[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

POETS Day snuck up on me this week. I try to extend some lifeline, no matter how flimsy it may be, to give plausible rational for skipping out of work early, but I’ve done a lot of these now. Finding a new excuse every week isn’t as easy as it may seem. Don’t let that deter you.

You don’t need me to supply you with a reason. It’s right there: TS. Piss Off Early comes with its own why. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Admire the fulgence of the anagram’s fullness and start the weekend at a time of your choosing.

Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Catch a ball game at a bar. Take a walk in a park. On average, we only see 4,113.2 Fridays in a lifetime and at minimum 2% of those are 13ths. Don’t waste one clock-watching.

If you do manage to get out, take a moment to read a poem or three. Maybe these.

***

My wife and I honeymooned in Vancouver. It was 2002, three years after the British ceded Hong Kong to Communist China. Refugees scattered all over the Pacific Rim. These weren’t the poor. I read that British Columbia absorbed thirty thousand souls. We were told to expect amazing high-end Chinese cuisine and we found amazing high-end Chinese cuisine.

We went to an elegant place near the harbor for dim sum. It was in a hotel lobby; a huge room below a series of mezzanines with an open wall of glass extending up several floors. Neither of us had ever eaten dim sum before but we were told that instead of a menu there would be a cart full of food that would visit tableside and you chose what you wanted from there.

That’s what happened. A cart came by and there were dumplings and bao, which may or may not be a dumpling as well but seems distinct to me. I think there was soup and definitely spicy vegetables. Little strips of sticky meat. Everything was fantastic. What we didn’t know was there would be a series of carts with different offerings making the rounds.

We loaded up on the first thing that came by and though we loved what we got, we saw what we didn’t. The duck on the third cart looked impossibly crisp. There was a lesson to be learned; a variant on “Don’t make fast friends.” Get the lay of the land before you commit.

I didn’t learn that lesson.

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