So I’m about to see “Don’t Mess With the Zohan” in Stone Harbor, New Jersey and the previews aren’t coming attractions—they come later—but commercials: for Verizon, for Samsung (know what a “BlackBerry prayer” is?) and for the National Guard. The last one’s the keeper: It’s a video of Three Doors Down singing “Citizen Soldier,” and you can download it, free, on the National Guard website (you look).

Rock ‘n’ roll used to be about peace and love and good vibes. When did it become an ad for war? Katy, my older kid, tells me she’s heard the song before and doesn’t know if any other rock group does that kind of thing. (Be right back; I’ll check out the National Guard website). Yep, Google National Guard and Three Doors Down and “Citizen Soldier” come up. You also learn that Kid Rock, that scruffy subversive who married Pamela Anderson, has just cut a commercial for the Guard.

I’m not against readiness but I am against war. Any musician who sides with the latter is lame in my book. Going to the movies used to be about entering a world of pure entertainment, a world you could get away to. No more. When did marketing become so mercenary, political and malevolent?

“Zohan” was fun, by the way. Getting there wasn’t half of it.

It’s my last paid vacation. We’re in Stone Harbor on the Jersey shore for the second year in a row. The beach is beautiful, though the Atlantic is too cold for swimming; the weather has been mainly good, with enough sun. I’ve been doing a lot of work here, some of my last as a full-time editor for Lodging Hospitality. The key task is compressing my 10-day China trip into about four magazine pages. Glad to be doing it in a place where I can take a break and get some sun.

I’m looking forward to my last day of work Aug. 1. But I’m also apprehensive. I’ve been employed for nearly 40 years, so lacking an anchor is scary. I’m putting out feelers for part-time work now, though I have a salary cap my first year of retirement (a strange word; tell people about it and the association is ending, dying. No such plans for me). I’m looking to edit, write corporate PR, put together brochures, do travel journalism. Maybe even some serious consumer reporting; now that I’ll have time, my ambitions are beginning to reawaken.

I also am looking forward to the presidential campaign and plan to volunteer for Obama. What form that will take I’m not sureyet, but his campaign is engaging me like none has since Clinton 1, in 1992. Back in February, I said it was Obama time. Still is. I’ll do what I can to guarantee that.

Naturally, time is on my mind, with a big shift in how I spend it coming up. So is continuity; last week, I got a note and some writings from Jack Behar, former husband of Barbara Behar, a former student of my father’s. In the ‘90s, I recall coming across writings of my father’s—dirty writings, sexual fantasies , if not (I hope) factual accounts—involving Barbara, who died of cancer in 1993. Jack sent me a packet of his writings about that “affair,” apparently a matter of phone sex-plus. It made me squeamish; not only does it tarnish my father to me, it shines a light on my own secrets, obsessions, sexual fantasies. Tantalizing? Scary, too. I don’t know how I’ll respond to Jack yet, but I will. Business, it seems, is never finished.

We’re starting a week’s vacation June 21, returning to Stone Harbor, New Jersey for a sophomore sojourn. The place will be great; time for sand and sun and seafood—and tightening up. We’re driving; bought a luggage rack/box for Karen’s Scion xB, and expect to spend a few hundred on gas to and from. But it’s cheaper than flying. It’ll be my last paid vacation.

There’s some finality to what I’ll do in August: quit my full-time job. That’s known as deciding to retire, but “retire” has a false finality, because I’m not ending, just shifting. Because Lylah and Katy are less than 18  years old, I can collect Social Security for them for a few years; combined with my Social Security income, the household should do OK. If prices begin to level off.

Anyhow, I’m looking forward to more time for myself. I still hope to travel, and to write. Though there’ll be an income cap in my first year, I’ll be able to make as much as I want after that, and I hope to do a lot more freelance work in corporate communications and hotel public relations.

On three other fronts: A 2004 BMW rammed into my own month-old Scion xB 10 days ago, wrecking the bumper and jamming the rear of the frame a bit, for $3,200 and change in repairs. The Beemer was totaled. We’ve been having some major auto issues, obviously, and the repair shop is doing well by us. The accident showed me how tough a little car my Scion is. The other front: Susan Green, whom I haven’t seen in at least 25 years, sent me a collection of essays/stories she and Susan Connell-Mettauer wrote. It’s way personal; it includes a few pieces about my relationship with the latter Susan, who died in late March. Weird reading my Susan’s writing about us 45 years ago. The narratives show me how I became such a flaming liberal; happens when punitive relatives frame you for fornication, a Massachusetts blue law of medieval, toxic cast.

Finally, the Obama-McCain campaign is on.  I’m writing this the day Hillary finally conceded and rediscovered her grace. About time; now it’s time for Obama, for the country to regain its balance—at least. Who knows? If he’s elected, the U.S. may even stumble upon a colorblind, positive groove. Here’s hoping.