Through a lucky break, I had a nearly four-day Labor Day weekend. I'm proud to say that it was time well spent... which you'll know is important if you read my last entry.

Saturday, Jessie came up and helped me do some shopping for curtains and such. My windows are still bare, but I have an idea of what I'm after. I never dreamed that I'd be a "curtain man," but I've decided that entirely too much light is sneaking in through my blinds and that I'm ready for my place to look lived in. I'm not in college anymore... And there's no reason for this to look like a college pad.

I've been shopping for wall art and digging through years of photos I've taken so that I can have something to hang on my walls. Of course, most of those walls are also bare... But as is the case with the curtains, at least a game plan is in place.

Saturday night, I watched one of my former colleges (yes, there was more than one) get kicked around a bit and Sunday I drove back to Smallville for a few days. I managed to spend a few hours Sunday evening doing absolutely nothing... And I can't tell you how great it felt. Sure, I'm pretty good at doing nothing here at my apartment, but there is always something here that I should be doing. At home, I was free.

Sunday afternoon, my old department was paged out to an auto accident. While it did feel odd to not be a firefighter there anymore, I couldn't stay away from the action. So, I went back to the thing that led me toward a career in the fire service -- photography. My reward was a color shot of the incident on the front page of the local paper. I've been running calls with those boys for many moons as both a newspaperman and as a firefighter... I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to quit.

The rest of my time at home was occupied with something I hadn't planned and didn't have to do... but was glad that I did. I cleaned out the walk-in closet in my bedroom. Before this weekend, my closet at home had resembled a Superfund site. I had so many years of stuff and clothes crammed in there that it was no longer a "walk-in" closet. It was more like a "reach in, hold onto the door frame and lean perilously into the void" closet.

I pulled almost everything out, sorted it, trashed a couple of tons of it and then placed anything that went back in some sort of order. Okay, so it's not the Dewey Decimal system in there... But at least you can walk in now. I was able to set aside quite a few clothes for charity, throw away a dozen pairs of holy jeans and take one helluva trip down memory lane. I couldn't have asked for a better holiday project and it sure beat the heck out of sitting and twiddling my thumbs enveloped in Smallville boredom.