Yes, it’s been a few weeks since I wrote anything here.  It’s still hot and I’ve been sick for the last few days – that’s no excuse for not writing in the previous three weeks, but it is a fact.

I’m not entirely sure what kicked off this latest bout of what I shall deem to be sinusitus.  Last Friday night, I gathered my camera gear together and drove over to Riverwood High to shoot the first football game of the season.  It was amazingly hot.  Disgustingly hot.  Unbearably hot.  Bind-me-with-duct-tape-and-throw-me-into-a-1957-Chevy-Bel-Aire-Trunk hot.  Here’s an example of how hot it was:  It was 96 degrees at 9:30 at night.

Okay, so that’s not really an “example” so much as it’s a fact, but here’s the point I’m trying to make:  It was really hot.

So I shot the game – didn’t do a very good job, but you can look at the few shots that I didn’t delete immediately here – and then (it being hot) stopped for a beer on my way home.  The beer was incredible, by the way. 

I spent most of Saturday morning indoors – did some cleaning, went through the shots from Friday night, watched some movies, and psyched myself up to do some lawn work. At about noon, I got out the hedge trimmer, pruning shears, rakes, shovels, hose and wheelbarrow and proceeded to hack the ever-loving crap out of the bushes (privett and otherwise) in front of the house.  After about three hours, I was (you guessed it) incredibly hot, and decided not to mow the lawn – there’d be time enough to do that on Sunday. 

Saturday night, I spoke with Betsy (on the phone) for a while and noticed a slight tickle in my throat.  Didn’t think much of it.  I was hot.  I ended up sitting in a tub of cold water for a while and then went to bed.

By Sunday morning, it was obvious that, at some point between going to the football game and sitting in the tub, I’d managed to make myself sicker than I’d been in years.  It was one of those deals where there was so much snot in my head that I was basically going deaf.  The pressure in my sinus cavities was such that I felt I could pop out all of my teeth if I just pushed on them hard enough with my tongue.  My eyeballs resembled those of Kermit the frog, my head was on the verge of exploding, every joint on my person was screaming for the application of Icy Hot balm, standing up was an exercise not unlike walking on a water bed…it was bad enough that I actually decided to call a doctor if I wasn’t better in a couple of days.

That’s bad, folks.

I managed to get to sleep Sunday night, but emailed my team on Monday morning and told them I wouldn’t be working.  Spent all day Monday in bed, alternating between sleeping and frantically blowing my nose. Sleeping, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is not only my most favorite thing in the world to do.  It’s also my cure for all forms of sickness.  I’m convinced that I could chop of my foot with a hatchet and, given enough sleep, grow a new one.

Sometime Monday night, I woke up with unbelievable chills.  At that point, I knew everything was cool.  That’s my other pet theory.  I can feel like crap for a long time, but once I start violently shivering (while sweating) and have to curl up into the fetal position in order to keep from falling out of the bed, I know that the worst is over.  I woke up yesterday morning and went to work for half a day – took the laptop home at lunch.

As expected, I’m on the way back up today.  I informed my team this morning that I’d be working from home (and yes, I have indeed gotten quite a bit of work done), and my head, while still pretty stuffy, is slowly clearing out.  The body aches are gone, the teeth don’t hurt any more, and I actually ate a sandwich for lunch (this after living on raman noodles and tea for the last three days).

Getting better is a good thing, because I’ve got my first college game this weekend.  It’s in Myrtle Beach, SC, and I’m planning to camp at a state park in the SC lowcountry on Saturday and Sunday (Monday is Labor Day). 

I hate camping with a snotty head.

TWD

So I’ve been home for a week now.  Are you all salivating over the prospect of lots of new and interesting adventures that I’ve had in the last seven days?

The kitten I named Hal shows off his sense of balance while checking me out.

Little tip: don’t bother.  With Scott and his mom basically hanging around the house all last Thursday and Friday, I made myself scarce at home.  Slept a great deal, watched some netflix, went out to play darts, etc. There was a bit of excitement at the house when one of the kittens that had first appeared on my deck last summer suddenly made a return – with 5 of her own kittens in tow.  I fed them on Thursday afternoon and gave them a bowl of water, which enticed them to become official squatters – when I got up to feed the cats on Friday morning, all six of them were piled in a heap on the deck.  Mama cat heard me inside and immediately approached the door, looking at me and obviously begging for food, which I provided.   I also gave names to all of the kittens and started trying to figure out how I could catch them all in order to get them fixed.  I love having yard cats, but I don’t really want to have 50 of the things out there.

By Saturday morning, however, they were already making themselves scarce.  I saw my favorite kitten, which I had named Brooks, a few times during the day; but he was obviously not comfortable hanging out on the deck by himself, and I was unable to locate any of the other critters.  I left some food and water out, but by Sunday evening it was apparent that the whole family had picked up stakes.  There’s still some water out there if they need it, as it’s been abysmally hot and dry this summer.

Also on Saturday, I took Scott and his mother to the airport, where she caught a plane back to Minnesota.  When Scott and I returned to the house, I decided to get some yard work done.  I had high hopes of cutting down a stand of privet and chipping it all into nothingness, but after trimming the holly and hydrangea around the deck and then sweeping and washing said deck, I was completely drenched in sweat, was hotter than I’ve ever been in my life, and cut the work short in order to go back into the house, change out of my clothes, and sit in a tub of cold water.  On Sunday, I didn’t even attempt to do any more lawn work.

Monday was back to real work, and it’s been going surprisingly well so far.  I had a major bottleneck (firewall issues) with a project before I left.  In my absence, one of my co-workers had managed to get that solved; so for the last three days, I’ve been writing queries like a fiend and finally making progress on a huge request that’s been on my plate for nearly a year.

I also got hit with a request from Furman’s new director of football operations, who apparently has been unable to find a lot of pictures of this year’s seniors for the annual promotional poster.  He asked me to provide him with shots of about eight different players.  So far, I’ve managed to give him seven.  Not sure that I’ll be able to get him the last guy, who went down with a season-ending injury in the second game of the season last year – when I was in Grand Rapids.  I don’t believe I ever saw the kid play.

While going through the shots for the school, I got an idea to start a new photography project, which I’m calling “Self-Portrait, 365.”  As the name implies, the idea is to try to take photographically-interesting (one hopes) pictures of myself every day for a year.  If you are so inclined, you can follow my progress in this endeavor at http://theuffp.smugmug.com/Photography/Self-Portraits/18037001_db3FJB, which will have large versions of the shots that I’ll also be posting on Facebook.

This is not so much a completely narcissistic idea as one which I hope will improve my photography skills – particularly my skills in portraiture, which are pretty bad.  I’d like someday to be able to take decent street portraits, but I’m not going to even attempt that until I’m more confident; and I figure I’ll make a patient model for myself as I learn.

Seems like a good time to wrap this up, check my email one more time, and hit the sack.

TWD

Betsy samples a fire-roasted donut on her first camping trip Wompatuck State Park, MA

So I arrived safely at home last night after about 11 days in New England.  Immediately had to scoop and fix the litter box (it had stopped cleaning itself sometime in the previous two days and had not been restarted…dammit), then said hello to Scott’s mom, who came down last week to help Scott in his recovery from his stroke (I hope I mentioned that he had one), then went to bed.

Today, I’ve retrieved my chipper from the small engine repair shop, mowed and swept the front lawn, and am currently sitting – nekked – on my bed and trying not to sweat to death.  Today being pay day, I also paid a bunch of bills and am solvent for 15 more days at least.

Now seems like a good time to bring everyone up to date on my vacation and maybe throw a few pictures into this thing.

After arriving in Cornwall, VT, on June 23rd, I spent the next week soaking up the feeling of being at home.  Betsy flew in on the 26th, so I also got to show her around for a few days.  We spent one day walking around Middlebury and buying souvenirs, another visiting Fort Ticonderoga (in New York), and got to schmooze with some of the Sheldon Museum’s big donors at a meet-and-greet on Wednesday night (the 29th, I think).  On Thursday morning, we got up early and did a brief interview about the concert and the Georgia Brass Band on a Middlebury radio station and then went back to Cy’s house to chill for a while.

Otter Creek at Falls Park Vergennes, VT

Thursday afternoon, I drove to the high school to pick up a bunch of percussion equipment for the evening’s concert, only to discover that we didn’t have a truck.  After Cy made a few phone calls, we found that the truck had been left near the concert venue, so I drove there, swapped my car for the truck, drove back to the high school, and Cy and I managed to get all of the stuff we needed into either the truck or her car.  Then it was back to the venue, where we put everything on the stage, finishing at around 3:15 – just over an hour before the band was due to show up for a sound check.  I raced back to Cornwall, showered and changed, and brought Betsy and two tubas back to the venue, where we arrived just in time for the aforementioned sound check.

The concert itself went pretty well and the audience seemed to appreciate our efforts.  Here’s hoping we get an invitation to return.

Friday morning (July 1), Betsy and I packed everything into my car and hit the road for Needham, MA, just outside of Boston, for a concert celebrating the town’s tricentennial.  For some reason, I had the time 6:00 PM stuck in my head as when we were supposed to arrive, so I didn’t make any great effort to speed my way to Needham.  We stopped for a walk at Quechee Gorge in Vermont, then poked around the gift shop for a while, then stopped in New Hampshire for lunch, then checked the actual band schedule.

We were supposed to be on the stage at 4:00 for a sound check, and there was no way I could get there before 5:00.

After calling the band director and getting yelled at, we ran into some horrible traffic, got rerouted through the middle of some suburb of Boston (where traffic was even worse), and arrived at the concert site at a little after 5:00.  We had plans to camp at Wompatuck State Park in Hingham, MA – about 45 minutes away – and there was no way I could get there and get checked in before our 7:00 PM concert, so I called the park and arranged for a late check-in.  Then we had dinner with the band director.  The service at the restaurant was incredibly slow, so by the time we paid our bill, we had about 10 minutes to get back to the site, get changed into concert clothes, blow a few notes in our horns, and then start the show.

It also went fairly well, and we were graced by a double rainbow during the concert.

A headstone from the 1600s near Hignham, MA

After packing up everything up after the concert (including a lot of stuff that I hadn’t brought with me, but which I agreed to transport back to Atlanta for the band), we spent about 30 minutes at a reception that was given to the band, and then set out for Wompatuck, arriving there at about 10:30.  Got the tent set up in the dark and crashed, exhausted.

During the night, we discovered that the air mattress had a hole in it, and we woke up on the ground.  Air mattress was replaced later that afternoon after I found a Walmart.

We spent most of Saturday walking around the park, throwing my hatchet at a tree, playing cards, reading, and eating.  Saturday night, we cooked dogs over the fire and also made s’mores, which I hadn’t eaten in probably 30 years – and after having half of one, I remembered exactly WHY I hadn’t had them in 30 years.  One can only stand so much sugar….

We left the park at about 11:00 Sunday morning and drove to Collegeville, PA, where I dropped Betsy off at a friend’s house and then continued on my own to Carlisle, PA.  On Monday, I drove the short distance to Gettysburg National Military Park and spent about three hours walking around the battlefield and taking pictures.  Then I hit the road for home.

There was a possibility that I’d drive straight through and arrive in Atlanta at about 11:00 Monday night, but I hit incredibly bad storms near Roanoke, VA, and decided to find a hotel.  Hit the road again Tuesday morning and poked along, stopping often and arriving at home somewhere around 8:00 last night.

All in all, it was a nice trip.  I’ve got the rest of the week off and will be trying to get some yard work done before returning to work on the 11th.  My streak of Canadian vacations has officially been stopped at, I believe, 20 years.  Maybe I can make it up there this fall.

TWD

Cy and “T”‘s pond at dusk

It occurred to me last week, as I preparing to hit the road for a couple of weeks in Vermont and Massachusetts, that I hadn’t been home to New England during the summer months since about 2002.  After just two days in Cornwall, Vermont, I’ve decided that such a long absence can never be allowed to happen again.  It is beautiful here.

The drive up wasn’t so much beautiful as it was terrifying.

I left Atlanta at around 9:30 last Thursday morning, fully intending to waste a good bit of time along the way in order to arrive in Vermont at around 6:30 Friday morning.  Within 20 minutes of leaving, however, I was confronted with a massive traffic jam in I-85 just north of Atlanta.  The kind of traffic jam wherein one shuts off one’s engine and reads a book.  After sitting for just over an hour in the stifling heat (and during that hour the rain began to fall, necessitating the closing of my car’s windows), the traffic began to move and I began to revise my time-wasting plans.

After the delay, my GPS still had me arriving in Vermont at about 4:30 AM, so I took a side trip to Vesuvius, VA, to try to determine what had happened to a campground there that I enjoyed several times between 2000 and 2005, but which had mysteriously fallen off of the internet (and I had stopped receiving emails from the owners) after that time.

Rain coming in at St. Genevieve Cemetery in Shoreham

After driving to the site, which, in the George Washington National Forest, is about 20 miles off of 85, I was dismayed to discover that it is most definitely no longer open for business.  The grounds that used to be home to about 30 very nice campsites appear to have been more or less abandoned.  The house that used to house the registration desk and a small camping-oriented store now looks as if it’s a single-family home; and the two tents that were pitched nearby were reminiscent of the setups that I used to have when I “camped” in my family’s yard.  If that is the case, then the couple who owned the campsite have given it up – their only child was an adult in the early years of this century.

I’ll continue to investigate what happened to the Tye River Gap Campground – after all, there is still a shabby-looking sign on the way to Vesuvius which reads, simply, “Camping –>.”  The last emails I got from the campground-owning couple, however, were narratives of what their only son was going through during his deployment in Iraq.  The morbidly-imaginative part of me has thought, since the emails stopped, that the son may have been killed in that worthless war; and that the grieving couple either split up and left or simply sold their property to try to escape from their memories.

After the trip to Vesuvius, I decided to spend another hour at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, where I had a leisurely meal, read a few chapters of a book on my iPhone, explored the country store attached to the restaurant (those of you not in the US may not understand the concept of a Cracker Barrel.  Look it up), and once again hit the road for Vermont.  My GPS now told me that I’d arrive between 5:00 and 5:30, so  everything was looking great as long as I set a moderate speed.

Just before Bethlehem, PA, however, the storms began.  I’m not talking about little rainshowers here.  I’m talking sheets of water falling from the sky.  I’m talking hydroplaning at 20 miles per hour.  I’m talking all lanes closed due to rollover crashes, strobe lightning that left you blind for two seconds at a time, and a cacophony on the car’s roof that made hearing the radio impossible.   There were no rest areas, so my only option was to plod along with everyone else on the highway.  The rain eventually slacked off a bit, but it didn’t stop entirely until I was on the New York Thruway nearly three hours later.  In celebration, I stopped at a service area for some coffee and a “health break” (in Georgia that’s what we call the act of pooping) and to let my nerves loosen up a bit before getting back behind the wheel.

As soon as I did that, however, the rain started again.

Old grist mill at the Middlebury falls

I ended up rolling into Cy’s driveway at a little after 7:00 in the morning, simultaneously exhausted and jacked up (from the caffeine and from the fact that I was here).  Cy and “T” gave me some more coffee, visited with me, and presented me with a handout with phone numbers and instructions to follow while they were away in Maine for a wedding (they left around noon on Friday and I expect them back later today).

I tried, unsuccessfully, to take a nap during the afternoon; but was unable to fall sleep until nearly 11:00 Friday night.  When I was awakened by one of the cats at 6:00 AM yesterday, I was not a totally happy camper.

After feeding the animals, I installed a new wireless router for Cy and contemplated going back to bed.
The sun was shining brightly, however, so after a shower and some coffee, I hit the road for Middlebury, where the brass band will play next Thursday.

After a few hours of walking around and shopping, I decided to go to Shoreham – just because.  Along the way, I stopped at Evergreen Cemetery in West Cornwall for some photos.  Upon arriving in Shoreham, I decided to visit the Shoreham Village Cemetery (hadn’t been there since I was in elementary school).  Spent an hour or so there and then drove a big loop down Watch Point Road and over to 74…where I stopped at the Lakeview and St. Genevieve cemeteries for more pictures.  While there, it began to rain again, so I headed back to Cornwall.  I took a long circuitous route through Vergennes (on 22A) and back to Middlebury (Route 7), arriving back at the house at about 6:00 PM.

Spend the rest of the evening playing with the animals, watching television, and surfing the net.  At around 11:00, I fell into bed.

I don’t think I moved until 8:00 this morning.

For quite some time now I’ve been planning on throwing a tent and some supplies into the car and heading for someplace with trees, dirt and a river.  With temps in the 90’s in 18 of the last 20 days, the heat was starting to make me clinically insane.  Mountain air and a cold mountain stream were not just something to do – they were a medical necessity.

So last week, I posted a few messages on Facebook and invited a few friends to head out with me for the weekend.  Two guys immediately agreed, we decided on a spot in the Joyce Kilmer National Forest near Robbinsville, NC, and I made plans to get the supplies I needed and sneak out of work an hour early on Friday.

Friday rolled around and I heard from one of the two guys (Brett) that the other (Ben) had backed out, and that he (Brett) was going to go someplace closer.  I was okay with that – until he informed me that the closer place was a trailhead, where he would park his car before hiking a couple of miles to a waterfall.

Normally, I’d be fine with that setup, but I’d already packed my car, hadn’t bothered to bring things for hiking, and had no intention of trying to carry a bunch of loose odds and ends two miles up a path to stand under a waterfall.  My stated intention was, had been, and continued to be, “I am going to park my car, set up my tent, start a fire, and sit in a river.”

So Brett went his way and I drove to Joyce Kilmer, arriving at about 7:30 Friday night.  I parked the car, I set up my tent, I started a fire.  I was sweating to death.  I got naked and fell in the river.

You’ve seen the old “Nestea Plunge” commercials, right?  The dude (or dudette) falls backwards into a pool and goes, “AHHHHhhhhhhhh.”   Yeah.  That was me on Friday night (sans the backwards plunge).  I sat down in that river, which was probably about 50 degrees, and 12 years fell off of my life.   Friday night, the air temperature in the mountains fell to around 60, and I actually woke up in my tent at around 3:30 Saturday morning because I was cold and needed an extra blanket.

Bingo.  Joyce Kilmer is now officially my favorite place on earth.

Saturday dawned cool and sunny (temps in the 60s), and I slept until close to 9:00, which was a nice change.  I love my cats, but I don’t like the fact that they have no concept of  “weekend.”  I spent the morning gathering sticks and logs and preparing my fire pit for Saturday night, then walked around and shot some pictures, ate a few crackers, and settled in to continue reading As I Lay Dying.

Early Saturday afternoon, it clouded over and started to rain a bit, so I moved everything under my tarp and took another skinny-dip.  I’d just gotten back to my chair and was preparing to read a bit more when a truck went tearing past on the camp road and I realized that it had been Brett.  When yelling and waving my arms failed to stop him, I got my keys and chased him up the road, catching him after about 5 miles.

By the time Brett got back to my camp, we were in a downpour.  We spent 10 minutes or so stringing up his large tarp so that we could both stay dry, getting soaked in the process.  Upon seeing us complete our task, Mother Nature immediately stopped the rain.

I took a bath in the river.

Brett apparently had decided that hanging out with his newphew on the hiking trail where he’d gone wasn’t all that relaxing, and so he’d come to see what I was doing.  He also brought two ribeye steaks with him.  After we’d built a roaring fire, we cooked the meat over it – and it was amazing.

Shortly thereafter, a young music teacher with a penchant for kayaking during his summer vacation pulled into the site next to us, and the three of us ended up sitting by the fire talking about nothing (in between occasional dips in the river) until I crashed at around 11.

Early Sunday morning, the skies opened up again, but the rain stopped by 9:00 AM or so.  By 11, we were packed and ready to head home.  When I left my campsite, the temperature was 65.  When I arrived home at about 2:30, it was 93.

I want to go back now.

TWD

Well, the rest of last week sort of flew by, but not necessarily in a good way.

Tuesday’s rehearsal went okay for me.  The solo horn player didn’t show up, so I tended to play a bit louder than I normally do, hit most of the high notes that have been eluding me, and actually got a compliment from the director.  There were a bunch of holes in the band, however, and it’s really tough to tell what we’re going to sound like in New England in a couple of weeks.

I dearly hope that we don’t suck.

Tuesday was Betsy’s last rehearsal with the band.  She’s spent most of the last few weeks getting ready to move to Texas, and moving day was yesterday.  I had dinner with her and John on Friday night – and retrieved the carpet shampooer that I’d lent them (minus the upholstery attachment, which has apparently been sent to Texas – doh!), then said goodbye and wondered where I’m going to find another cemetery/football/music/literature friend to hang out with going forward.

Ocmulgee River, Macon, GA 12/26/2010

She’ll play with the band two more times (in VT and MA at the end of the month), and then she’s back to TX to start building her new life there.  With any luck, she may be able to get back to the east coast sometime this fall to shoot a football game or two with me, and we’re still on the brass band board together – but I guess most of our interactions going forward will be via phone or email.  Don’t see many early-morning treks to middle-Georgia cemeteries together anymore.

Sigh.

When I got up to feed the cats yesterday morning, I glanced out the kitchen window and was delighted to see that my back yard was chock-full o’ kittens!  There were three half-grown ones and three very tiny ones, all of whom were having a ball rolling around in the dew, chasing bugs, jumping on each other and generally being adorable.  I only noticed one watchful mama kitty, but I’m fairly sure that there must have been another one somewhere.  When I opened my (upstairs) window to try to take some pictures, however, all seven of the little buggers scampered.

About an hour later, I decided to give my front lawn a much-needed mowing.  I’d hoped that, by starting at 8:00 AM, I might be able to mow the thing in relative coolness.  “Relative” being the key word there.  85 degrees is, after all, relatively cool compared to 95.  It’s still incredibly hot when one is pushing a mower around and pruning trees and picking up sticks.  By 10:00, when I put the mower back in the shed, I was completely soaked in sweat.

I got a little surprise while re-shedding the mower, however.  One of the tiny kittens – a little ball of tuxedo – had decided to explore my shed while I was mowing, and I surprised it when I barged in with the mower.  It cowered in a corner of the shed for a few moments before seeing an escape route and hurtling out into the sunshine for an instant before barreling underneath the shed.   Had I been thinking more clearly (I think I was suffering from heat stroke at the time), I might actually have closed the shed door and tried to adopt the thing. Not sure how my two cats would take to a new baby brother or sister, but I’ve decided that (unless I can get a pure-bred Maine Coon) my next cat will be a tuxedo; and that one was just TOO cute.

After mowing, I went grocery shopping and then spent most of the rest of the day on the couch downstairs, alternately napping and watching Angel (my current series du jour).

This morning, I’ve down a couple loads of laundry and am trying to decide whether to do some housework (dishes to be washed, carpets to be cleaned, furniture to be moved, etc) or practice my horn (either tuba or tenor) or just go out somewhere – to take pictures or to play darts or maybe a bit of both.

Before I decide, however, I have to do some more laundry.

TWD

Yeah.  I know.  I pen an entry on Thursday night, in which I say that I’m going to try to get back to daily updates, and then I don’t write anything else for 5 days.  I’m a slacker.  I know.

The worst part about doing that is that I honestly forget what I’ve been doing every day.  It’s a ritual of sorts.  I wake up between 6:00 and 6:30, go downstairs to feed the cats, go back upstairs to pee, turn on the news, and forget everything I did the day before.  I know that the throngs of people swarming this blog each day think that my goal is to write things for them to read, but the truth is that I’d like to keep this thing updated just so I’ll know what the hell I’ve been doing with my life.

Now that I’ve cleared the air, I’m happy to report that I’ve done basically nothing since last Thursday.  Friday was a typical work day, followed by a typical do-nothing evening.  Saturday was given over to yard work and gushing perspiration.  Sunday was the annual Sausage Fest at a brewpub in Roswell.

Actually, Friday night wasn’t a complete waste.  I began reading – and generally enjoying – Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying.  This was Betsy’s idea, and I believe she’s been harboring it since I told her a year or two ago that I’ve never read more than about two pages of Faulkner in my life because I can’t stand the way he writes.  She gave me a copy of AILD a few weeks ago and insisted that it wasn’t that bad. 

Spam.  Brussels sprouts.  Faulkner.  Three things that I hated as a kid and three things that I decided that I needed to try again as an adult.  So far, I can report the following: 

• Spam no longer makes me vomit and may actually be useful for low-maintenance camping food; but I’m not going to rush out and buy a bunch of it just in case I want to fix myself a big ol’ spamburger at home. 
• Brussels sprouts remain the single most disgusting plant on the planet. Anyone who eats those things and claims to like them is a liar.  A damned liar, even.  Seriously, Brussels sprouts are just plain nasty.  The simple act of thinking about them makes my tongue shrivel up.
• The jury is still out on Faulkner.  As I Lay Dying has, for the most part, kept my interest.  Yes, there are some chapters that make me shake my head and whisper, “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ALL ABOUT?!?!?” but I have finally learned to recognize and appreciate the sheer genius of Falkner’s writing.  I could write 10,000 words a day for the next 20 years and I still wouldn’t have the literary rhythm of the gentleman from Oxford.

Moving up to  Saturday for a minute: I managed to get my wood chipper (the one that won’t start) into my car (an Audi A3).  This was not an easy thing to do, but I did it.  I then drove to a small engine repair place in Duluth and asked them to make the chipper work.  They indicated that they’d be happy to if I gave them about three weeks.  That was fine with me.  So.  They now have my broken chipper and I still can’t cut any brush.

After bringing the chipper to the shop, I spent most of the rest of the day doing things outside in the extreme heat.  Picked up pine cones.  Trimmed a few bushes (and piled up the clippings).  Washed my car (I do this about once every three years whether it needs it or not).  Sat on the deck.  All typical things designed to give me heat stroke, and I think I may have accomplished that.  I hit the sack at about 7:30, was asleep by probably 7:45, and was out of it and nearly incoherent when a friend called me at about 9:00.

On Sunday, I did pretty much nothing until about 3:00, when I drove to the 5 Seasons Brewpub in Roswell and watched Mercury Orkestar perform at the pub’s annual “Sausage Fest,” and event in which some people bring in samples of their sausage recipes and everyone else votes on them. 

I think I’ve said before that I’m not overly fond of Mercury Orkestar, which is a “Baltic Brass Band” (read: a very very very very loud gypsy band). but Betsy, John and various other friends are in it, so it seemed like a good way to spend an afternoon.

Yesterday was Monday and today is Tuesday.  ‘Nuff said.

TWD