Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Sometimes the voices make me want to burn things. Especially after watching something like this.

We have been out of town more often than not for the past couple of weeks. Last weekend and the weekend before we went to the ranch. Dove hunting season opened up, so we went out ready and willing to take a ton of birds, but since neither one of us has hunted doves in a few years, we ended up killing far more ammo than birdies. Cuervo was very excited to be out retrieving again. Kona, it turns out, is gunshy. We’re going to have to acclimate her to loud noises. Funnily enough she really doesn’t seem to care for fully automatic gunfire. Can’t imagine why.

Today we went out to see my aunt and uncle’s new ranch in the hill country. What a beautiful view… I can’t even begin to describe it. Up on top of a hill is a view that stretches for at least 20 miles (you can see the town in the distance), and has a perfect shot of the sun setting in the saddle of two tall hills. Ojalá que I had a camera. There’s also a mysterious cave in the ground, with the half-moon opening too small to accept my bloated body. Shining a flashlight in there shows some stalactites and stalagmites, though.

The weather today was outrageous. High around 82, clear and dry. This is my very favorite kind of weather. The leaves are starting to turn a little yellow; a reminder of death and birth and life all wrapped up in the subtle change of a tint.

While we were 2.5 hours away from home tonight, my cell rang – the alarm company, calling to tell me that the alarm went off at the house and police were on the way. They called back 30 minutes later to say that they think the dog set it off. Turns out a cat was locked in the kitchen and knocked a cooking pot off the counter.

I’ve got to get on the ball regarding the JournalCon! Things have been so hectic that I haven’t really had a chance to do much of anything. Including update my blog. Sorry.

Is anyone surprised that the Western world is obsessed with weight issues?

It’s been a crazy week.

We had been completely dead all summer, business-wise. Nobody was calling in, and we were starting to get worried. One of our usual clients called last week, and so hub went out there from 10-7 on Tuesday, then I went from 1-7 or so on Wednesday and Thursday, then hub went back again from 8:30-11 on Friday. And I’ve got to go back this week.

We left for the ranch on Friday afternoon, detouring at the Sprint Store because I was unable to get to the Wireless Web and customer service told me to go exchange my phone, and I called the south store to doublecheck they had them in stock, which they verified and told me to come on in. When I got there, they not only refused to exchange my phone (they had them in stock to sell, not to exchange), but they couldn’t be bothered to apologize for whoever screwed up and told me I could, and then when I told them I was really mad they said I was free to take my business elsewhere. I called Customer Retention because they’re the people who bend over backwards to keep you from ditching Sprint, and they told me my account was not highly valued enough to bother with. I guess because I’m the add-a-phone to hub’s account, and my fee is $10/month. So not only did someone lie to me, but they also told me my business wasn’t valued. Nice! Way to go, Sprint, I will not be buying my new $500 Treo from you, and you’ll lose our $1000+/year when we switch to T-Mobile.

By this point I was furiously upset and starving, since I’d forgotten to eat with all the excitement. We hit the road and got to the ranch around 10:30, kids in tow. Not a one of us slept well the whole weekend and on the way home tonight I kept smacking hub, who looked like he was on the verge of nodding off at the wheel.

Dove season opened on Saturday. We were very excited about hunting that evening. Then it rained, and rained, and rained some more. Undaunted, we packed the kids and gear into the car and drove to the tank, set up a video, and took positions near the car. I took charge of Kona, who had never been hunting before, and put the loop of her leash around the foot of my seat. Someone called over to me that I had a bird passing by, and even though it was too far away I took a shot. I turned around, and suddenly my chair was around 10 feet away from me and the dog was just a brown streak heading to the car. She’s terribly gunshy. We will have to work on that.

At this point, a mosquito flew into the car with the kids and all hell broke loose. Jo has a Fear of Bugs, and started screaming, which scared Caroline, who started howling. Hub tried to calm then down but couldn’t, and when I arrived on scene we had two children with tears and snot running down their faces, in “huh! huh! huh! huh!” hysterics.

So much for hunting.

My cousin asked us down for next weekend. We’ve already arranged for the kids to have visit with their grandparents.

In the meantime if anyone knows of a good alternate set of ATI drivers for MacOS 9.2.2 (ATI Resource Manager kills Quark, and without it windows draw so slowly that my client gets seasick), I’m open to suggestions.

Did you think I was kidding about my pink AR-15? I wasn’t. Click the thumbnail for a bigger view.

While we were at the ranch, the gas station on the horizon let out a bunch of little mushroom clouds. As that distracted my attention, a 737 taxied up to the ranch house. It said “Panama” on in, but I knew that was a Hawaiian airline. The pilot set up the plane like a pop-up camper and went to the neighbor’s house to pick up an invisible quilt. Intrigued, I followed him over there. The woman wasn’t home, and as the pilot made disparaging comments about her quilt, the radio in the background played “Another Drip in the Mole”, which was almost but not quite like Pink Floyd.

John Riiter died!

I’ve been pretty quiet lately… the new game that I’ve been waiting on, Acheron, started the other day with a bang, and there’s this miserable awful devilish puzzle that nobody seems to be able to figure out. So yeah, I’m obsessing.

The girls have been completely at each others’ throats for the past few days, and I have no idea why. The constant fighting, screaming, and thud of fist against flesh has been tattooed into my brain.

In happier news, a friend is painting my AR-15 bubblegum pink and I think it’s beautiful. I was considering a Barbie logo, with a little daisy to dot the ‘i’, but thought that might be too much.

I’m thinking about stopping work on the puzzle and doing something more enjoyable, like coating myself with honey and lying on an ant hill.