On the road again...

So, we're in Kansas, getting ready to head for Memphis. First some thoughts about Kansas. Our motel had a special spot for those of us redeeming free rooms.

Heh-heh. This motel is one of the old-timers -- you drive up to the door and unload your car. No driving under a carport and unloading your luggage to an elevator. There are brown doors and there are purple doors. Yeah, purple. It's lovely.

Actually, my theory is that the rooms with the purple doors are the rooms they've renovated. We got a room with a brown door. It was a queen-size room with a king-size bed. The sheets were so thin, I swear I could see through them. I didn't want to look too closely however. They were so pilled that it felt like bedbugs, but I've never felt bedbugs before, so I just called it "texture."

There was one-way traffic through the room. HighGuy and I had to take turns at the sink, the shower, the desk. The room DID have a couch, however, which was a nice addition. There's nothing worse than trying to watch TV laying in bed. Just gives me a kink in the neck. And I've already got one, thank you.

I slept fine, until the alarm in the room went off. Some sadist had set the alarm for 2 a.m. HighGuy got up, fumbling around in the dark and found the button. For about 15 minutes. And then it went off again. He'd found the snooze, not the Off button. He unplugged the offending appliance and we went back to sleep.

We slept fine. We had the gentle roar of the highway as our lullaby, just like at home. We woke up again on our own and got ready for the day ahead. I noticed that the bleached towels irritated my skin. My face looks a little like W.C. Fields, rather flushed and red, and without the bulbous nose. OK, maybe I do have a little bit of a knob going on.

The continental breakfast this morning was fine. They had tea bags and hot water, along with mini-muffins. Whenever I see mini-muffins, I think of comedian Kevin James and his routine about mini-muffins. He pops them in his mouth like M&M's, while commenting on how good they are.

I spied a little basket with oatmeal packets. I had the apples and cinnamon. And maybe a little bug... I don't know. It was dark, it was small. I put it in my napkin and threw it away. I was a little happy I couldn't see it clearly.

I'm retraining my eyes. The "person" who labeled my contact lenses had them reversed. I kept wondering why I couldn't see distances yesterday with my new contacts. I turned them around today, and I think I'll be able to see just fine.

So off to Memphis. And all day long I'll be singing in my head, "I was walking in Memphis..."

Posted by: HOMD on 9/7/2008 at 8:27 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink

Preparing for the best & worst

With the short work week, it's been a scramble to get everything done, and still prepare for a vacation. We're leaving on Friday, driving down to Alabama to see my sister and her husband. On the way, we'll stop in and see the kids in South Dakota, and look for Elvis at Graceland.

Yeah, this year HighGuy said we really should check out Graceland as long as we're going to be that close. We'd stayed at a motel that even had a shuttle going to the King's humble abode, and we passed it up. It was $30 to get into the place! No wonder Elvis is still one of the highest-paid dead people!

We're planning to go to a time-share resort in Panama City Beach. I just hope the hurricanes don't strip the beaches of their sand. I'm told it's quite a project to truck it all back in again.

My sister and I are hoping to beat the guys at miniature golf, and plan to take a drubbing at normal-size golf. We'll make sure we rub it in when our scores are par or below on the putt-putt golf, and try to stay silent when our real golf balls go missing in the rough.

HighGuy is getting the trip all prepared. He'll have our turn-by-turn directions printed out and clipped to a clipboard. He drives and I navigate. Well, that is, unless I'm sleeping. The route south on Interstate 29 is pretty dull through South Dakota and Nebraska.

Once we hit St. Louis and Kansas City, then I'm pretty bright-eyed. I have to make sure HighGuy is in the right lane for the right exits through the Big Cities. I remember once how a car went from the far right lane to the far left lane right in front of us. It looked like he thought he was playing Grand Theft Auto.

We're also watching the weather closely. We keep checking our resort's website; I guess that if they evacuate people we can get our money back. Otherwise, we just have to ride it out. Great. Maybe I'll come back with stories about hurricanes. Eh, I'd rather not. I'd rather have stories about the number of boiled peanut stands along the roads.

I'd rather come back with pictures of the four of us on the beach or on the golf course -- soaking up the sunshine and laughing the day away. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Posted by: HOMD on 9/3/2008 at 3:53 PM | Comments (4) | Permalink

Vacation?

HighGuy and I are planning a vacation down south after Labor Day. We'll be driving to Huntsville, Alabama, to visit my sister and her husband, and then we four will be going to a resort just south of there on the Florida panhandle.

And it'll be a race to see who gets there first: us or the hurricane. My sister e-mailed me that Gustav is on his way, followed by another hurricane. Gee, I've never been in a hurricane before. I've seen tornadoes, lightning, blizzards, but no hurricanes. Somehow, I don't think we'll go to the beach to see the hurricane come in.

That's the mean part about hurricanes. You get evacuated. With blizzards, they just shut down the highways and everyone hunkers down and waits it out. With tornadoes, you go to the basement with a flashlight and a radio, and ... wait it out. (And now that I don't have a basement, I go into the bathroom with a flashlight and a radio.)

And what the heck do they do with earthquakes? My nephew and his wife both experienced the one out in California earlier this summer. His wife posted on her Facebook site that she'd witnessed the CEO of the business dive under a table. Apparently he knows what to do.

Dang, I'll be disappointed if we don't get to send pictures of us on the beach back to the folks in North Dakota. And I even found a new swimsuit! My sister said that she has the game, Rock Band, and if our plans get scrapped we can learn how to play. She's got a sizeable head-start on us, but it sounds like fun.

Still, it's not like sitting on the beach at sunset, soaking up the last rays and listening to the surf. C'mon, Mother Nature. Cooperate!

Posted by: HOMD on 8/29/2008 at 3:00 PM | Comments (6) | Permalink

Busy, busy

Wow, it's been crazy-busy at work this week! I don't mind it -- the days fly by, and that gets me closer to a long weekend and then -- vacation time!

We're going to close up the lake trailer on Labor Day weekend. It's kind of a tradition. Sure there are some great weekends left that could be spent out there, but we have to get out on the golf course, too!

We'll have our son and his fiancee at the lake. They're going to bring their tent and their whip-smart dog, Hurley. That's going to be fun. Hurley will be the center of attention, since he'll be the only dog out there. Well, not counting the neighbor's dogs, who like to come and greet us, too.

We have a pile of twigs and branches, so we'll be able to have a campfire. Just hope the wind isn't the wrong direction. One time, we ended up with a trailer that smelled of smoke. It probably still does; I've just grown accustomed to it.

Closing up isn't as big a job as it used to be. The dock has wheels, and my Kia has a hitch. The shore is level enough that we just drag the pontoon in and put it up on blocks. We let someone else blow out the pipes and winterize the place. That way we don't have to drag an air compressor with us and try to do it ourselves. Bleah, that was always a chore.

I have a bazillion bins that I use for most of the bedding and linens. Good thing -- since I don't have storage space at home for it all! I just need one set for the guest bedroom at home. And I have to grit my teeth and leave a lot of stuff there. It goes against the grain, but I can't take it with me!

And then whenever I can't find something at home, I'll mutter to myself, "Must be at the lake."

Posted by: HOMD on 8/28/2008 at 12:21 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

weekend wrap-up

The weekend was productive: I finished reading a book, finished redecorating a guest room and attended a bridal shower.

I finished "Lost and Found" by Carolyn Parkhurst. It was basically about losses, and how people deal with them. A group of people are competing for a million dollars in a reality game show in which they have to collect certain things and solve puzzles to find keywords. It's like The Amazing Race with a scavenger hunt added in.

One team is a mother and daughter. The teenage daughter carries and then delivers her own baby, unbeknownst to her mother, until she appears at the astonished but clueless mother's bedside, saying, "I've had a baby; take me to the hospital." The daughter gives up the baby for adoption and then clams up.

Another couple, newly married, are "ex-gay" according to them and the group they've joined called Redemption. Both are struggling to be straight, and the young man even has a homosexual tryst while traveling. The young woman denies her own feelings because her husband is denying his. But what happens when she finds out he's broken his wedding vow?

Another team is two child stars, grown up and trying to make a comeback. Each of them thinks that Lost and Found might be the vehicle to find that new role on television. What they don't know is that the production company has some twists in the game: choose a new partner!

Those are the couples who have the most interesting back stories. Other teams are lightly touched on before they're eliminated. But before they go, the emcee asks them, "You've lost the game, but what have you found?"

I found myself thinking that the production people were despicable human beings, but hey, they're just doing their jobs: trying to make a show worthy of watching, trying to get some emotion out of the people they're filming.

I loved the premise of the book. Everyone has an agenda. Even the emcee is a character who has lost her popularity on TV and wants to gain some name recognition. The mother wants to reconnect with her daughter, the ex-gay couple want to spread the Word of God, and the child stars want to become celebrities again.

And the production company has chosen all of them because they have secrets that could come out and make a big splash in the promotion of the program. They aren't above doing some manipulation -- placing a hunky cameraman in the way of the ex-gay couple, and putting a baby's dress into the hands of the teenaged birth mother.

I have to admit I put a sticky note on the page where the author capsulizes each couple, and turned back to it to remind myself who these characters are. Each character has his or her own chapters in which the reader sees the story from their perspectives. Each one has a voice, clearly different from the others. That's the sign of a good writer.

Do I like this book more or less than "The Dogs of Babel"? I think it's a worthy follow-up. In fact, I think Parkhurst has written an even better book. Dogs isn't nearly as memorable, while Lost and Found has some lessons that will stick with the reader much longer. I challenge anyone to watch a reality TV show in the same way.

The rest of the weekend was taken up with a shower for my son's fiancee, which was well-attended and lots of fun. I also did some sewing. I needed new curtains for the guest bedroom at the lake. I tried some pieces of material I had at home, but nothing really grabbed me until I held up some patchwork denim.

I generally make quilts out of worn-out jeans. I just cut out squares and piece them together. Instead of adding filling or even a backing (they're heavy), I attached some hooks and took down the sheer (too fussy) and called it good. I hung the pictures on the walls, and said, "Done!"

Just like this entry: done!

Posted by: HOMD on 8/25/2008 at 8:14 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink