Join Waukesha resident Brien Lee and his blog, Sir Fido, as they explore the city and report on the interesting things they find.
Today is the first day of my new regularly-scheduled vacation; two days off a week every week. Instead of 20 days off per year I'll now have 124, more than a third of a year. Instead of being envious of students for their summers off they can now envy me. You see, for the past 20 years of weekends, well over a thousand total, I worked in all kinds of weather to see that stores in Waukesha received their Saturday, Early Edition Sunday (the Bulldogs), and late Sunday Journals then Journal Sentinels.
I always knew I had a good weekend job: fresh air, friendly people, peacefullness of the night, adrenaline rush of delivery on a deadline, but the reason it lasted so long is also the reason it ended. I survived 20 years in the business because I only had to get up at 2:00 a.m. and deliver two days each week. Changes in distribution of the paper in Waukesha now require a 7 day commitment and with my other job I wasn't able to do that.
So, what would you do if you had your first Saturday off in many, many years? The first thing I did was sleep late, about 6:30. This morning, instead of delivering the Bulldogs, I Wauk'd the blog. Sir Fido isn't a bulldog but a poodle - terrier mix, a Perrier, and when he asks for fancy water he gets an icecube. While S.F. checked his pee mail on our walk up Oaklawn and down Norton (and left some spam of his own), I observed birdsong and quiet and yards planted and landscaped nicer than ours, most of them, so I'd better get busy, there's lots to do!
