Category Archives: Idle Chit-Chat

Gettin’ the Google On

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As I pay more attention to where visitors are coming from (Have the Campbell Award judges come by? Have the Campbell Award judges come by?) I am once again bemused by the wide variety of odd searches that people type into Google and Yahoo, only to end up here. Go figure.

In the past I have obfuscated key words in these entries, in order to avoid misdirecting the search engines to here, rather than to the original page. This time, though, I’m just too lazy.

  • stacking haircuts – I’d much rather be stacking rocks.
  • “large breasts” embarrassing incidents – linked to an episode where I discuss the darker side.
  • cult in scotts valley – linked of course to the shocking expose that only this blog dared expose.
  • minimum sample size – I doubt the searcher was looking for thoughts on Czech TV, but that’s what he got.
  • girl with extra-arms – the Stories category page was buried way deep at match 190, but that was enough for this searcher to arrive here
  • soup boy – linked to an episode in which I describe learning of my first pro sale.
  • Budvar Bar – the place is near home, and it’s cheap, to boot.
  • write without fear – it’s an important ingredient for success. Sometimes I almost come close.
  • half baked sex – and understandable misunderstanding to be misdirected here.
  • stacked rocks – maybe I’m just paying attention more now, but interest in rock stacking seems to be on the rise. On Menorca , they’ve been doing it all along.
  • laura k hamilton blog – misspelling the famous writer’s name got me a high ranking in this misspelled search. Linked to an episode that talked about the words that ended up here.
  • boobs lake mead – nestled among the predictable crap was the sleep-deprived story of my day as I traveled from Las Vegas to Mesquite, or more accurately, Through the Valley of Fire to the Bosom of Bobbi.
  • Bearded actors – Everybody’s searching for them!
  • bud light banner – I assume if the searcher wanted a banner advertising the product, he didn’t share my opinion about that vile substance.
  • i like to clean my duck of air and heat myself – I think I feel sorry for the duck. Linked, strangely enough, to the Eels category page.
  • How to write a writing questionaire – attracted by a mutual misspelling to my writing category page, where no help at all was to be found.
  • how tall is kareem abdul jabaar? – mentioned tangentially in a Pirates! episode that took me from a garden party in Prague to a hotel bar in England.
  • Buffalo Butts – imagine the dismay when the searcher found an image of the back ends of bison.
  • “pork sparrow” – there’s only one reason to search for that phrase, and that’s to answer the question “what the hell did I just eat?“
  • can a blind man dream in color – I ask the same question myself in a pile of random stuff, but no answers are even offered.
  • sestina origin – that my explanation is the top match in Google is likely a disservice to the poetry world, but what can you do? Plus, I like my version.
  • wizard of id ; shinola – linked to an episode in which I ramble about (among other things) how profanity is encoded in the mainstream media.
  • menorca pigeons – the episode mentions pigeons in passing, but it really about life, death, larceny, and all that stuff.
  • two beers in japanese – linked to an old, old episode in which I enumerate ways to say “two beers“. Your favorite not on the list? Leave a comment!
  • lonely in adelanto – whatever the searcher wanted, I doubt he found it in this episode with a sexy title.
  • summer seems shorter – linked to an episode with a story that with a little work would be all right. The comments are the best part of the episode.
  • hankering for bud light – notable only because my episode called Bud LIte is Horrible was the second match out of 36,000.
  • stacking things on drunk people – Good sport! Linked here.
  • my first enema – the constipation mentioned here is metaphorical.
  • Ax Chop Elf – linked to The Quest for the Important Thing to Defeat the Evil Guy , which has axes, chopping, and lovely young elves, but is almost certainly a far cry from anything the searcher wanted to find.
  • Mount Mazma – once it was very tall. Now it’s not, but it’s very pretty.
  • big ass diverson – Yahoo! corrected the spelling and brought the searcher along with me to San Angelo, Texas, for some big-ass beers.
  • dont get mad get glad – I don’t get every role I audition for. One time it didn’t work out.

Notable also is that in the last two weeks there has been a surge of searches for suicidal squirrels. The searchers are in Western Europe, mostly Germany but also France and Italy. The trend seems to be spreading to Eastern Europe as well. The crack team of Squirrel Watchers at Muddled University will continue to monitor this trend very carefully.

Thanks!

A Good Night’s Sleep

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I went to bed early last night. I just hit a point where I didn’t want to start anything, and the book I picked up was boring. So I punted on the whole idea of being conscious, put on some gentle tunes, and drifted off to the Land of Nod.

Naturally, since I went to bed early, I also woke up early. I thought about all the things I could do; a few last changes to the upcoming release of Jer’s Novel Writer, a way to iron out a part in Dark War, odds and ends like that. I also realized I was thirsty. I got up, drank a bunch of water, then made my way back through the darkness to my still-warm bed. I went back to sleep. Take that, to-do list!

So it was that I didn’t get up until some thirteen hours after I went to sleep, with only a brief interruption.

I feel good.

During my supplemental slumber I had a dream. It seems like an allegory, but it was only a dream. In this dream I was in a little workshop where an old man and a middle-aged woman were weaving a rug. They were at opposite ends of the loom; the old man was in charge of working the yarn, while the woman was singing a song. In the song were the instructions for making the rug, the pattern was determined by the music. “Ah, yes,” I remembered, “Native American cultures used songs to memorize the complex patterns of their rugs.”

She finished her song, but the rug was incomplete. There was a big section right in the middle still unwoven. Neither the woman nor the old man seemed terribly bothered by this; the old man seemed unaware that there was a problem, while the woman just looked things over and nodded. “I know what I can do,” she said, but I never learned what that was.

Thanks!

Back in the day, he was Fleeker

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It seems that most places I’ve worked there’s been the designated guy who the rest of the office likes to pick on. It’s a combination of traits that lead someone into this position — an almost contradictory combination of a tendency to take himself too seriously, making sweeping pronouncements that he expects people to instantly see the wisdom of, while at the same time having his own sense of humor and willingness to laugh at himself.

Fleeker was that guy at Binary Labs. He was smart and hard-working, and he wasn’t afraid to make a bet that might end with him wearing a dress to work. Every office needs a Fleeker.

Eventually Fleeker went back to school, got his MBA, and is working now at some big food company in Chicago. The office wasn’t the same without him, but somehow we managed. I fell out of touch with Fleeker, so it was a bit of a surprise a few months ago when another former coworker sent me a link to (I think) a Wall Street Journal article. The article was about using the Internet to find love, and it started off telling about a Chicago guy who had been rejected by a major online dating service — apparently no small feat. In response this man launched his own Web site. I clicked on the link, and sure enough, there was Fleeker, in a particularly unflattering photograph.

That is the first thing you see when you go to SettleForBrian.com. On the site he does his best to lay out both the good and the bad about him, so there will be no disappointment later.

On valentines day this year the online version of the San Diego paper featured Fleeker. Apparently the full-discolsure method has yet to work magic, although there has been some interest.

I think it’s time to pitch in and help the lad out.

A big part of the site is a long list of pros and cons, listing his good points and his less endearing qualities. Looking over the list, however, I see a few omissions. Not necessarily pro’s or con’s but important Fleeker facts. Also missing, and much more needed, are testimonials. Naturally, in the spirit of things, the testimonials should also not sugar-coat the truth. Toward that end I’ll be sending a testimonial to Fleeker, for him to use as he sees fit. I encourage those who know Fleeker (or the new Brian version) to send in your own testimonials. I have no idea if he’ll use them, but it should add depth to the character he presents on his site. If he posts the testimonial there, I’ll slap it up here as well. (I had the testimonial up here for a couple of minutes, but then I decided to take it down until Fleeker had a chance to see it.)

Thanks!

You gotta believe!

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Believe In Me, a film built around the themes of values, commitment, and personal growth, will be coming out in a limited release soon. fuego worked on the film, and he tells me that when shooting wrapped the movie had a decent chance of being good. It’s a sports movie, based on the true story of a girl’s basketball coach in Oklahoma in the 1960’s. It was a small-budget production, shot mostly on the plains of Eastern New Mexico.

The initial release is scheduled for March 9th and will be in markets where the distributors think that basketball, values, and Bruce Dern will play the best. If it does well in these locations, then a larger release will be scheduled.

The planned release cities are (copied from fuego’s blog):

A R K A N S A S
+ Bentonville/Rogers

I N D I A N A
+ Indianapolis

I O W A
+ Des Moines

K A N S A S
+ Kansas City

K E N T U C K Y
+ Lexington

N E W M E X I C O (in April)
+ Albuquerque
+ Clovis/Portales
+ Other cities TBD

N O R T H C A R O L I N A
+ Raleigh
+ Durham
+ Chapel Hill

O K L A H O M A
+ Oklahoma City
+ Tulsa

T E N N E S S E E
+ Knoxville

T E X A S
+ Austin
+ Lubbock

If you live near one of these towns and occasionally find yourself lamenting, “whatever happened to good family entertainment?” now is your chance to vote with your pocketbook and give the little guys a boost at the same time. I don’t know how much marketing will accompany the movie, so watch for it and fill those theaters! If you see it, and like it, don’t hesitate to tell the world.

In the interest of disclosure it should be noted that some of my brother’s associates will benefit from the success of the movie, and therefore my brother might realize some intangible benefit, as well. That, in turn, could somehow remotely help me some day. I just wanted to be up front about that.

Thanks!

Sick as a Dog

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This will be a short episode, since I have to use my eyes to write it. My eyes hurt. My head hurts. My lungs hurt. My muscles ache, especially my back. The only time my back is happy is when I’m standing up, but I’m just not up for that sort of exertion. I spent the day tossing and turning, watching the sky become gradually brighter and then watching it get darker again.

I’ve made a couple of half-hearted attempts at doing something useful, but no, there will be none of that.

I made a comment earlier that most of the time I enjoy being single. When I’m sick may be the only exception to the rule. I thought about it this afternoon and it’s not so much the pampering I miss but the sympathy. I just want someone close by who can listen to my complaining and feel sorry for me. Somehow that makes the suffering much more tolerable.

Tomorrow will be better.

Thanks!

Mind Share

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I’ve been stretched lately. Not for time; I’m busy but no busier than usual. Concentration seems to be the scarce resource. There are a couple of things that are eating all that my head has to offer, so when it comes time to answer emails or preside over the message forums at the Hut, my good intentions glance off the task like an Apollo capsule bouncing off the atmosphere and condemning its occupants to being the first interstellar humans.

I know that to run a successful business I have to be there for the folks, and I know that to run a successful blog I have to be here. I haven’t the slightest idea what it takes to be a successful writer, though. Sucks that that’s what I want to be.

Thanks!

Zima!

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The phrase “since the communist era” is an overworked one when discussing the weather; it’s as if the weather patterns were affected somehow by the Velvet Revolution. My first winter here was the coldest winter since communist times. There was a period of almost a month where the temperature never got above freezing. Not even once. The mercury never so much as poked its head above the zero line, groundhog-like; it stayed in the cellar. That winter, it was a notable event when I stepped in mud one day, simply because there was mud to step in.

Last winter was the snowiest since the communist era. Memories of the flooding a few years ago had locals looking pensively at the deep snow in the mountains, and when spring rains accelerated the melting process there was a feeling of held breath. I expect there was as much water this time as last, but the powers that be managed the potential disaster much better this time. (Thanks, Austria, for not screwing us over this time!)

This winter is only two days old, so it’s hard to characterize. The temperature is finally below freezing, and I pulled out my winter coat (thanks, Mom!) last night for the first time. Somewhere in Ireland my gloves, my beloved hunters gloves lie, and I miss them right now. (They are fingerless, but with a mitten flap that can be folded over the digits when they’re not typing. MaK dethumbed them for me, making them the only harsh-weather typing gloves on the planet.) Although I am ill-equipped this year, I welcome the cold. It’s one of the things that has forged the national character of the Czechs, an active character in the story of life here.

Thanks!

The Metrics of Rockin’ Out

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It’s a short walk from the Little Café Near Home to my place. (Kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?) Not far out the door, the song ‘Heroin Girl’ came up the wires and into my ears. The wind was chill, but still lacking that true Czech winter bite. The streets were dark and quiet, and I’m pretty sure there were no witnesses to see me covering the last hundred meters to my front gate. (I looked back furtively as I worked the lock; LCNH was closing and at least one of the other patrons that was still there lives on my street. All clear. Whoo. I’ve got a reputation to maintain.

Nick Cave came on next, and I love the guy, but this was not the time for cerebral music. On the stairs up to my flat (no acceptance letters waiting on the stairs), I skipped on to The Jack Saints explaining in electrical mayhem that Gin’s A Good Man’s Brother. Shoes off, moves on, it was time to let go. The Mars Volta only added to that, followed by Gwen Mars, the culprit of my last Rocking Out Injury.

My thermostat is set for 20; cool but comfortable. Right now it is 23 in here. The heater is not going; that heat came from me. (Residual radiator heat must certainly be a factor, although the radiators are also covered with laundry right now, reducing their efficiency.) It was the Hives that put things over the top, and then when Alkaline Trio came on, that was the end. I was, in fact, the quintessential iPod commercial, holding the player in one hand (it kept falling out of my pockets, and I came to appreciate that when the headphones come out, the player automatically stops), white wires connected to my head flinging about with my body motion.

I was not, however, a vague shadow that reminds me somehow of the antishadows left by mannequins on the sides of buildings after nuclear tests. I was 3D, a little more 3D than I’m happy about being, which just increased the work required to move this body in ways that the kids can only envy. (I assume that their laughter is based on jealousy.)

Things are cooling, now, and I have a screenplay due tomorrow. Using Final Draft Pro for the last few days has really helped me appreciate just how cool Jer’s Novel Writer is.

Appropriately, the music is following the script, mellowing; Toad the Wet Sprocket is covering a Kiss tune. I want to rock and roll all night, party every day.

Thanks!

Random Stuff

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I’m listening to Saint Low right now. Johnson City. Somehow in that narrative there is something important, something more complicated than love, and it will be lost. They are going to Johnson City, but it feels like the last time. Something’s changed; it’s heavier now. The trip is destroyed by its own significance.

The singer would probably laugh at my interpretation.

I watched hockey tonight, the electric hypnosis coming at times from different hemispheres. During the first intermission of the Sparta/Slavia (rhymes with Yankees/Mets) game, the owner of the Budvar Bar Near Home switched to Rugby. Amazingly (at least to me), one of the teams playing was one that I had seen during the calm part of new year’s eve in Ireland. The game was in its final moments, but is was close and hard-fought. I’m not sure how the players differentiated each other — they were all the color of mud.

Sport, mate. Sport.

There were times when the team with the ball was stalled, and there was a pile. Who gets the ball in such a pile is carefully regulated, but when you can’t move the ball from under the pile, you have to move the pile off the ball. It has been argued that the pads in the NFL actually increase the injury rate, and watching these guys, that’s easy to believe. When the progress of the ball is stalled and the pile is forming people will fly in, head first, smashing into the pile without regard for personal safety. We’re talking about big people, and big hits.

As far as I can tell, there are three reasons a man might fling himself at a pile like that. First, he could hope to move the pile. Second, he might take one of the other team off the pile, someone who had good leverage. Third, he might just like to crash into people, without regard for personal safety. I think to play that game there must always be a bit of reason three.

The whistle blew, the game was over, and they unpiled themselves and began shaking each other’s hands. It was an easygoing, natural sportsmanship that limits the cheap shot because you’re going to be looking those guys in the eye when the game is done, and ideally you’ll be buying each other beers down the street. That is sport.

Saint Low is now telling me that I can just walk on by, like she’s no one. I just wish I could tell her how wrong she is.

Soup Boy sent me an invitation tonight, chocolate night at some club or another. I do like chocolate, but the launch time for the festivities is about now, and I am well and truly done for the day. In fact, today is about done for the day.

Hockey. I was pulling for Slavia, the other Prague team, mainly because they weren’t Sparta, easily the Yankees (ca-ching!) of Czech hockey. It was a good game, back and forth, with both sides pulling off some of those passes that have you saying “Wha — wow!” The game went to a shootout. While I will always rail against the shootout in any team sport (reducing a contest that is supposed to be about how a group of people work together to a series of one-on-one events is a disservice to the entire sport, whether hockey, soccer, or whatever), this was an interesting one to watch. It went long, and I noticed a pattern that held. If the shooter glanced down, even for the tiniest of moments, at the puck, he missed. The shooters who never, ever took their eyes off the goalie scored and made it look easy. Nothing fancy, just smack it by the guy.

I’m pretty sure there’s not a useful life lesson there.

After that game we switched to NHL. They play on a smaller surface and at first the skaters seemed unnaturally large. In the past I’ve preferred the North American version of Hockey, but with the recent rules changes they’re caught in middle ground, no longer the hard-nosed pounding game I like, but without the room to be a game of finesse.

Johnny Cash is telling me that it’s the time of the preacher, in the year of ’01; when you think it’s all over, it’s only begun. I’m pretty sure he’s right about that.

My team, the Flames, they still play old-school hockey. (Incidentally, this means they’re doomed.) That is only secondary to why I am a Flames fan; it would be more accurate to say that I am a Flames-fan fan. I’ve already documented it in these pages, no sense in digging up old laundry and all that, but never before and never since have I seen a row of pretty girls neglecting their jobs because they simply could not tear their eyes away from the hockey game.

I wonder what apartments go for in Canmore.

I only had the one Johnny Cash song handy, now Nick Cave is singing about a woman with a dead man in her bed. I’m pretty sure she’s not referring to me. She’s never met me.

There are times, looking out at the city at night, at all the lights, the sound and the motion; it seems busy but for all that there are no people. My window is just another sparkle.

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Thanks!

An aritficial rose, by any other name…

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I am in a café called Meduza right now; it is early afternoon and there is already far too much caffeine in my system. fuego tells me that I should recognize the place, having seen the movie Hostel — in the film the place is ostensibly in Amsterdam, and some semblance of plot development occurs there. If you watch the movie (I don’t recommend it, but those things happen), you can snap out of your coma for that scene and tell yourself, “hey, Jerry wrote a blog episode there!”

If I look up from my laptop and past fuego’s shoulder, there is a woman drinking some sort of tall, layered drink that might involve chocolate. She is distracting; I think she is used to people looking at her, but for me the fascination is a little different than the effect she is trying to achieve, I suspect. By any empirical measure she is attractive; her hair is long, with multiple layers of varying blondeness, her eyebrows are perfect arches over her wide brown eyes. Her skin is a deep salon bronze, her lip color carefully selected to match. Her clothes are simple but work well on her. The overall effect isn’t beautiful, however, and certainly not pretty; she is well-crafted.

As I wrote that last sentence she was joined by a friend (an English tutor, it turns out), very American, and I will admit that the artificial woman’s voice is very pleasant, smooth and low so that her words stay at her table, in sharp contrast to the penetrating nasal quality of the newcomer. So she’s got that going for her, and that’s a pretty good thing. She’s got the Czech cheekbones as well. The natural qualities are there, but she has chosen to hide them beneath a layer of artifice, an attempt at perfection that undermines and distracts from what is already there.

Clearly, this woman needs a coach, someone in her corner to give her the confidence to let her genuine qualities speak for themselves. Someone like me. She’s caught me looking her way a couple of times, and I know what she’s thinking: “That guy obviously has a discerning eye and a healthy disdain for convention. I bet I could learn a lot from him.” It’s either that or she’s thinking “Someone should teach that guy to dress better, and trim that scruffy beard.”

It could be either one. Fifty-fifty, I figure.

Thanks!

New Toys!

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When Soup Boy moved out, he left a legacy behind. Nothing major — some dead flowers, some rocks, a few other odds and ends. I’ve long since taken care of most of those things, but after the disruption caused by the Great Flood of ’06, I was confronted once more with an odd assortment of pebbles and small stones. They ended up on the table where I put my laptop when I’m using it at home. So there I sat this morning, reflecting on the irony that it was the rocks that I was having difficulty getting rid of. I couldn’t put them in the yard, because the landlord would run over them with the lawn mower. Just putting them in the street seemed irresponsible, and putting them in the trash wouldn’t be nice to anyone.

City Life, I tell ya’.

SBL_1.jpg

Rock Stack SBL-1. Nothing mind-blowing, but likely the first of many.

This morning I was mulling this oddity of modern life, asking myself where I could put the rocks when I realized one particular rock clearly belonged on top of one of the others. I stared in disbelief, stunned that I had not noticed that simple fact before. After a few fairly aggressive stacks tumbled I relocated the operation so that I was not working my near the glass coffee table, and that was pretty much it for my morning.

Stacking small rocks is noticeably different than stacking large ones. The biggest difference is that the tiny adjustments you make to adjust the balance have a much more dramatic effect on a small rock, and even the smallest disturbance can have catastrophic effect. Getting all the pieces to work together can be tricky. On the other hand, it only takes a little bit of friction to keep a small stone at an improbable angle. The biggest advantage of the small stones is obvious when the stack falls over.

Eventually I got a stack that was fairly stable if not particularly breathtaking, and before I added the One More Thing I hauled out the big camera, tiptoed around the apartment while the batteries charged up, and then snapped a few picks. Maybe I can hone my rock stack photography skills as I practice my rock stacking.

Of course, then I tried to add the One More Thing and the stack collapsed, but that was all right. The rocks are still there, waiting for me.

Thanks!

An Unlikely Injury

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The plan at Saxkova Palačinkarna (Sax is a dog, by the way) tonight was simple: two cups of tea, two beers, and an evaluation of the effect on the first 150 pages of The Monster Within if I add two telling words in the fourth paragraph. The result: three teas, three beers, a rewrite of chapter three, and a bloody knuckle. The first results can be attributed to bad communication, bad counting, and good ideas. The last is a little more complicated. In fact, when I left Saxarna my knuckle was still intact. Indeed, as I emerged from the convenience store with a loaf of bread (the crumbs of which I am picking out of my keyboard as I compose this), I was still more or less in one piece. As I stepped out of the store and put the earphones in, however, I sowed the seeds of my own destruction.

In retrospect, perhaps it was not the act of putting phone to ear that did me in, it was my skipping over a tune in the shuffle because it was too mellow. Thus it was that “Electro” by Gwen Mars was crashing against my eardrums when I got home. I set aside my backpack, and there in the kitchen I proceeded to Rock Out. It was with a grand leaping air-guitar flourish that I cracked my hand into the ceiling lamp.

It wasn’t until after the number off the new(ish) Dickies album was over that I noticed the blood. Rest assured, by then the house was rocked.

Thanks!

Coming Soon to a Paris Runway Near You

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There’s something that’s been percolating through my grey matter for a few days, and it’s finally reached the surface. A while back I read a blurb about a guy who was looking ever-so-stylish in a custom-tailored four-button coat.

Four buttons! Wow! Can you believe it? That guy has some brass!

Four buttons.

One time, many years ago, I went into a suit store (lacking the funds to pay someone thousands of dollars to make a jacket for me with one more button) and asked for the suit that would be the farthest thing from the Standard Male Uniform without offending people who expected to see me in the SMU. (Nobody I knew was in the ‘expecting to see’ category, but there was a funeral or a job interview or a wedding or some tragedy like that that required me to look ‘respectable’.) I ended up with a fairly nice suit in a borderline scandalous dark dark green that utterly failed to bring out my eyes. It looked, to my eye, like just about every other suit I’d ever seen.

If someone from a non-suit-wearing culture were to visit me in a suit-required situation and apologize for mixing up our names by saying ‘you all look the same to me’, I would nod my head in agreement. Women have fashion, men have the SMU. Men are reduced to the necktie to express who they are through clothing. Unfortunately, the necktie has turned into the business equivalent of gang colors. It’s not an expression of individuality; it’s your membership badge for whatever pathetically irrelevant subset of suit wearers you imagine yourself to be. There is the Power Tie (ha!), the School Tie, the Invisible Tie, and (the only one backed by a shred of honesty) the Family tie. I like the Family tie. It changes with the holidays, is sometimes horrible but carried as a badge of honor. “I’m wearing this polyester disaster because it will make my family happy.” There’s a good chance it will deflect bullets as well. The Family tie is cynically wielded by gray-haired salesmen.

Back to the buttons. You read it here first, kids… the TRUE FASHION REBEL will have no buttons at all. Velcro, baby. Imagine the clean lines of your suit jacket that is in every other respect just like what everyone else is wearing. No buttons! The Scandal!

Velcro. It’s the new black.

Thanks!

Breaking the Curse

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I’m heading out in a few minutes to watch the Charger game. This week, I just feel like the curse will be broken. I’m not sure why after three years that this will be the week, but there you go.

Edited to add: Just for the record, I ended up not watching the game after all. I did listen to it, however.

Thanks!

A Hundred Little Things

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I was supposed to go down to Moravia this weekend for a birthday party, but as the time approached to leave I was getting progressively more stressed out. The big pile of things I had put off in November was looming over me, and the flood added a new list of its own. Even just taking a shower was a hassle; there were sodden floor mats piled in the shower, and I had no towels even remotely clean.

I had no dry shoes that didn’t tear up my feet, rent was due, I had no telephone or Internet access, the list goes on and on. On top of everything else I had been eagerly awaiting the chance come December to get back to work on my “real” writing projects. Thanks to the flood that hadn’t happened yet.

MaK really wanted me to come, and I fell into the trap of listing some of the reasons I was bailing. Any individual reason sounds pretty weak, it’s only when you can see the avalanche that you stop saying, “those are just snowflakes.”

It did not promise to be a relaxing trip, either. It was for a birthday celebration, and there were events planned that stretched from the moment we arrived until we left, and I knew that more things would be added. And, like MaK trying to convince me I should go, there would be no saying “no”. If I boarded that train, there would be no getting off, and there would be no getting any work done. (I suspect my in-laws don’t consider what I do to be work. I have heard them say (in czech, assuming I don’t understand) that my language skills are weak because I go to cafés but I don’t talk to anyone, I just sit and write. Well, that’s my job. It’s a good job, but it’s not one that involves talking.) It became a lot easier to say no when MaK said they were ready to go and they she thought they should pick me up. I was so laughably far from being ready to walk out the door (see shower and shoes above, add clean clothes and painfully stiff legs from bailing out the kitchen), that at that point I wouldn’t have been able to join them even if I wanted to. So I just said, “I have to work. I can’t work right now and I’ll be crazy until I can.”

I could go on talking about all the things I need to do, but I think I’d better get back to doing them.

Thanks!