Sunday, September 21, 2008

Home, once.


Good guess Cog.

February 14, 2007


Heading out to New Orleans, later today.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Worth The Walk


Monday, September 15, 2008

Seasonal Fallback


What with the autumnal equinox just a week away I'm checking out corners of Paramour that I can spend dejected hours in during the depths of winter.

See, along with the celestial plane we are sliding down towards the perigee of the winter solstice, so too can my mood slide down that slippery slope to the point of complete nuttiness somewhere around the 18th of February when the addition of 37 seconds of daylight sets me so giddy I re-create Van Gogh's Starry Night in snow bank piss art.

"Gee I love the seasons!" and "Autumn's my favorite time of year." are fighting words around here. Don't get me wrong, I love the seasons too. I could have an orgy with spring and summer. Fall and winter though can sit at the kid's table again even though they's fully grown. Let them eat stale jell-o off their knees for all I care. Once the leaves start to change, be sure to catch my in the backyard maple with a can of Krylon green.

I'm decidedly not a winter guy. I don't like cold, dark, snow, sleet, ice, skiing, skating, gloves, hats, runny noses, scraping windsheilds, galoshes, parkas, frozen lakes, fireplaces (unless its burning calendars in effigy), hot cocoa or any other trapping of those three months of hell we subject ourselves to. And fall is just the usher to your seat of misery so I'd just as soon crown him with his flashlight.

But you can't fight the seasons, so I just plan for them. Every fall I set up an agenda of things I intend to do over the winter that will have me coming out the other end in spring with a modicum of accomplishment and a few snowbank piss arts when things get really rough. Every year though, the list and the actuality tend to diverge at about the same time with about the same qualitative velocity.

For example:

October Plan: Pot the basil and keep inside. Cut the lawn short one last time. Pick up a new jump drive for the second book you're going to write. Figure colors to paint your home office in.

October Actual: Ignore frost warnings and wake to instant dead savory plant. Figure you can comb the lawn next April. Pick up cashier at Staples. Figure you'll find your home office under the paperwork in December.

November Plan: Make pesto. Carve pumpkins. Take a hike in the woods to shoot some bucolic scenery.

November Actual: Buy pesto. Carve finger in error instead of turkey. Shoot bucolic scenery.

December Plan: Lay in to working on writing an hour a night.

December Actual: Lay in to weather forecast.

And so it goes, really only getting worse until March claws its way out from behind February's ass to give us a last glimmering shred of hope that someday there will be life again. If you don't see me for a couple of weeks this winter, don't worry. I'll have had enough and will be chained to the radiator with the furnace going full tilt. Yep, I get that cold. Or I'll be Volkswagen curling on the interstate. Depends on how the road crews are set up this year. But I'll be out there in some form or another. Just doesn't mean I have to look forward to it.

Bunny on.

visited 34 states (68%)