday it was about as full a boat as I've seen in a while: my sister of course, and Dave and Roseanne, and David, and myself. October can get pretty chilly, what with the wind whipping off the lake, but despite the cold, October sailing is delightful, because you have the wind whipping off the lake. So although we were sailing to nowhere in particular, we were getting there fast, at five, six knots or better. For sailing, this is easily the best time of the year. And the company couldn't hardly be improved upon either, and when David missed the dock and fell into the lake, we all had a good laugh- even David (who I think was a little bit intoxicated (Old Alt never stints on hospitality)).

Sunday, we took a sunrise cruise, joined by Rich Craft. I don't get to go sailing with Rich as much as I'd like- he really is the ideal boat-mate- and the winds were again perfect. But we had to get back to the dock so Myfanwi could drive to New York and be home at a reasonable hour. Myfanwi left. I took down the mast in the afternoon, effectively ending the sailing season- this is by far the worst time of the year. I always hate this time of year. I broke a tooth at breakfast. The mechanics told me that I need new rotors as well as brake pads. Everything always goes wrong this time of year. I think I'm going to be late to work today.

You know how I told you my Dad suffered a stroke? Well turns out I was wrong. Turns out the doctors were all wrong.

Turns out my Dad has a brain tumour instead.

I couldn't get up to the lake much before nine thirty or so, so I was pretty sure that my sister would already be there. As I couldn't find her on my boat, I was pretty sure she'd be on Dave and Roseanne's boat, and that was in fact where I found her. Myfanwi, faced with the uncomfortable prospect at arriving at the marina well before myself, and therefore having to sit around in the cold and wait for me, had (not unreasonably) called Dave and Roseanne to see if they were at the marina and if so could they please let her in.

Turns out Dave and Roseanne weren't at the marina, they were home in Canton or Akron or wherever it is that they live, relaxing and minding their own business, but once they caught the gist of my sister's predicament, they up and lead-footed it off to the marina to help her out: changing all their plans! dropping whatever they were doing!- just so's they could help my sis out, and also, apparently, to ply her with booze (she was truly looped). That is the kind of rare gems Dave and Roseanne are- if you haven't met them yet, I encourage you to do so: you won't be disappointed!

Thus it was that on Saturday, poor Myfanwi wasn't feeling her best when we set sail for Kelleys Island. Steve's wife Mary Anne, along with Steve's brother and sister-in-law were going up to Kelleys, so one thing led to another and Steve kind of finagled an invite to sail with us out there. Good thing, too, because Steve is an experienced sailor, and the winds were delightfully strong- twenty or so knots- so it was nice to have an able hand, seeing as how my sister was feeling a bit hung-over indisposed.

The weather was truly splendid- the wind was right parky, five foot waves crashing away. Steve is a good friend, but he's one of those guys that it's best to go on short day-sails with rather than a weekend cruise, because he's one of those guys who keep on talking long after he's run out of interesting things to say. Personally one of the things I like about sailing is the sounds of the water and the waves and the creaking and the clanking of the rigging. It's very relaxing, I find, and puts me in a contemplative mood, attunes me to nature, one might say- the boat rising with the swell, the feel of the wind... the waves hissing by.... the rollers expiring under the lee quarter with a mighty "kssssshhhhh", the sun occasionally breaking through in all its brilliance- sparkling over all the ripples and the wavelets, the rail buried in the hissing foam. And all the while, Steve babbling on and on and about nothing at all. Mmm, yes- remind me: no more sailing to Kelleys with Steve-o.

The wind- staying strong- backed more and more into the west, forcing us to sail more north and south and north again. We were going five, six knots all the while. And it took us eight hours to cover 25 miles over ground.

In the morning the howling wind in the rigging woke me at five, and the lake was a mass of whitecaps. I admit to feeling somewhat trepidatious, but the actual sailing turned out to be amazing. The wind was, say, 20-25 knots, and the waves four to six footers, but it was all on the quarter. It's grand sailing, before the wind like this. We averaged high fives, low sixes, hitting the sevens when the waves threw us along, twisting the boat forwards and around like a corkscrew. You can't steer hardly but it's exhilarating enough that you don't care. At one point, we hit 8.38 knots for a half a second, easily the fastest I've ever gone on my boat.

We made the return passage in four hours forty five minutes.

With the long holiday week-end, I had been hoping to sail off to the Islands, but Saturday the wind was rather lame, and as I'm not the sort who likes to sit and listen to diesels rattle for hours on end, it looked like the Islands just weren't in the cards this week. That's a shame, because I haven't even been to the Islands once this summer, and now summer is dribbling to a close.

Instead, it turned out that Steve had scored a bunch of VIP tickets to the Cleveland Air Show on Sunday (his son Chris works at the airport there) and he invited me along with his wife Mary Anne and his friend Rich to go watch the planes zip around. So! Off to the Air Show! The VIP seats were pretty choice indeed, front row right in the center, and of course separated from Cleveland's unwashed masses. The planes indeed did zip and swoop and thunder right in front of us, which was pretty cool. On the other hand, we were also right in front of the announcers- I guess I never knew that Air Shows had announcers, and fact is I really don't think I ever thought much about whether or not Air Shows have announcers, but it turns out they do. And it also turns out that our announcer today was one of the shining lights in that competitive field of Air Show announcers; in fact he was even in the Air Show Hall of Fame. Naturally, I was delighted that there was such a thing as the Air Show Hall of Fame- how wonderfully preposterous a concept!- but I really can't think of any reason for him to be in that or any other Hall of Fame, other than for his preternatural ability to talk non-stop for hours on end.

And talk he did, even when he really didn't have anything to say. Naturally, any Air Show announcer worth his salt will tell you what plane it is currently zooming past, but our boy went far and above the call of duty, showing us why he belonged in the Air Show Hall of Fame by treating us to an endless stream of banalities and noninteresting factoids, yukking it up with tired jokes that he himself didn't even seem to find all that funny (a view shared by the crowd as well, if the conspicuous absence of mirth at what I'll call (for lack of a better word) his punchlines was any indication), and, when all other topics of conversation dried up, he informed us that there were all kinds of food and drink for sale, helpful on the off chance anyone had missed the rows upon rows of concessionaires all up and down the airfield behind us. I'm pretty sure sure he was paid by the word, perhaps with deductions made for any silence exceeding a length of 1.5 seconds.

On occasion, he relinquished his mike to various military spokespeople (the majority of the aircraft flying were military) who tended to be far more entertaining, if (understandably) somewhat given to glorifying the militarism of the whole event, and expounding the martial virtues of honour, duty and sacrifice, and the simple joys of scaring the bejesus out of anyone who lives in any of those benighted backwaters where folks persist in hating America. Indeed, the whole show had the air of a ritualized exercise in conspicuous patriotism, the speakers backdropped by not only the thunder of jet engines but also those sort of stirring patriotic songs that I've always found somewhat tedious. I guess I'm just not wired for patriotism, and I've never even really understood why patriotism is considered a virtue. I did quite like the Army Parachute Team, the Golden Eagles, though, because their name sounds like they're a high school football team.

Still and all, it is quite an awesome thing to see the fighter jets- they streak silently towards you over the lake, then bank and turn and suddenly you are engulfed in a deafening roar, the very ground shaking, and then you look and they are already five miles away. They zoom vertically upward, three miles up in a matter of seconds, silently spinning and tumbling and sparkling in the sun before rocketing back down to Earth, clearing the surface of the lake by mere yards and then accelerating off again. Aesthetically it's all very pleasing. The planes can certainly speak for themselves; I only wish the announcers would have let them.

It wasn't long after the last echoes of the departing Thunderbirds had faded away before the natural aviators of Burke Lakefront Airport returned, squawking sea-gulls returning to feast on the trash strewn all over the ground by the receding tide of Cleveland's aeronautical enthusiasts and patriots.

The wind was blowing strong from the East- I bet a guy could have made it to the Islands in pretty good time today.