Vacation, Sort Of

About 3:30 PM yesterday I emailed the "Practical Guide to the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act" to my publisher, a few minutes ahead of deadline for the "manuscript."  Doesn't that word sound a bit antiquated?  Not really, authors still use their "mani" (hands) quite a bit.  If you want to preorder a copy, please visit http://www.sheshunoff.com/ and click on "Don't Get Blind-Sided."

"Yeah, right," says Virginia. "I could buy a bunch of music scores for that price.  So what did you do on your first day of vacation?"

Well, I've missed three August 1 deadlines, so eventually I worked on those.  But I started the day by running to Arrowhead Lodge and playing piano for an hour and a half.  I ran back home and dug up half of my garlic.  What a pain!  I should have taken my eyes off the "manuscript" a month ago and simply pulled them up.  That would have saved me a lot of time and effort.  Now the stems have dried and practically disappeared, so I have to hunt around with a spade.

In the midst of garlic breath, Karen invited me to help harvest our first turkey.  We repeatedly thanked him for his sacrifice, as we've heard native Americans would do.  Karen's an old hand at chickens by now and impressed me with her knowledge of birds by giving me a lesson in windpipes, crops, lungs and even testicles.  Our little pot of 145 degree water would have handled a chicken just fine, but this tom had to be dipped half and half. Plucking reminded me of squeezing pimples, not that I have any experience with that (thanks Adam Sandler, for "Zittly van Zittles").  18 pounds wait for tomorrow's roasting.

I also read some more of "Hellgate," about the Hellgate 100K mountain trail run that begins a mile down the road from our house.  I won't be signing up unless Larry, my friend from Florida, does.  December 11, Larry.

Oh, lightning knocked out our power for about 3 hours, which got me thinking about a 5 megawatt solar plant.