Too Focused on Pokemon to Play Pokemon

Let me tell you all a story about how "Pokemon Go"dropped surreptitiously overnight and I was left hungering for adventure for days.

Wait, that might be the whole story...

I suppose that I can't say it's not my fault that I haven't started the game; I have had plenty of time on my hands.  Summertime for many teachers means stressing out about how your paychecks are stretching to the limit; exercise that body and exercise the wallet; both must be stretched.  Fo me, however, summer is time for me to (finally) take some time off.  See, I'm not only a teacher: I'm a teacher/tutor.  At parties (when I'm at least 40% intoxicated) I like to facetiously (or rather 40% facetiously) describe these two as my "community service job" and my "mercenary job", respectively.

Let's face it, teachers don't get paid in any real money.  Teachers get paid in broken dreams and wasted effort.  As much as I would like to be able to feed myself with cynicism and ennui, I tend to seek out solid foods because this insufferable corporeal form requires them.  The tutoring is how I make all of my real money.  As a matter of fact, the teaching salary is completely incidental by comparison--not even matching up to 10% of the same hourly rate.  The only reason I do the high school science teacher thing at all is to keep in touch with my conscience.  If I accepted ALL of my money from rich, stubborn parents and their rich, stubborn children, I would surely have sold my soul to the non-denominational devil, so to speak.  The teaching helps ground me, but it doesn't keep the internet "ON".

So here I am with all this time on my hands breeding pokemon for my upcoming Sinnoh Classic Battle Competition (later in July) when Pokemon Go drops like a ton of rectangular prisms made out of baked clay (bricks, I believe the humans call them).  I'm a very "first-things-first" kind of fellow: it is often the case that I forego doing something entirely if I would have to be stretching myself between two different activities.  I have a pile of unstarted video games and books; I can't begin something new if I'm working on or involved in something else.  I can't start Pokemon Go until I'm satisfied with the team I've been building for this ACTUAL Pokemon Tournament (blog post about this one to come).  Well, I could, but I wouldn't enjoy myself nearly as much as I would if I just started it, say, a few days from now after I've gotten things cleared away for the Sinnoh Classic.

As a result, I've been sitting here hatching Vulpix eggs and soft-resetting for the correct-natured Zapdos when I could be out there in the sun catching Butterfree with my pokemon (charm the Charmander.  Fuck me, I've already chosen a nickname for him!).

Well, these eggs aren't going to hatch themselves...