back to work...

On Friday I get to go back to work. I say 'get to' because I will surely start to put on weight if I don't, and I don't want that! Also, I say 'get to' because I am lucky to have a job in this economy, and get sick leave. I should also apply for State Disability, but I probably won't, since they don't pay the first seven days you were off, and all told, I'm only going to be off for nine days. Going back on Friday is strategic. Monday is a Holiday, and I am off. I want to get paid, so, just like my birthday, I have to work the 'day before' and the 'day after'. I've already sacrificed my birthday pay on the altar of the broken toe. That's enough! So I go back for one day, and then have a three day weekend. I can live with that.
On my last day of work, May 14th, I was having a conversation with a man named John Allen. John Allen likes to talk to me, and he is a conserative Christian, so I think he probably has an ambition to get me 'saved'. He suggested to me, on Friday, that I was 'taking a chance' by not believing. I've been 'saved', a couple of time when I was younger. I can't imagine why you would need it more than once, if you needed it at all. I used to believe in that stuff unquestioningly. I mean, I was raised a Baptist, for Christ's sake! ( Ha ha, the irony is intentional.) But now, after having given it a half a lifetime of thought, I can't see that the idea of needing a blood sacrifice to appease an angry god is anything but barbaric. So if anyone ever tells you I 'accepted the lord' on my deathbed, don't believe them. It ain't so. I'll go to my grave looking forward to my eternal rest, perhaps wishing I could have had more time, maybe regretting some things I have done, maybe not even remembering. But I won't suddenly get scared that just in case there really is a hell, I'd better cover my ass. I hope my humanist friends will be there to fend off any attempts by well wishers to convert me. Or maybe I'll still have it in my to make the case against them. So I'm looking forward to seeing John Allen again, to make my case for not believing. Who knows, maybe I'll convert HIM!