Last week was, for lack of a better word, paradise. Short story even shorter, except for Tuesday, I pretty much just stayed home and played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Tuesday I took my kitty in to get her spayed and declawed. She came out a little drugged, but otherwise no worse for the wear.

As for Vice City, I won’t bore you with a big diatribe about how awesome it is, or all the things they’ve improved on since the last game, or all the cool new things available to do in it. If you don’t have it, go buy it. If you don’t have a Playstation 2, this is the reason you need to buy one. Trust me here, it’s worth it. I played the whole week and I’m only like 65% done with the game.

I will say there are two complaints I have with the game, and these are the only real bitches I have about it: First, there are some levels that are waaaaaay too hard. I played one racing mission for like six hours before I beat it. It’s a two minute long stupid race, but the AI that you race against doesn’t make any mistakes. Ever. It was ridiculously hard and I almost gave up. I even tried to beat it with a cheat code and couldn’t do it. I finally won with a lot of luck and prayer. Which brings me to my other gripe: If you enable a cheat code, even if you disable it again, once you save your game the cheat code is permanently enabled. Even on your other saved games. That’s crazy. The real kicker is, I didn’t know that until after I beat the ultra-difficult race mission (without a cheat code, mind you). Was I going to start all over (with like 30 hours of play up to that point) or just leave the cheat in place?

I left the cheat. Screw it.

Other than that, it’s the bomb. Check it out.

Friday was Fred Meyer employee double-discount day, so I went shopping with my mom and got two CDs: Elton John’s Greatest Hits 1970-2002 and The Rolling Stones Forty Licks. Both rock hardcore, but I have to say - Elton John songs have been running through my head since I bought them. I guess that’s why they call it the blues.

Saturday morning I saw the latest installment of the Harry Potter movie series. Very cool. I still maintain that Hermione is a hottie.

And now I’m back at work. After a full week off, I’m tense. Not just a little tense, either. My entire back is tense, from the top of my head down to my ass crack, and I don’t think it’s going away. I’ve sifted through my 200+ emails (about 100 of which actually were things requiring action on my part) and I’m getting back in the swing of things. I’ve got more crap queued up to do than I think I can reasonably handle.

That sort of hits on this thought that I had on Sunday. You’ve heard the saying that if you find a job you love, you never have to work a day in your life, right? Implying that if you find a job that you have fun at, it doesn’t really feel like work. Well, I thought about that, trying to think of a job that I could get where it wouldn’t feel like work. You know what I came up with?

Jack-fucking-squat.

I can’t think of a single job that wouldn’t become repetitive. Or have too much structure. Or have not enough structure. Or just get boring. I told the guys at work about that, and they came up with, like, video game tester. No way - getting stuck playing the same game over and over to find all the bugs? Forget it.

The closest jobs I could think of that I could do would be either video game reviewer or movie reviewer. Less on the video game reviewer - I’m really not all that great at video games, so I would get all pissed off at the hard levels. But movie reviewer… I could probably do that. I doubt people would agree with my reviews, but that’s not the point, is it?

Basically, it all boils down to the fact that I don’t want a job. Millions in the bank, sitting at home doing whatever I want, whenever I want. That’s my ideal. Travel, learn stuff, play games, watch movies, and just generally loaf. That’s what I want to do. If someone out there knows a job that sounds like that, sign me up. Until then, I’ll be sitting here with my tense back, ready to pass out from my migraine headache, and dream.