Basking in Laziness (or The Human Puddle)

This weekend I think I spent more time lazing and dazing around in my bed than I ever have, ever.

Two days of glorious horizontalness.

And this bed isn't even that comfy. I must have wanted it. Bad.

And what really shocked me was the absence of self imposed guilt.

Always being one to jump out of bed first thing in the morning, and never able to sleep in on the weekends, and always feeling a sense of MUST DO SOMETHING at the first sign of stasis...this weekend was uh-MAZ-eeng.

In one single weekend, I think I exhausted the watchable movies on Hulu.com -- the free version where only the bottom-of-the-barrel movies are shown. I would start a movie, and then drift in and out of nappiness until the credits rolled. Repeat this scene about 50 times between Friday and now.

It was sooOooOOOooOOooo difficult to leave my bedroom Saturday for a couple of reasons. 1) The temperatures were cool due to a slightly overcast day, and the breeze coming in my bedroom window was delicious. It held me captive. 2) The mahjong parlor next door was having live performances or something, because all day long, floating in through my bedroom window was traditional Chinese music and singing from some of the most beautiful voices I've ever heard. It was mesmerizing. I felt transported to another time, another dimension. When each song ended, the patrons would clap and cheer. And sometimes they would drum the tabletops in applause. Something about it all made me very happy. I couldn't budge.

I did manage to verticalize myself and get movin', eventually...

for a very long Saturday evening with other foreigners here on the island. A coworker invited me out for pizza at the main foreigner hostel in Haikou. It's a 15-20 minute cab ride, not bad, and totally worth it for the food and company. The pizza is fabulous, and getting to meet people from all over the world is pretty darn fun...Belgium, France, New Zealand, England and Iceland were just a few of the places people called home.

On this particular Saturday night, the foreigners had organized a night out, and everyone was required to dress up as a nerd. So nearly everyone I ended up meeting that night was dressed in over-the-top nerdy attire, like very high-waisted pants, suspenders, big framed glasses. And the best touch of all was a guy who strapped a large calculator into his belt. It looked like a gun in a holster...ready to calculate anything in a moment's notice. While a few of us sat around eating our pizza and talking, the nerds left for their night out on the town. Eventually we met up with them and had a great time. The night ended with a group trip to KFC. (McDonalds was closed.)

It was nearly 11 hours from the time I left Saturday to the time I returned Sunday morning. I'm not used to being social for so many hours in a row. So I took the opportunity to make Sunday even lazier than Saturday. I stayed inside all day enjoying another cool breezy day in nap land. And it felt wonderful.