Well, I am officially living at high speed.

I am eating right, exercising regularly and vigorously, sleeping well, thinking clearly, and I’ve even kicked diet sodas and biting my nails. I quit smoking years ago, and I regularly go on no-drinking breaks, but it bears mentioning because I’m taking an alcohol break again as well.

I’m so focused I feel like I can look around the world and see my own ass cheeks, and they look good.

I feel great! My holidays were excellent, and I got to spend some good time with my sister and my brother in law. Everything is going really great for me.

I hope all of you are well too!

I played a gig tonight, opening for a band called the Hushpuppies. I met a few of them. They seemed like nice guys.

Their crowd, however, wasn’t that interested in hearing me sing my songs. I just couldn’t get them going for whatever reason.

Finally, after suffering through a shortened version of the set, I said over the mic “Well, I’m Jim Hodgson, thanks for letting me play for you guys. I have to get home and feed my alpaca.”

A wheelchaired lady at the first table brightened up. “YOU HAVE AN ALPACA?” she said, the very picture of excitement.

“Hell no, lady. No one has those things.”

So, if you want to turn on a room full of people, and you have tried everything else, mention alpacas.

I was walking into the supermarket to pick up some beers for band rehearsal, looking at everyone. I have been reading up on body language, and it’s opened up a whole new world for me. Watching people is infinitely more interesting to me now.

I rounded the corner to the beer aisle. There was a college coed there in a sweatshirt, talking into her cell phone. Cute, but her hair looked like some of it was trying to escape her head, and she was hunched over. Bad body language, honey.

I gave her a big smile. She looked like a deer in the headlights, then started talking into her phone even faster.

I selected a twelve pack of some particularly choice and delicious-looking Pabst Blue Ribbon (in the cans) and turned around to go check out. A tiny hispanic girl rocketed past me carrying a tub of ice cream that was half her size. I heard her mother shout a lane over.

I sauntered over to the checkout robot and set the beer down on it. It yelled instructions at me in what someone probably thinks is a soothing voice, but they’ve got the volume cranked way up so you can hear it over the noise of the store. It’s just a hair too loud to be soothing.

I booped and beeped my way through the transaction. There was a tall black man there. He was the master of the checkout robots. My robot called him over to check my ID.

“How’s it going, man?” he smiled.

“Great!” I said, holding out my driver’s license. He had a small computer in his hand, which he pointed at my license. It booped.

“Okay, buddy. See you!” he said.

I turned back to my robot so I could use my credit card to feed it the numbers that it craved, when I noticed my birthdate on its screen. It showed PABST and my birthday date, but I was shocked to see the word “Saturday” there as well. Holy shit! I was born on a Saturday!

I have never known what day I was born on, just the date. And here I am, buying a 12 pack of beers from a checkout robot and its friendly master, and I am hit with the information! Neat!

Of course it’s a mathematical calculation, what day it was, so it’s an easy thing for the checkout robot to compute. I guess I could have figured it out any time all these years, but I just never got around to it. Well, now I know!

I was born to rock the weekends!