5 Brief Minutes on The 10 Commandments...

A 5 Brief Minutes preview...

This weekend will see the start of my new YouTube series, 5 Brief Minutes. And I've decided to share the image below as just a brief preview...

So Dream Something, Season 1 closing episode...

In Our Selves... the Trailer...

Dreams make us better, happier, healthier people. They help us achieve our greatest potential. They help us become the person we want to be.

With In Our Selves, Ken La Salle brings another collection of essays from the pages of Recovering the Self. Not only does he share his journey but he also provides the reader with tips and clues and signposts to help them along the way.

Dreams are the best parts of all of us. We should never forget they lie not in the stars but In Our Selves…

Zombie guts…

So, Vicky and I were out walking the dogs the other day when the topic of zombies came up… again. (What can I say? We like to keep our conversations lively.)

Not only did we talk about zombies. We also talked about zombie… guts.

Here’s the thing: Imagine you’re a zombie (Republicans, this shouldn’t be too hard). You’ve eaten a side of person but you’re still a bit peckish, so you opt for some brain salad with a side of liver, spleen, and intestine.

Now that you’ve eaten all of that… where does it go?

Seriously, where does it all go?

Do zombies poop?

None of the standard zombie cannon shows any sign of zombie bathroom habits.

If zombies don’t poop, what happens to all that yummy people? Do they digest it? They can’t, obviously, because they are dead.

Take that to its logical conclusion and you find that zombies are bound to be… well, bound. I mean, zombies would keep a gastroenterologist pretty busy. Eventually, they’d just be these stick-thin walking corpses with huge, distended stomachs.

… and who the hell wants to talk about that?

Jogging by any other name…

The other day, I shared with Vicky the fact that I had jogged 10 miles that morning. Actually, I refer to it as “slogged”, not “jogged”. “Slogged” means “slow jogged”. And, believe me, I’m slow.

Vicky suggested that I was getting close to half a marathon and maybe I could think about getting into something like that.

… I thought she was kidding…

I told her, “I don’t think you understand just how slowly I jog. I jog really slow.”

“I’m sure plenty of people do marathons slowly,” she countered.

I just couldn’t get her to understand the depths to which my slowness plumbs.

And so, I have decided that I will share with you, my reading public – both of you – just how slowly I jog 10 miles…

 

Mile 1

I sit at the bus stop for 34 minutes. When the bus comes, I take it for .896 miles… and then I walk the rest.

 

Mile 2

I sit with my phone and watch a “Murder, She Wrote” marathon. After the 17th episode, I realize I’m thirsty and walk to the nearest 7-11 for a Big Gulp Slurpee.

 

Mile 3

Bathroom break. I hurry to the nearest bathroom, stopping only briefly to eat a gallon of ice cream, take a nap, and get a manicure.

 

Mile 4

Stop by to get a massage.

 

Mile 5

Stop to get another massage because I just learned about “Happy Endings”. Sadly, the masseuse has me thrown into jail for soliciting.

 

Mile 6

Several days later, I am released. Famished, I stop by Subway for a footlong tuna sandwich, a “Big & Beefy” sandwich, a “Chicken O’lay” sandwich, three meatball subs, four packs of chips, and a Diet Coke. I never eat more than seven sandwiches as I am watching my weight.

 

Mile 7-9

Hitchhike.

 

Mile 10

After a slow meander, I “binge watch” the last season of Newsroom. Then, I stop for some Never Ending Pasta at Olive Garden, get checked into the hospital to have my stomach pumped, and catch a ride home.

 

I guess what I’m saying is I’m slow.

Sleeping, are we?

Well... I'm not...

On a road in Eastern Washington…

One way I consider myself lucky is that, oftentimes, I have a very vivid memory. This doesn’t apply to everything and it sometimes pops up on its own but, when it does, it’s like a movie playing in my head. Scenes unroll and I almost feel like I was there (which, of course, I was).

That’s what happened this morning. I was sitting at my desk, editing a new audiobook, when I began to see a memory from just a few months ago.

Vicky and I were in a car, on a road in eastern Washington State. I was driving and we were navigating our way up and down along these green and winding hillsides. Traffic wasn’t too bad; the only cars we saw were some classics on their way to a car show somewhere.

We drove along – I think Cher was playing on Vicky’s iPod – and talked a little, here and there. When you’re on the road with someone for more than a week or so, you’d think you would run out of things to say but that’s not how it was with Vicky and me. We just talked and talked; I think it was because we knew that, all too soon, we’d be back home and knee deep in the minutiae of our lives once again.

So, I was sitting here, letting that scene unroll in my mind, and I just felt so lucky.

I know it’s not much – trapped in a car for more than two weeks, driving every day – but sharing that with Vicky, even that, just made it so much better. It made it the kind of memory I can reflect on, months later, and just feel good about, knowing my love was next to me, knowing that she’s mine. It’s powerful stuff.

Sure, we fought quite a few times on the road. That’s what happens. That’s so common, it’s not really worth remembering. Because the rest of the time was so good and so right that even the memory of the two of us on a road in eastern Washington can still appear in my mind and just… make me happy.

To the 9s…

I’m not going to write about dressing “to the 9s” today… mostly because nobody would know what the hell I was saying.

Actually, I’m going to talk about jogging nine miles. (Sorry, all you fashion nuts!)

Since the beginning of the year, my plan has been to go for longer jogs – 9, 10, 11, 12 miles – to help get me ready for longer hikes – once I have the time and money to go on longer hikes.

Once I start really hiking, distances will get crazy. Twenty miles won’t be unheard of. But I can’t just start off at twenty; I have to condition my feet to get used to that kind of distance.

… and it hurts!

I’m used to feeling pain after a jog, in my joints or muscles or massive protrusions of fat. (I have a self-image problem.) But I’m not used to my feet protesting so much. After going on three 9-mile jogs this week, the bottom of my right foot feels like it’s been through a meat grinder. That meat grinder is the rest of me, chewing up my foot for just a few more miles.

Fortunately, I can rest and get over it. But, once I jog again, I know the pain will return. It has become a part of my routine: sit-ups, push-ups, jog, and suffer.

Being nearly 48 surely isn’t helping. Being as fat as a small town – a small, INCORPORATED town – probably isn’t helping, either. But it has to be done.

I have to get used to this.

Because I want to do more. Much more.

And I’m running out of years in which this type of abuse is possible… without a great deal of frowning on behalf of my wife and my GP.

Flat feet…

I slogged nine miles yesterday.

… some explanation appears to be in order…

You see, I don’t jog… exactly. I “slog”, which is to say I “slow jog”. I have my music on my iPod and jog with the music. So, when a song is up-tempo, I jog faster. When a slower song comes on, I slow down. And so on.

This works for me because it gives me a chance to breathe now and then.

This is not to say I never push myself and yesterday I slogged nine miles.

But my feet insisted on having a say. By the time I got home, my dogs were – well, not exactly barking – they were crying out like they were being put to sleep! And, today, my feet are still hurting.

Vicky asked if, perhaps, my shoes were getting old and worn out.

This, right here, explains why I love Vicky so much. Once in a while… okay, once in a great while, she’ll give me the benefit of the doubt and, instead of saying “Your feet can’t carry your fat, obese, rotund, chunky monkey body,” she asks me if my shoes are getting old and worn out.

Sadly, my shoes are practically new. It’s my fat, obese, rotund, chunky monkey body that is the problem, flattening my feet like some kind of pancake press. (Those exist, right?)

But I have a “never say die” attitude. I’ll keep at it and never say die.

I think my feet have a “I’ll happily say die whenever you like” attitude, but we’re working on that.

John Ary from Ain't It Cool News is my guest on So Dream Something...

I sat down with John Ary from Ain't It Cool News recently and got to spend an hour talking about movies and following your dreams. Check it out in this month's episode of So Dream Something...

Radio de'Olde presents the missing adventures of Hango...

Yikes! Yelp…

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Yelp. I don’t even know if you use Yelp. For that matter, I don’t know who you are. Who are you people???

(start again)

Vicky and I have used Yelp on a number of occasions. On our recent trip around the west, we used it quite a bit. My personal impression used to be that it’s a fairly reliable source of opinion on many stores and services I haven’t tried, yet.

… I say “used to be” because I also use Craigslist. My books haven’t been selling very well and, so, I am looking for a part-time job to help generate some income. As I’ve searched on Craigslist, I have found not just one or two but hundreds – thousands! – of ads looking for writers to write Yelp ads.

These folk will pay a writer as much as $20 to write positive ads for whatever service they are told to write about. It doesn’t matter if the writer has the appropriate experience or even if the words are true; they are paying the writer to lie.

And, on top of that, it turns out most if not all don’t even pay the writer! Most are scams!

If you’re anything like me, your opinion of Yelp just fell through the floor. But I like to believe there are still honest people out there… You know, five or six. And I hope there are enough smart writers out there, like me, who don’t want to lie only to be robbed, in turn.

Sometimes, it goes beyond humoring me…

“Can we drive out to Warner Springs this weekend? Some of the new book is taking place there and I want to get some pictures.”

If you heard someone say this to you, chances are you’d give them an odd look, reach for a phone, and begin calling men in white coats. I mean, I said those words and even I can’t help but fear that the speaker was off his meds.

Vicky? She just said, “Okay. Let’s go in the morning before it gets too hot.”

Vicky has reached a point, I believe, where being married to a writer almost feels normal. I mean, let’s say she remarried. And this person was a lawyer or a mailman or a mechanic – something NORMAL! I don’t know if she could handle it. There wouldn’t be nearly enough randomness for her system!

I’m reminded of a trip she and I took many years ago, possibly 2006, to Arizona. We drove along Route 66 to Kingman, Oatman, and so on, taking pictures as we went, because I was writing a book that took place along that stretch of road. Vicky humored me but, clearly, this was outside of her spectrum of normality. She didn’t quite get it and didn’t really want to get it. But, we did it. I wrote the book. There you go.

This time? She didn’t bat an eyelash.

One day, she’ll mention it to someone – or some other excursion – and they’ll give her the same looks that she once gave me.

Vicky, you’re welcome.

Meet the new tooth…

A couple of weeks ago, I broke a tooth.

Actually, it probably happened long before that. But I noticed it on one Sunday morning, when Vicky and I were eating breakfast. I bit into some eggs… and I heard a crunch.

I thought it was an egg shell.

I swear, the eggs were not hard or anything. They were actually quite good, nice and fluffy.

Said crunch was not from an eggshell. When I pulled out the offending bit, I realized it must have been a tooth. And when I felt about in my mouth with my tongue, I found one of my bottom molars split like, well, anything in a Roland Emmerich film.

Vicky was certain that I’d cracked the tooth all the way down to the nub. “You’re going to need a crown. Probably a root canal. You’re going to need a root canal and a crown. It’ll probably be pretty severe. You may lose a tooth.”

I was almost expecting to hear her tell me that my jaw would have to go.

When I finally made it to the dentist a few days later, however… after days of paranoid worrying, my dentist said I’d be fine. She said she could fill it and repair it.

And sure enough, she did!

I mean, the procedure took several hours and it was all quite painful. (I’m still not sure how the hot poker on my feet helped.) In the end, my tooth was fine, perfectly repaired.

The Novocain wore off in time and I was back to chewing – if with a molar that felt much larger than before. I tried to ignore it.

… that is, I tried to ignore it until said tooth took a bite out of my cheek!

I heard a loud crunch, and screamed in agony as my mouth filled with blood. Soon, though, the bleeding stopped and the pain subsided.

A flap of skin hung loose in my mouth.

“You’ll have to bite it off,” Vicky said. “Just chew off the rest. Don’t be a wimp.”

… this is my life, folks. Kafka by way of "Now spit"...

Quotationals come to So Dream Something...

If you're a parent or interested in the state of education, you should take a listen to this month's So Dream Something. My guest, William Beshears, discusses Quotational Bees and the state of education.

Hope you enjoy it!

With just a pinch of perflusion...

It's Radio de'Olde!

Where’s Vicky?...

As some of you may know, I share my life with a particularly work-addicted woman. The only reason I don’t have a problem with this, I think, is because I am as addicted to my work as Vicky is to hers.

All the same, it does put some obvious stresses on our marriage. And when we do find time together, oftentimes it is spent running errands just to keep our lives moving forward.

I wish I could say I am mindful of this, but all too often I squander the little time we have. Listen, Vicky and I recently went on a nine-state tour around the western United States by car. We drove nearly every single day of the more than two week trip and I realize I should have had the foresight to avoid that. After all that driving – some days we drove 10-12 hours! – we found ourselves more anxious and exhausted than if we had been working that whole time. I realize now that we wasted a perfectly good vacation driving here, there, and everywhere.

And, of course, all that stress led to quite a bit of fighting.

It was a mess.

We got back and returned to our schedules, Vicky going off to her career and me staying here to pursue mine.

… and I miss her.

But I realize that’s just how our lives work right now. Maybe, one day, things will work more in our favors and I’ll remember to plan a bit more appropriately.

Until then, however, I am making do.

I’ve taken all of the photographs I used to put on my desk at work – one that Vicky gave to me shortly after the first time she told me that she loved me, another of our first trip to the Grand Canyon, one of us at our wedding, and another at Sand Rock Farm in Capitola – and I have set their frames where I can see them whenever I work. In addition, I’ve propped up a couple loose photographs Vicky gave me of when she was younger.

Photos are just the start. One of the best things about working here at home is that I feel constantly surrounded by Vicky, by the life that Vicky and I have built. I am held safely within US and there is something very soothing about that.

Mind you, if Vicky ever reads this she is bound to tell me that I don’t make any sense or call me a dork or something. She’s not too fond of sentimentality on the part of others, but I like to think she will understand.

Highlights from a Mad Dash: California...

When I saw the Welcome to California sign, I actually cheered. Why? Because of good phone reception and a time zone I could get behind (seriously, what’s with the sun in the north – is it afraid of the horizon?) and, well… work.

Yes, you read that right. I wanted to get back to work.

So, sue me.

But I should have realized something was wrong when we stepped into our room in the Crescent City Quality Inn and found that the light switch by the door turned on the bathroom light – on the OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM! (Their electrician must have been high…)

Then, of course, we hit crazy traffic in Frisco, trying to get to that magical garlic of Gilroy before the shops closed.

And then, there was…

Cool Hand Luke’s

The desk clerk at the Adelaide Inn in Paso Robles recommended Cool Hand Luke’s to us. I know it wasn’t meant as a great, bit middle finger to our last night on the road but it might as well have been. (Which is to say nothing against the Adelaide Inn; that was very nice.)

Cool Hand Luke’s is where dining goes to die. It is the kind of restaurant that makes you long for McDonald’s. To say it’s shitty is to bring insult to the largest swamp of pig shit with a mountain of human excrement possible.

It’s bad.

The servers, who we saw so little of I wondered if it was my breath, had very few other tables to tend to but when they did I overheard them complain about being so busy. Before we could order drinks, about fifteen minutes after we got there, we were brought a basket of rolls and… a pot of beans?

Yes, a pot of beans – with a single spoon. What’s the point of that? I mean, I was there with Vicky. We could share but… really? Did they expect this from a family of four? Or two guys who weren’t really looking to swap spit?

So, we order our food and a half hour later are presented with something mildly resembling playdough. I had the Bacon Macaroni and Cheese, which was overcooked noodles in a bland cheese sauce. A few pieces of shredded cheddar were laid on top to make it look real and then the whole mess was sprinkles with bacon bits. Classy!

I thought I saw whip marks on my steak from where the rider rode it to death but then I realized they were marks from when the veterinarian patched it up. I’m not saying it was dog… it was probably cat.

When we finally reached Los Angeles, I gave a big, deep breath, happy to be back home.

I think I’ve outgrown the road trip. As much as I love spending time with Vicky, two people like us just should not be cooped up in a car for two weeks. Our next vacation should be somewhere we can relax, be served drinks, and possibly have more drinks.

For now, I’m just happy to be back home.

Highlights from a Mad Dash: Oregon...

This entire trip began as a business excursion for Vicky. I just tagged along for the ride… for the very, very long ride.

So, we ended up in Portland, in a lovely room at the Hilton Downtown. I didn’t really care for downtown because it was mostly businesses and homeless – no bueno.

But I got out for a jog on my first morning there and had a nice enough time. When I came back, Vicky was busy – she’d be working while we were there – so I went off to find what was – nay, is – perhaps the finest speedy sandwich establishment ever created…

Potbelly

Holy shit, folks. Have you been here? Go! If there’s one nearby, go! And then, order me something. Like their Italian sandwich. Then, mail it to me. I don’t care if it doesn’t make it! I’ll lick the envelope! My god, I have wet dreams about their sandwiches!

… and that was pretty much Oregon.

Oh, wait. Um… I walked up to Northwest Portland to see a publisher and just fell in love with the Northwest district. It had what I missed about Downtown - that hominess, niceness, pleasantness that made me want to just move there. I mean, it’s awesome.

But after Portland, for all of its pleasures – did I mention we were at the Hilton? It’s pretty nice – I just wanted to go home. I missed my puppies, my computer, my TV – everything!

Vicky and I took a long – perhaps too long – drive down the Oregon coast on the 101. Hey, Oregon folks, can you put some speed limit signs up for crying out loud? When we saw that Welcome to California sign, I practically cheered!

More on that next…