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

Competition, in and of itself, is a good thing. A bit of healthy competition helps folks to strive toward excellence. It forces them to work harder for a reward, thereby helping them become better at what it is they are competing over, about, around, on, under, or otherwise with.

In the marketplace, it even tends to promote a little better pricing here and there. Sometimes it even spurs honesty – but then again, sometimes it spurs dishonesty, which is a bit less than healthy.

But, we aren’t talking about the marketplace here today. What we are talking about is “healthy competition” among friends. A contest, as it were, on an impromptu family & friend game night.

And it all starts with coffee…

You see, a dear friend of mine – we call her DeathStar because… well, if you ever meet her you’ll understand… Anyway, this dear friend of mine is a coffee roasting hobbyist. Actually, I think she has migrated from hobbyist to professional in recent months, but the real point is that DeathStar  hand roasts and custom blends some of the most INCREDIBLE coffee on the planet. And, since I am her friend I am fortunate enough to receive freshly roasted – as in less than 3 days old – coffee beans on a regular basis. If you are a coffee drinker at all you understand me when I say this is almost literally a case of “Java Nirvana. ” The aromas when you open the sealed package, the aromas when you grind the beans, and everything else that comes along with it… Because of DeathStar I even went out and purchased a French Press… Well, actually E K picked it up for me, and she doesn’t even like the smell of coffee, which just goes to show you that even someone who hates coffee with a passion knows how to respect the “Beans o’ DeathStar”.

And so… I have this coffee. And, I have this other friend who is a coffee fanatic. We’ll call her Anastasia. We won’t, however, call her ‘Stasia Mae. Only her husband gets away with that. But, if we’re going to be honest, we mostly just call her Luets. Long story there… But, anyway, Luets is a coffee fanatic, and whenever I come into possession of the sacred beans, she shows up at my door. As was the case recently.

Luets and her husband came by for freshly roasted, ground, and pressed coffee one Saturday. After juicing several of the beans and sitting around talking it had progressed into the late afternoon, so we invited them to stay for dinner. Afterwards, as we all sat around drinking Vodka-Tonics the Evil Redhead decided we should play a game (see… now I need a friend who distills their own Vodka…)

Now, normally when this happens it usually involves me wearing a collar and fetching sticks, tennis balls, and various chew toys for E K. However, on this particular evening the Redhead was looking for something we could all do, and she didn’t have enough leashes on hand to accommodate everyone.

But, seriously… E K came up with the idea that maybe we should play Uno or some other card game. Since the O-spring was involved, we let her pick and she decided upon Phase 10. If you’ve never played it, Phase 10 is sort of like what would happen if Rummy and Uno had a child. It’s a lot of fun, and we really enjoy it. And, it’s healthy competition…

Or, so we thought.

You see, Luets is competitive. When I say competitive I don’t mean healthy competitive. I mean insano, take no prisoners, needs a straitjacket competitive. With everyone…

Her husband, Mike, however, is not what you would call competitive at all. He’s more along the line of “Yay! Everybody wins!”… In fact, he is sooooo diametrically opposed in “competitiveness” to Luets, that he will literally go out of his way to help someone else win, even if it costs him points. In fact, he readily admits that he is happy to lose as long as he is able to drive Luets up a wall. It seems that when it comes to games, making Luets crazy is Mike’s real entertainment.

And so, we discovered this… with extreme prejudice, mind you…

At one point during the game Luets used a skip card, but didn’t skip Mike, even though he wanted her to. The reasoning, announced loudly and without apology, was that, “You don’t play the cards right.” You see, had she skipped him it would have set him up to help someone else win on the next round. She knew he was going to do this and was vying to prevent it, all the while seething and generally turning into a psychopath whenever anyone would inch ahead of her. To give you a verbal illustration of her behavior, Luets was even going head to head with our 10 year old, and was being brutal.

Fortunately, the O-spring can hold her own, as I shall now illustrate…

During a later hand, as Luets whined, seethed, grumbled, and shrieked, it came around to the kid’s turn. O-spring was in possession of a skip card herself, and she played it. On Luets…

Well, I probably don’t have to tell you that Competition Girl immediately became pissy. She demanded to know why the O-spring didn’t skip Mike instead because in her mind that would have been a better play. Without missing a beat our 10 year old looked across the table and completely owned her by saying, “Because just like you said, he won’t play the cards right!”

Yeah… The O-spring doesn’t fall far from the tree… Next time we play cards though, I’m thinking we might need to dial back on the amount of DeathStar Coffee we allow Luets to drink…

More to come…

Murv