BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

How y’all are?

As I’m sure you’ve noticed from the lack of bloggage of late, I’ve been wayyyyy too busy. So…what have I been doing? Well, stuff, and things, and stuff. You know…things you have to do when there are things that need doing.

Yeah, real specific there, eh?

Okay, I suppose I should be a bit more forthcoming. Primarily, I’ve been traveling. Over the past few weeks I’ve been in Virginia, Maryland, Nevada, and Arizona just to name a few places.

This Friday morning (yeah, like day after tomorrow) I hop another plane and head for Spokane, WA. Fortunately, even with all this being away from home, my kid still remembers my name and I haven’t found anyone else’s shoes under my bed…so, I’m pretty sure Evil Kat hasn’t replaced me yet, or even started the application process. Which is a good thing, because she’s way too busy to train another husband.

So…on the Spokane deal. I have a layover in Salt Lake City on my way, which is where I meet up with Morrison and we catch a flight into Spokane where we will be appearing at the Conscious Living Expo. Per our itineraries, my flight in from St. Louis lands about 6 minutes before Morrison’s flight from Virginia. So, I have 6 minutes to find her gate and meet up with her so we can shuffle off to our connecting flight. No big deal, right? Guess again…

Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever walked through an airport with Morrison, but I have. Here’s the thing–under normal, everyday circumstances, Morrison walks at the same pace as your average human being. This is NOT the case when you put her in an airport. For some reason– perhaps the fumes from the jet fuel, I dunno–when faced with an airport concourse, Morrison turns into a sprinter. It doesn’t matter if she has 3 hours before her connection, she does the 4 minute mile from one gate to the next. Last time I had to do this we met up in Denver on our way to Reno for the Northern Nevada PPD, and there I was cruising along at a brisk pace, thinking everything was normal…But nooooooo…30 seconds later I look up and realize that Morrison is about 25 yards ahead of me and widening the gap. On top of that, she was completely oblivious to the fact that I had been left in the dust and was just jabbering away to thin air. (Yes, it was thin…We were, after all, in Denver.)

So, you see, I am going to need to wear running shoes just to deal with this layover, because the TSA isn’t about the let me bring a tranquilizer dart with me in order to slow Morrison down.

Okay, enough of that. Morrison is getting wayyyyy too much air time in MY blog.

Speaking of airtime…Thursday (10/11) at 3:15PM (Pacific Time) I will be doing a short phone interview with Tanya Tyler, one of the radio personalities at KZZU 92.9FM. They apparently have a stream on their site so you can listen via the internet if you are so inclined. You can find it here- www.kzzu.com. I’m not sure what we are going to talk about, but I guess we’ll all find out. If you happen to live in the Spokane area, according to the website Tanya is giving away tickets to the Conscious Living Expo all week.

So, let’s see…What else is going on…Oh, yeah, by popular demand, Miranda has her own Myspace page now. You can find her here- Miranda’s Myspace. Go ahead and send her a friend request if you are feeling brave. I have a feeling she’s looking for more victims.

Other than that, well…I’m basically spending a lot of time cleaning up around the house and that sort of domestic type thing. What I REALLY need to be doing is packing for Friday, but as usual I am dragging my feet. I did, at least, get my suitcase out and set it in the living room. I suppose I should get busy and go put some stuff in it…

More to come…

Murv

Wellllll, it seems the topic of Wendy’s struck a chord with many of you. I’ve received many comments and emails asking me to tell the story now instead of waiting until I come off the road.

We are still in Sanford, Maine, but right now Morrison is waxing prophetic about various things to a room full of folks (i.e. she’s giving a workshop and I’m not)…Sooooo, that means I actually have a little free time between signing books for folks. It’s probably the only free time I will have until we reach the end of the tour so I thought I’d drop in and run off at the mouth myself.

Big surprise, right? (Grin)

So, here’s the thing…I like hamburgers. Cheeseburgers, actually. Now, given a choice I will go for a really good restaurant style burger, but I don’t always have that opportunity. In a pinch, I’ll go for a fast food burger, and that includes Wendy’s. Now, of course, they have the odd notion (much like White Castle or Krystal’s) that hamburgers are square. This is something that I have problems wrapping my head around (yes, I know they stack and ship easier that way, but hamburger are round, cornbread are square where I come from…) Still, as fast food burgers go, Wendy’s makes an edible “sammich”. And, White Castles (i.e. belly bombers, sliders, whatever) are just horribly addictive. This is one of the reasons why I am inclined to believe there is something terribly evil about square hamburgers.

Anyhow, this book tour started in Nashville, TN…Burns, actually…And that was great. I’ll talk more about that leg of the trip when I do the flying pigs blog…Stop number two, however, was Indianapolis, IN. We started out on Monday last (5/21) with a fairly leisurely drive to Indiana from St. Louis. We hooked up with one of our favorite folks, Edain McCoy, who was gracious enough to open her home to us.

After the gig at Inner Path that evening, we were hungry. Now, something I’ve rambled about in the past is the fact that when authors get together they kibbitz and commiserate. Since we hadn’t seen Edain for some time, we decided we would all go back to her place, get in our “jammies”, order a pizza, and then visit for a few hours before grabbing some sleep.

This is where problem one occurs. Edain lives in a new subdivision that is outside Indianapolis proper, and no one was willing to deliver. Problem 1A is that there isn’t much around her area other than a CVS and a Wendy’s…Since the CVS was closed already (not to mention that we weren’t really all about nuking a frozen dinner), Wendy’s it was…

We all put our shoes back on (yeah, after being on your feet and such at a booksigning it is a great relief to do the patented “Die Hard” practice of kicking off your shoes and walking around making fists with your toes. Fortunately, Hans Gruber hasn’t shown up to chase me yet whenever I have done this…) So, anyway, we climb in the car and head for Wendy’s.

We reach the lovely oasis of square pressed beef patties and park. About the time we reach the door we discover a sign which says “Short Staff – Use Drive Thru – The Management”…Okay, no big deal. We get back in the car and put ourselves into the queue. When we finally reach the menu board a very unhappy sounding voice barks “Can I help you?”

Well, since I was driving I was charged with the duty of dolling out the orders, so I start the first of the three and the voice suddenly barks again, “You’re going to have to wait a minute.”

Okay. Obviously this person is harried here. No biggie, we wait.

And we wait…

And we wait.

Then we waited some more.

Finally, the still rather pissy voice comes back on and says, “Sorry for your wait, what would you like to order.” As an aside, I don’t actually believe she was sorry at all, but that might just be me…Anyway, I tell her, “I have a few orders here,” and then I give her the first. It happens to be Morrison’s and she wants something akin to a double burger with no pickles or ketchup and a side order of left handed wingnuts with flying monkeys. Okay, so I can’t remember her exact order at this point, but suffice it to say I couldn’t get across to Morrison that we weren’t at Burger King and that Wendy’s motto was NOT have it your way. But, Morrison never listens to me anyway, and to be honest that’s not actually an important point.

It was at this point the pissy voice barks back, “Are these going to be all on one order?!”

Okay…My bad. I had used the phrase “a few orders” so I can easily understand the confusion. I replied, “Yes, it’s all one order.”

This was problem two. Miss Piss on the other side of the intercom didn’t let me get even that short sentence completely out of my mouth before once again demanding to know if it was one order or if it was going to be several tickets. As soon as I could get a word in edgewise I said, “No hon, it’s all on one but I just have to get the individual orders from a few different folks in the car.”

Now…I am willing to admit that there might have been a bit of mild exasperation in my voice, but nothing angry or pissy. I even have witnesses to that effect. I am also willing to own the fact that I said “hon”. Maybe that was a problem too, but I am from the South and that is not a particularly abnormal thing to say. Of course, maybe in Indianapolis it is viewed as condescending, I don’t know. If it is, I can only apologize and say that it certainly wasn’t my intention. Either way, I am willing to own those two points and state that if they were the problem I am at fault.

However, I don’t think that was the problem. What I am inclined to believe is that someone didn’t feel like working. Anyhow, Miss Piss proceeds to begin talking over me again. This time, however, she shouts something on the order of, “There’s no reason for you to have an attitude and if you’re going to give me attitude you can just leave!”

Remember, she didn’t “say” this. She SHOUTED this.

We all blinked.

We blinked again.

Even with the highway nearby you could hear a pin drop.

Then we collectively picked up our jaws and reseated them on our faces.

Morrison tells everyone now, after the fact, that she was sitting there counting down because she knew we had about five seconds before the tires would squeal. I don’t doubt this. We know each other fairly well.

Well…About five seconds later, the tires squealed. Not because I was being hot headed, but just the nature of accelerating away across asphalt while turning the wheel. As we pulled from the parking lot, Miss Piss actually hung out of the drive through window and screamed very sarcastically, “Have a nice evening!”

Morrison has perpetuated this story all over Pennsylvania and New England ever since. Everywhere we go she now tells everyone that, “Sellars got her kicked out of a Wendy’s in Indianapolis.” Of course, she does then tell the story so that everyone knows she is just joking about the “kicked out” part.

I have to wonder if Dave Thomas is rolling over in his grave. Who knows…Maybe he will haunt his daughter and while she is surfing the web perhaps she will run across this blog and discover the fresh tarnish on her name.

Oh, and by the way, we did finally get something to eat…We had Taco Bell for dinner that evening, and it was very good. The people working there were even pleasant and polite.

I think I’ll probably visit Taco Bell again. Wendy’s, not so much.

I guess this just proves that square hamburgers really are evil. Something even tells me Miranda probably likes them a lot…

We are off to Long Island tomorrow for an evening book signing and workshop, so I doubt I’ll have much of a chance to post anything more until the end of the tour.

So….Till the next time…

Murv