Vacation in 60-ish hours

It's getting really hard to concentrate on things not vacation related. I'm already semi-packed. It doesn't take much thought to throw whatever clean close you have on hand into a suitcase. I did make sure I didn't pack anything that I wore to Michigan last year. Otherwise it would look like I only have five tshirts. I think I have seven...

My boss asked me to keep track of where we stay and what sites we see on the upcoming odyssey. She said she and her husband have a hard time coming up with vacation ideas and just use other people's. I said we would. It'll be fun to keep a journal. I'm thinking about blogging at the end of each day if we're somewhere with wireless.

Picking out my books for vacation is proving to be taxing. Even though I'll probably only have time to read one of them, it's still a big decision. I'll probably end up taking the last four crime books I bought.

I'm getting close to my crime novel threshold, slipping the lingo into conversations and thinking about double-crosses. I think once Carrie's classes start back up I'll be able focus on the Gravedigger's Promise and get it written. Digger isn't going to solve the mystery on his own. Poor bastard has been washing the church windows for quite some time now. I should at least let him do some breaking and entering soon.

Rainy Sunday

Yeah, the last couple of days have sucked as far as the rain has been concerned. On the plus side, at least my bathtub got cleaned.

The hound and I headed over to the parents' earlier for her weekly exercise and my weekly breakfast. She ran around quite a bit but it never stopped raining for long... until we went into the woods and looked for mushrooms. Long story short, we got caught in a deluge and only found four. Wait, let me backtrack. We had to stay out of the woods until one because of turkey season. I found a dead bat on my parents' back porch. No signs of foul play. It must have died of natural causes. My dad blasted a big water snake while I was walking Belle down to the creek.

Fast forward to after the mushroom hunt. My mom presented me with a fraction of the bread-loaf sized cinnamon roll they brought back from the Machine Shed, a diner my dad saw on Breakfast Paradise and my brother got him a giftcard to. Was it worth driving to Iowa for? DEFINITELY!

I suppose I should do some laundry now. Not too many days until departure...

Where did I leave my coffee cup?

I hate when I put my coffee cup down and it gets whisked to a parallel universe, only to be found by that universe's Dan, who thinks he's found his version of it. It reminds me of an old Tales from the Crypt comic where a guy invents a machine to enter a parallel universe where that version of himself is successful and sabotages him, only to have his own house be blown up by dynamite, leading us to believe that he hadn't, in fact, gone anywhere and is delusional.

After about twenty listens, I'm convinced The Great Rocksteady Swindle is the best Slackers record since Wasted Days. It's just that damned good.

The Gravedigger's Promise has made a bit of progress, most of it inside my head. I changed the first chapter around to get a little sympathy for Digger from the audience so it will hurt more later when the depths of his bastardry are revealed. Also, I had to put some props in his living room so I can frame him for something later.

So I'm off today. The plan was to work in the yard but that has been changed since last night's rain. Looks like I'll be gathering vacation supplies and running errands I planned to wait on instead. Rain usually makes turtles and frogs move around. Maybe I'll take some pictures later.

Found it. It was on the bookcase. I hope my body can handle caffeine molecules from another universe.

The Post Weekend Show

The weekend flew by too fast, as usual. Carrie finished up her classes on Saturday so yesterday was Girlfriend Appreciation Day. I arrived at her house and made grilled cheese sandwiches with turkey on them for lunch, then threw a pork shoulder in the crock pot for a dinner of pulled pork. We went to Washington Park and did the One Thousand Steps trail. It was a mile and a half but a great portion of it was steps on a steep hill. The woods were really green and the path was tramped down enough that we didn't get overrun with ticks. We finished the trail fairly quickly and decided to take the Possum Trail until it hit the road. We wound up doing the whole thing. Photos were posted last night.

Dinner went okay. The pork seemed to take forever to get done. It wasn't the best pork I ever pulled but it did the job. The cake I made afterwords made up for it.

I got the new Slackers cd, the Great Rocksteady Swindle, in the mail today, along with an extra sleeve signed by Dave, Vic, and Ara. I'm about halfway through the CD and I'm already liking it as much as Peculiar.

Wash Day Wailings

So I've got all of my laundry either in the washer or dryer at the moment and I'm giving the turkey tenderloin a few more minutes to marinate. Let's chat.

Writing a mystery is a lot harder than the other things I've attempted. I finished the first chapter of The Gravedigger's Promise a couple days ago and have been pecking at the second chapter in my spare time, along with about a fourth of the last chapter. It's requiring more planning, almost like I picked someone to frame as the murderer and am planting evidence accordingly. I think I have the plot in my head now but it could change again. Digger has changed a bit since I conceived him as an older version of Richard Stark's Parker, retired in a small town. The supporting cast is a little clearer in my mind.

Some woman at work smelled like she rolled in a kiddie pool full of old lady perfume yesterday. She might even have ladled more on when she was sitting in it. Do people lose their sense of smell when they get past a certain age?

The dog is really staring me down. I think that means she's finally recovered from three days of running around over the weekend.

The Picnic

Yesterday's picnic was a complete success. I made buffalo chicken wraps ahead of time, which was torture considering they looked and smelled delicious, and packed them in a basket with a mixed fruit container I bought at Schnuck's. We went to the tiny roadside park in Bloomsdale overlooking the valley. Afterwords we took a scenic drive down Sugar Bottom all the way to Ste. Genevieve. It was a good time. I'll be posting pictures shortly.

Today was a typical Monday. Carrie's busy wrapping up her homework for the semester so I'm filling the void with Philly Cheese Steak. That's about all I have to report.

Trivia Night

Carrie and I went to a trivia night in Farmington last night with her mom and dad and two couples they know. Free food was plentiful, donated by local restaurants. The trivia night was 80's oriented and ranged in difficulty from pathetically easy to so hard we wanted to key the shit out of the car of the woman who picked them. She was sitting next to the host and looked proud of herself. I'd say over half of the questions were of the "What date did this happen?" variety, which I don't think is reallly trivia. Trivia is the name of the Ghostbusters car or the name of the cat from the Smurfs, both of which I knew. We wound up only getting 59 points out of 1oo... and winding up in SECOND PLACE. They asked us if we wanted to keep our prize money or donate it back. You bet your ass we kept it!

The first communion dinner I went to yesterday afternoon was pretty good. The potato casserole was awesome, the various pasta dishes were good, and the appetizers really hit the spot. Afterwords, Chris and Abby and I sat on the bleachers behind the KC hall and watched the kids burning off their boundless energy by chasing butterflies.

Other than that, not much else happened yesterday. Carrie and I are probably going on a picnic later today. It's too nice out not to enjoy it while we have the chance.