BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

My recent trip to Massachusetts to speak and sign at the SEMA PPD (Southeastern Mass Pagan Pride Day) falls into my favorite category. That being, it was a great event. There were plenty of wonderful folks, good conversations, hanging out, and excellent food as well. And, I even signed a gazillion books – gotta love that.

Of course, whenever I go on the road, even if the event is great and… well… UN-eventful… there’s always something to keep me entertained along the way – usually to and from.

So, for those who follow me on Facebook and Twitter, this is going to be redundant.  However, since there are many of my blog readers who don’t do the Twitter and Facebook thing, here, in a nutshell, is the round trip as told to my Twitter account via my cell phone. I’ll warn you up front. It’s not all that exciting…

SATURDAY

Travel Day One – Getting There From Here

Saturday 9/11 10:08AM – At Lambert STL. Busier than a whore house on dollar day. TSA Agents FASCINATED with my I <heart> EK t-shirt. O_o

Saturday 9/11 10:25AM – Almost missing those lost LBs. Took off belt for security and britches were around my knees by the time I was thru the metal detector O_O

Saturday 9/11 11:24AM – On airplane. Wheeeee!

Saturday 9/11 1:22PM – Layover BWI. Maybe I’ll see Duff and the gang…

Saturday 9/11 2:30PM – On board another air fly thingy. I’m like, YO! WEEEEEE!

Saturday 9/11 4:01PM – As a rule women make way better pilots than men. True story

Saturday 9/11 4:23PM – On ground Providence, RI. Yo! Weeeee!

Saturday 9/11 5:59PM – At the hotel. Nice room. Gang coming to pick me up for dinner at around 7:30…

Saturday 9/11 8:33PM – Dinner roundup: FRESH fish and scallops… Mmmmmmmmmm… :-P~~~~~

Saturday 9/11 8:48PM – Lost an hour today (slow damn airplane)… Gotta turn into M. R. Sellars tomorrow morning around 9… Thinking it just might be “Jammie Time”

Saturday 9/11 9:05PM – Okay… Grabbing a book and jumping into the sack. I’ll check in tomorrow morning over coffee… The maker is right here on the desk (WooHoo!)

SUNDAY

Event Day

Sunday 9/12 4:59AM – Okay, you silly whackos… I’m up. Hotel coffee cooked. It’s not DDC, but it’s definitely drinkable…

Sunday 9/12 5:26AM – Waking up just isn’t as much fun without Kat Sellars here…

Sunday 9/12 6:28AM – Clean and shiny… Even squirted on some smelly good so I won’t schteenk too badly… Now having some more coffee and diddling about on Facebook while considering heading downstairs for some breakfast…

Sunday 9/12 6:35AM – Hmmmm… Not used to that much fried food all in one place at the same time… Last night’s dinner has me feeling slightly bloaty this morning… Still better go see what’s for breakfast. Long time till lunch… O_o

Sunday 9/12 7:03AM – Hard boiled egg, a self-nukeified miniature ham & cheese quiche (never did find the ham in it), a fruit cup, and some OJ… That “oughta” hold me for a bit.

Sunday 9/12 7:07AM – Why do all of the “expert” commentators on FOX look like they’ve had botched facelifts and then lost a fight with Merle Norman?

Sunday 9/12 7:59AM – I’m not waitin’ on a lay-dayy, I’m just waitin’ on my ride… I’m just waitin’ on my ride. Do do do doo dop dee do. Do do…

Sunday 9/12 8:57AM – The Weather Channel LIED!

Sunday 9/12 10:47AM – First workshop done. Plenty of hopeful writers in attendance. Great questions

Sunday 9/12 11:10AM – Minor crisis averted – Yes, folks, I found the little authors room, weee! (Literally)

Sunday 9/12 11:38AM – Lunch: AMAZING Morrocan stew, and the cook gave me her secret recipe

Sunday 9/12 1:52pM – Booksigning rule #1 – Slow at your table? Put food in your mouth and that’ll change

Sunday 9/12 3:55pM – SIGN… SIGN… SIGN… Writer’s cramp!

Sunday 9/12 4:06pM – WHAT? WHAT? SPEAK UP! (Metal band closing out the festival – but I have coffee and cheesecake, so it’s all good.) 😀

Sunday 9/12 8:01pM – Back to the hotel. Great dinner of fish & chips at a local diner ala Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Fieri would’ve said, “Now that’s money right there.” Now working on packing. They’ll be here to shuttle me back to the air-fly-thingy place bright & early.

Sunday 9/12 8:15pM – So… How’d y’all like the periodic SMS updates? Should I keep that as part of my regimen, or no?

Sunday 9/12 8:55pM – Okay, that’s all the schnitzengruebers I can take… I’ll be up early enough to annoy everyone before they come take me to the airport. G’night all…

Monday

Travel Day Two – Homeward Bound

Monday 9/13 5:22AM – Almost finished with the packing. Swilling some hotel coffee and thinking about spending some time in that little room with the water that sprays out of the nozzle on the wall. What a concept… Sure beats a garden hose. I gotta see if I can have me one of these deals installed at the house.

Monday 9/13 6:34AM – Just called the Evil Redhead to make sure she was up and moving. I got the distinct impression she likes her daily “wake up back massage” a WHOLE LOT MORE than the aforementioned “wake up phone call”…

Monday 9/13 9:32AM – At Providence air fly place wearing EK recycles tee. TSA afraid of Evil Kat. They promise to recycle so that she won’t hurt them.

Monday 9/13 12:56PM – On ground Orlando, FL. Might have to resuscitate woman in seat behind me. She talked non-stop for 3 hours without taking a breath.

Monday 9/13 1:00PM – Just showed hi-pressure salesman my appendectomy scar & told him EK did it to me with a hi-heel the last time I spent money w/o permission

Monday 9/13 1:15PM – Orlando air fly place dining: Chef salad, heavy on the salad, LIGHT on the “chef”. Got my roughage for the day

Monday 9/13 2:00PM – On board air fly machine. M R go home…

Monday 9/13 5:30PM – I’M HOME! I’M HOME! Well… STL anyway. Redhead might leave me standing here at the East terminal. She’s mean like that.

*     *     *     *     *

And, there you have it… Murv on tour. Next stop, Ohio…

You never know… He might even come to your town.

More to come…

Murv

Pizza boxes were piled on the island in the kitchen. They were empty, and what little remnants of the various “flavors” of Italian-American dinner pie… Well… Lunch and Breakfast Pie for that matter… But, I slobber as I digress. Fitting I suppose, given the title. But back to the story at hand…

…what little remnants of the various “flavors” of Italian-American dinner pie that were left had been tossed into a Tupperware container and stuffed into the icebox for later. At the moment, there was still work to be done.

You see, before I started blogging to keep folks up to date on my whereabouts and nefarious deeds, I had an e-newsletter. While I don’t regularly send one out any longer, I do use the list for announcements and the like. And, prior to establishing the e-newsletter, I had a good old-fashioned paper newsletter. I even have an 11×17 paper folder in my basement. Anybody know someone interested in buying it?

There I go, digressing again…

Let’s continue… AND, before THAT, my newsletter was on 8.5 x 11 paper, and stuffed into envelopes. So, when you have 2000 plus newsletters to stuff into envelopes in order to send them out to fans and bookstores, and you barely have enough money to print the newsletter to begin with, what do you do? Well, you don’t hire a mailing service, that’s for sure. You hire your friends. You buy pizza and beer, invite them over, and make them fold for their supper…

Or, in my case, I join them in the folding while E K strolls back and forth, occasionally slapping us with her riding crop and screaming, “FASTER LACKEYS!” as she makes us ALL work for our supper – which, of course, is primarily the leftover pizza crust from her plate that she tosses to us as we grovel at her feet.

Think I’m kidding? Two words: Evil Redhead.

But anyway… There we were, “Mentos”, The Chunk Man, E K, me, and even the o-spring, sitting around the dining room table with plastic milk crates of newsletters and boxes of envelopes and rolls of stamps. We had ourselves a regular assembly line going.

The Chunkster and E K were on folding duty, because they are both insanely meticulous about such. Mentos and I were stuffing the pre-printed envelopes, and I was pulling double duty putting the stamps on them as well. I really didn’t have much choice. E K kept kicking me under the table.

Anywho, the o-spring was all of about 4 at the time, which meant she was all about helping. For some reason that changes when they hit the tween/teen years. However, that’s now and this was then… So, back then, she was all about helping, and what she really wanted to do was lick the envelopes and seal them.

Okay, all good. She’s pretty meticulous too, so once she was shown the process, there was no worry about her slobbering on them or anything.

We had been at the project for better than two hours, with only a short break for dinner. Everything was coming together, moving like a well-oiled machine. Then, it happened… The end of the line started slowing down. By that, I mean the o-spring was no longer sealing envelopes. In fact, she was sitting in her chair with a bizarre look on her face as she smacked her lips.

My first thought was that she had given herself a paper-cut. I’ve done the same on envelopes when not paying attention. But there was no apparent blood and she wasn’t crying. Just seemingly perplexed.

E K turned to her and said, “Why did you stop? What’s wrong?”

The o-spring smacked her lips a couple of more times, then said without missing a beat, “I’m all out of tongue water.”

Creative descriptions… I guess that’s what happens when one of your parents is a writer.

More to come…

Murv