Nothing much going on now

So, I scheduled myself work in the other part of the house from eight to ten. So I got that done. Well, not exactly. But I did get two hours of work done either in the other part of the house or outside, and I got it done before lunch. And that was really the point, to get a little bit done in areas that it is too warm to work before it really is to warm.

And I have been told that part of the reason I feel so bad (physically) is that I don't drink enough water. I hate water. I could drink probably drink gallons of soda, but getting down that recommended two liters of water really seems like a chore to me. If I am not really paying attention, I probably won't do it. And recently, I haven't been paying attention. When I was doing the serious digging holes in the garden type stuff, I was drinking plenty of water without really thinking about it. So I hadn't been paying attention, cause I knew I was drinking lots of water. But then I decided that it was probably too hot to do anymore of that for a while, and I stopped drinking so much water, and I didn't notice. So that was probably some of what made me feel so bad. I made a point of seeing how much water I drank on Sunday, which was about half of what I needed, and then I made of point of drinking two liters Monday, even if I really didn't want it.

Okay, so two hours of work done before lunch, check. Two liters of water drank yesterday (though that last half liter wasn't easy), check. And the last disk of an audio book listened to so that we can take it back to the library, check.

We then watched the conclusion of Impact. Okay, so this was a new twist on the meteor that will destroy us, but I buy this one even less than Armageddon. Could a meteor hitting the moon be really bad news for us? Yes. We aren't even keeping up with what might hit the earth, so we would certainly miss seeing something that might hit the moon, and that could be a problem. Could we fix the problem of having the moon go all crazy on us after being hit with part of a brown dwarf by throwing nuclear missiles at it and then trying somebody's mothballed science project? Hell no. Even with the very convenient mothballed science stuff being available, I think getting any of it to work the way it is supposed to would just be luck, and getting it to work at all in less than a month is just silly. I wonder if we would even be able to do the stuff from Meteor, much less Deep Impact, and this stuff is just way out there.

But it was nice to have something different to watch anyway.

There will be another meteor that will destroy us TV movie in a couple of weeks.

Okay, watched Impact and listened to audio book and watched True Blood. And then it is back to complete boredom. After having kept my husband away from this computer most of the morning, he had it for most of the evening. There was no new TV on (at least no new TV that I watch), and I'm not really up to reading at the moment. I had to take back the last book half read, even after I renewed the thing. I couldn't finish a book in six weeks. I have that much trouble with it.

I really hate being here. I hate being in the house all of the time. I hate the heat. I hate that the only thing around here that made me feel good about myself for a time was the gardening, and I can't work on that at the moment. I hate the mess. I hate not having a job. I hate not having money. I hate not being able to go out and meet people.

I wish I could just lock the place up and go somewhere else for a few months. But even if I had the money, I really wouldn't have any place to go.

That is one of the drawbacks of having had a traveling job. While I quickly got tired of being on the road all of the time, after doing that for a while it feels really abnormal to be here all of the time.

I spent half of a summer in Pittsburgh, and I was really bored with it. After going to Kennywood and a few other places in the area, I had seen all that I cared to see, and I couldn't wait to get away from there. But that was several years ago, and right now I would gladly pack a bag and go there, if I had any reason to go there and the money to do so. Pennsylvania this time of year is cool and green and it seems to rain every night, but not so much during the day. At least, that is how I remember it. But it was a while back, and maybe I am remembering it wrong.

Anyway, I shouldn't leave the house in this state, and the plants have to be watered, etc....

Okay, today I am going to work two hours before lunch and drink two liters of water.

Not doing much today

I'm just a bit out of it today. I don't feel well. I don't feel particularly bad, but I don't feel like doing much of anything. Just tired and a bit down in general. Like writing this morning's post took all the energy I had, and now I'm just going to watch TV and look at stuff on the Internet.

The thing is that I used to feel like this a lot, as I used to feel like this most days after I had been away for a week, which for about a year and a half happened maybe three out of every four weeks. There was all of this travel, which I mostly did not care for, mostly to places that were not that interesting.

And I didn't even knit then, so I was trying to make a quilt or something.

So my husband had another traveling job, and we had this routine, though it was at different places. So the first thing was to see how far away the job was, and compare that distance to what was on the chart. If the distance between home and the job was some number of miles or less, then that wasn't far enough away for the company to pay for motel rooms, so I stayed home that week and my husband drove back and forth from wherever the job was. Now that happened about once a month or so, and that was the only time that I might see my family or any of my friends. If the job was more miles away than that, but still under a certain other number, then you were supposed to drive to the place where the job was on the first day of the job, which was almost always a Thursday morning, and then stay at a motel that night and all of the nights after work, except for the last night of the assignment which was almost always a Monday. So if that happened we were driving at least an hour and probably more in the dark in the middle of nowhere usually Texas in someplace that we were not familiar with, after he had already worked at least nine and a half hours at the actual job. So that happened a lot, except for a few times that we found cheap places to stay that cost the same amount of money to stay for a whole week as the company had agreed to pay for the four nights. And then there were times that the place was a few more miles away, and the company paid for a motel room the night before the job, so that he wasn't late for work Thursday morning, but they did not pay for a room the last night, as they did not care if he fell asleep at the wheel and died Monday night after the assignment was finished. There was some magic number that got them to pay for both a room the night before on a Wednesday and the night of the last day of work on Monday, so that he could sleep before driving home on Tuesday. I don't remember for certain what the magic numbers were, but it seems like it was divided up between jobs that were less than 60 miles away, jobs that were between 60-100 miles away, jobs there were between 100-200 miles away, and jobs that were more than 200 miles away. So if you worked someplace that was almost 200 miles away, almost didn't count, and you had this really long drive home some time after eight in the evening. And if the map and/or the odometer said that it was just over 200 miles away, but the company computer said that it was just under 200 miles away, then your request for Monday night's motel room to be reimbursed was declined, and we just had to pay for that ourselves, and the job just didn't pay enough to begin with.

So I was quite in the habit of having a long drive either on Wednesday or Thursday morning, and spending most or all of Thursday in a motel room not feeling quite right, But then, being in a motel room there was not much else to do but watch TV anyway, or perhaps read a book that I had brought or else work on some craft project that I had. Then while I was there I had to figure out how to make the 10 dollar a day meal allowance for one person feed the two of us. Then a few days later I had to pack everything. Sometimes I spent Monday in the motel room and we had a really long drive home on Tuesday. But most of the time we didn't have the motel room on Monday and I had to spend Monday in a store or something, or maybe trying to find a place to read, and then we had a long drive home that night. So after that I usually didn't feel so great the next day, usually Tuesday, or sometimes on a Wednesday.

He had that job for a year and a half. At first it was kind of exciting to go places, but it was not usually anyplace interesting, and I quickly grew tired of the schedule. Either Monday night we would drive home late and be tired the next Tuesday, or maybe Tuesday morning/afternoon we would drive home and then be tired from that on Wednesday. And then either Wednesday or early Thursday we would have to drive someplace else, which would make me tired too. Some weeks we drove home on Tuesday and just to had to rush about and wash clothes and such so we could turn around and drive someplace else on Wednesday. Sometimes this was a trip to the Houston area, and then maybe we got to spend Wednesday afternoon or Tuesday morning in Galveston, or maybe we went to San Antonio a few times. But mostly we went to boring places in Texas and Oklahoma, where the only things that we did besides the job was maybe find a nice Mexican restaurant, watch cable TV in the motel, maybe find someplace to do the laundry, do a bit of shopping at Walmart, and then once in a great while find a place to watch a movie.

Just thinking about back then makes me tired.

Maybe I'm tired today out of habit. But that should be all of it. He doesn't have that job anymore, and we're not off to someplace else today or tomorrow. In fact, there is no travel scheduled for this week, and right now there is no travel scheduled for next week, and we'll just have to see what happens after that. But there's no travel for me for a while, and even after there is travel scheduled, I don't have to go with him.

But I'm still sitting here wasting the day, and I still feel a bit bad just about that. I keep meaning to post this other thing about the headaches of business travel, but I haven't finished it yet. Business travel can really have a lot of headaches, so it will be a long post.

The Star Trek Experience in Vegas is closing

If you haven't been there yet, you have a month or two, and then they plan to close. I have been there, though only once, and not at a great time. But I have been there. One thing crossed off my list.

I've only been on the one ride, which was probably the first one, at the end of which I was sworn to secrecy. I think that they have added two more since then. I would have liked to have seen them too.

Other rides like that from Vegas have gone on the road, and I ended up seeing them while visiting Moody Gardens in Galveston. So I'm hoping that the same might happen with this. And I've read on another website that the ride is actually owned by the company that owns Cedar Point and several other amusement parks, so maybe in time it will move to Ohio and my friend from the great white north will get to visit it. They also own a park in Kansas, so that would be good too.

September 11th, six years ago

Okay, so I'm sitting here debating whether or not I want to start a new post, and what should I write about, etc.... And then I notice the date. So I guess that settles that.

I had already written most of this on another website, and when today came I was just going to copy it. But the other website is still down, so that sucks. I will try to get it all down again. I think a couple of you might have already read the original or a shorter version of it.

I had rather an odd 911 experience. Not as odd as some. We were not stuck in another country, and we were not stuck in an airport. And we did not work for the military or an airline. And we did not have to worry about any family being stuck somewhere. I did have some concerns about a pilot, but I was pretty sure I would have heard if something had happened to him.

In 1999, my husband got a job as a traveling photographer. He'd been a traveling photographer for a while, but this particular company sent him out to other states for months at a time. He took the job over my objections, but in 2000 and 2001 I ended up taking a sales position with this same company so that I could travel with him.

We had been away from home for several months and had spent the summer in Maine, New Hampshire, and finally North Carolina. Instead of trying to get home for a week or so before our next job, we drove to the ocean and did tourist stuff on the Outer Banks before heading to our next job in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Leavenworth has a few prisons and a military base with some kind of school. People from all over the world attend this school. I don't have a clue what it's for, just that all the students are in somebody's military. Anyway, the company was hired to take the pictures for their school yearbook.

We arrived on the evening of September 8th. On September 9th we drove to Kansas City and went to the Renaissance Fair. We had been there the year before, because of this same job, and we'd met a few people. We asked someone if she wanted to have dinner with us while we were in the area, and we made plans for the next weekend.

On September 10th we had to go back to work. This is a big account for the company, and this is the main time of year that we work with other people. We had only seen one of the other salesmen about five months before that. And we had only been to the main office once that year. So that day was unusual for us just because we saw all of these people that we hadn't seen in a long time.

The motel we stayed at was just across the street from the entrance to the base. Once in a while someone will stop you and ask what your business is and stuff like that. That day they were doing some sort of inspection and had everyone stop and state their business while they had a look around the cars and such.

Then we were told where we would be working and set up our equipment and such. It was in a nice new building, and I was much happier with the place compared to the building that they had us work from the year before. At the end of the day, the sales were disappointing, but I was just so glad to get all the set up work over with and know that I didn't have to deal with that again for at least a month.

Most of the time we had the 2-8 shift, and at this place we had the 3-9 shift, except on Saturdays. So we tended to stay in bed late and watch TV and such. So when we woke up we turned on the TV and flipped the channels a bit. The world was all very normal at that point. Then we watched a tape of something that was on while we were at work the night before.

Then stuff started to get weird, but we didn't notice for a hour or two while we were watching this video tape. After the tape was finished my husband called the main office to tell them Monday's numbers. And then he had an odd conversation, cause he was talking about one thing, and the lady on the other end of the phone was talking about something completely different.

She said something like that's just terrible. And my husband says something like it's not great but I wouldn't call it terrible. And the conversation went like that for a bit and then it really didn't make any sense, because my husband was talking about sales figures and the lady at the office was talking about something she'd seen on TV. So then we turn the channel on TV so that we can see what she was talking about.

You already know what we saw on the TV.

So after a bit we got what was going on and decided to stay at the motel for a bit instead going to do whatever it was we were going to do that morning. So we had a couple of sodas and I went downstairs to get some ice.

There was a scene outside that looked like a movie or something. There were cars as far as the eye could seen in both directions. Everyone was trying to get onto the base. Some weren't allowed on the base, and the rest of them all had to stop and be searched. So all of these cars were just lined up like that for hours.

So I guess if they're not letting people on the base, we don't have to go to work today.

We called the office to tell them what was going on outside. But they just said something dumb like we'd better get an early start if there's a long line. You don't get it. There's a long line, but it's not really moving and they are turning people away. I don't think we should try it.

But the lady on the phone seemed to think that we should still go to work as usual, because no one had called to cancel their appointments.

Do you think that maybe they have other things on their minds and maybe they forgot all about appointments to get pictures made?

But she didn't seem to believe us. It took about two hours later before they could get through to someone and confirm that as far as we were concerned the base was closed and we would not be going to work that day.

Now the office is ticked off that they had to "pay" us to sit around and do nothing. In fact, we were not "paid" anything except for the motel room and meals. Somehow they always seem to think that is the greater problem than the fact that we're stuck in the middle of nowhere and not making any money. At least the people at the office were in their own town and still collecting a paycheck.

The next day was pretty much the same. The people at the office thought that we should just try to go to work as usual, while I'm looking out at all the cars inching by. The usual five minute drive took almost two hours, if you really were one of the people allowed onto the base. But the people at the office wouldn't officially give us the day off until they had talked to someone on the base, and that didn't happen until like one or two in the afternoon.

The next day the main office has been told that we will not be allowed onto the base for the rest of the week. We might be allowed to get on with the job next Monday, or it might be cancelled or postponed. They're just not sure yet. So we can either stay at the motel for a few days, or we can go home but we might have to come back on Monday or Tuesday. The office thought that since we didn't know for sure that we would be working the next week that we should just go home rather than waste money on the motel room.

I said that if I made the trip all the way home to Texas, I would not be coming back. And the company equipment could just stay where it was and someone else could pick it up later. Maybe someone on the base could just bring me a couple of things that were my personal property. Or the company could keep paying for the motel room and such and I'd be happy to go back to work on Monday.

The office didn't like that, but they finally agreed to keep paying for the motel room at least until Monday.

So we decided to drive to Kansas City for the day and go to KC Masterpiece and do some shopping and such that we would normally do on our day off on Sunday. The restaurant still had a bit of business for lunch, but the rest of the places we went were nearly empty.

The lady from the ren fair was just too upset over the whole thing. She cancelled our dinner plans for the weekend and decided not to go back to work at the fair that year.

It was odd how some things had all but shut down, and other things were business as usual. No one wanted to go shopping, but the big haunted houses were open.

Monday came, and we were told to go back to work. But it wasn't as easy as that.

They were afraid that someone would try to blow up one of the buildings. So half of the parking lots were closed. And they didn't want us working in the nice new building were we had originally set up our equipment. So the first thing that we had to do was go to the nice new building and pack up our equipment and take it someplace else. Only this is one of those places that no one allowed to park. So we had to park somewhere else and walk. Packing the stuff up takes about an hour, and then we still had to get it into the truck. So my husband went to get the truck while I waited with some of the equipment. And he parked it someplace that really wasn't a parking space, but we weren't going to be there very long. So he went to get some of the equipment, and he got back to the truck to find five guys with guns looking at the truck, trying to decide if there's a bomb inside. So they finally figured out who we were and guarded the truck while we got the equipment inside so we could take it to the other building.

The other building was that awful place where they had us work the year before. It used to be a gym but it was going to be remodeled and used for something else. Half of the building was already fixed up and being used. Those other people in the nice half of the building did not play well with others. There was a lot of arguments about locks and they had the restrooms blocked off and stuff like that. So it was not a pleasant time at all.

There were some other really odd things that happened. Since a lot of people couldn't park where they would normally park, they decided to park outside the base and walk a few miles. The really odd thing was that a lot of them we walking to the nursery with strollers.

So it's not safe for the military people to bring park their cars because there might be a terrorist bomb, but it's okay to bring your kids to the nursery as usual?

On the other side of us was a small shopping center with a Subway, two pizza places, and a bunch of military recruitment offices. And a there's a 7-11 right next to the recruitment places. So while all of this stuff was going on, someone put a bomb in the 7-11. And the bomb-squad came with the little robot thing and they blew up the bomb in the little metal box thing.

I few weeks later I slipped and fell in the Burger King parking lot. I had to go to the hospital and get X-rays and such as that. And they gave me the wrong phone number for the guy that deals with the insurance claims, so I nearly ended up suing Burger King. Anyway, that's another odd thing that happened that wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a terrorist attack, because we would usually eat at the Burger King on the base. But it was just too much trouble to get onto the base, even when it was right across the street, and we just decided it would be faster to drive to the one on the other end of town.

So I did not go to work for a few days. We were not making that much money, and my arm really hurt even if there was not a big enough break to show on the X-ray. We were leaving that Saturday. Someone was putting up these big concrete barricades, and we were told that if we were not out by 5:30 on Saturday we would probably not have room to drive the truck out and we would be stuck there. We did not care if people bought anything. We did not care if they thought that we were rude and complained to the office. We were not doing any retakes or anything special. We were going to get everybody's picture taken in time to get out before 5:30 and we didn't care if they liked it or not.

One of the unhappy people asked if I was proud of my attempts at customer service. Let me see, I've worked for three days with a busted arm, I'm getting no commission at this late date, I'm working someplace where I've been treated like I'm suspected of some criminal activity, I've been told to get everything finished by 5:30 today, and so far I am on schedule and today I've haven't started swearing yet.

So, yes, I'm proud of my attempts at customer service. I'd appreciate it if you could move along now.

So we did manage to do our work and get the equipment in the truck and drive out before the concrete barrier people blocked that end of the street.

We went home for a couple of weeks and then we had a job to do in California. While we were on the road we saw signs up at the travel centers and the motels and such saying "Thanks for traveling." My husband joked that they might as well have put our names on them, since most of the places we went we mostly had the place to ourselves.

We went a few days early so that we could go to Disneyland and such. There were no lines at Disneyland.

I was going to quit the job anyway, and in fact had tried to leave six months earlier. After California I was fired. One of their complaints was that they had to pay for me to have extra vacation time during the week of 9-11.

I'm not going to Roswell, again

About sixty years ago, a flying saucer was reported to have crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. The event was reported in newspapers across the country, only the be followed the next day by a story claiming that the "flying saucer" had turned out to be a weather balloon.

Years later, different groups of witnesses came forth to tell what really happened at the Roswell flying saucer crash, or the crash at Corona as it is sometimes called. In the eighties, several people wrote books on the subject, decades after most people had forgotten all about it. In the late eighties and early nineties, the public demanded to know what really happened. Then we all learned about something called Project Mogul.

Tourists started visiting Roswell. A few people started museums about flying saucers. Visitors went out to see the crash-site.

And then came the Roswell UFO Festival. There were serious lectures and such, as well as some not so serious stuff. Bike races, movies, a dance, and a costume contest.

It was a bit of fun. Some friends of mine at some of the local clubs went. The next year a bunch more went. By the fiftieth anniversary, this was going to be a big deal.

Harlan Ellison went on television to tell us how stupid we were for having a big party. I've always wondered if he paid for the TV time himself, or if the Sci Fi Channel used to like him so much that they just gave him free air time to say whatever he wanted. The first possibility seems unlikely, but the second possibility seems unlikely as well. Only a dozen or so people like Harlan Ellison, and I only know that because I've met about half of them.

So there was the big party planned, and some people were guessing that half a million people would go. I wanted to go, but I didn't have any money. But I really did want to go.

At the time my husband worked as a traveling photographer at a company that was cheating him. I have signed legal papers that prevent me from talking about it, so I won't say the name of the company. Anyway, my husband's boss at the time was Ms. Big Eyelashes, and she kept promising him that things would get better. And to keep him from quitting, she told him that she could arrange for him to travel to other districts whenever he wanted.

I decided to put this to the test and told her that we wanted to be in Roswell for the 4th of July weekend. I told her that it would not be possible to actually work in Roswell that week, since even if there happened to be a job there at the time that we wouldn't be able to get a room there. But maybe she could get something in the general area, say something that would be a half hour drive, or maybe even an hour.

Sure, no problem.

My friends kept asking me if I wanted to share a room and travel expenses with them on the trip to New Mexico. No, I said. I don't have that much money. Supposedly I'll still get to go, but I can't spare the money to share a room in Roswell with anyone.

I kept asking about it, and Ms. Big Eyelashes kept telling me that everything was fine. She just had to get permission to trade photographers with someone in that district that week. The other district manager was okay with the idea, but she didn't have the schedule yet.

Anyway, the date got closer and closer, and I kept getting offers to go to this thing with other people. A couple of people had to cancel, and the rest of them would rather that someone went who could pay some of the expenses rather than just be short a person and have to make up all of the money themselves.

Thanks anyway, but I really can't afford even that.

I asked Ms. Big Eyelashes again, and again she said everything was fine.

A friend of mine offered to take me along, and he didn't ask for any money. But he'd just remarried, and I didn't know his new wife that well. I thought she might not like another woman tagging along. She might have different ideas about the trip. Having to take two kids on the trip was one thing, but having an extra woman on the trip is different.

Thanks anyway.

I asked Ms. Big Eyelashes again, and again she doesn't say anything useful. I'm starting to get very annoyed with her. Not that I wasn't annoyed with her already, but I was started to get really annoyed about this trip to New Mexico in particular. If she couldn't do it, she should just admit it and get it over with. If the trip is going to happen we need to know where specifically so that we would know where to reserve a room. That sort of thing isn't normally a problem, and we rarely make reservations, but this was different. I figured we would probably be working in Artesia or something, but if we didn't hurry we wouldn't be able to get a room there either. Roswell didn't have enough motel rooms for all the people going to the UFO Festival, and maybe all the rooms in Artesia would be taken too.

At one point Ms. Big Eyelashes said something really stupid. She said that she had the guy on the phone and he was making up the schedule, but she didn't know which week I wanted to be in New Mexico. It wasn't like this year, with the 4th being on a Wednesday. Not sure if the weekend before or the weekend after gets to be the 4th of July weekend when the 4th is on a Wednesday. But this was not the case that year, and the 4th was either on Saturday or maybe Sunday. The work week for us at the time was Thursday through Monday, so there was no doubt which week I was asking about when I told her I wanted to be in Roswell for the 4th of July weekend.

A week later she tells my husband she's arranged for him to work in Brownfield, Texas on the week in question.

Not even in the right state. I don't know if it was even the right district, but it's not close to Roswell. It's like a two or two and a half hour drive between Brownfield and Roswell. There's no way that I could get to the UFO Festival if I was staying in Brownfield. And Brownfield is a bit of a drive from here. It just wasn't worth going there at all.

Then she tells me that if my husband doesn't work in Brownfield that week he'll have no work at all. The schedule is already made up, and there's nothing for him in his regular district.

Fine.

The Festival was Thursday through Sunday, with most of the good stuff being on Saturday. My husband worked Thursday through Monday. We had put a camper shell and such on the truck for carrying the photo equipment, so I was unable to drive the truck myself. My husband couldn't drive two hours, drop me off at Roswell, drive back to Brownfield, go to work, drive back to Roswell, get me, and then drive back to Brownfield. That would have taken between seventeen and nineteen hours. I could have gotten a ride from Artesia, or maybe even from Carlsbad, but not from Brownfield. It just wasn't even worth thinking about it.

We decided since we were stuck with the schedule that we might as well go a day early and drive to Roswell anyway.

So we go to Roswell on that Wednesday before the Festival and there is really nothing to do except for the stuff that's always there. So that isn't very much. And there was someone selling hot sauce, but we didn't buy any. We went to Roswell's regular museum (with art and regular science stuff, not flying saucer stuff), and we went to a couple of the flying saucer museums and stores. And it was crowded everywhere we went, cause about half of the half million people who wanted to go to the Festival were already in town looking for something to do, so we all ended up being at the same places. But I didn't see any of my friends from the clubs.

I did see Stanton Friedman. I didn't hear him speak or talk to him or anything, I just saw him. In fact, I think I stepped in front of a camera when someone was trying to interview him. Sorry about that. Did I mention that the place was crowded?

You know what happens when half a million people go out to New Mexico in July?

They sweat. They sweat a lot. We went to the planetarium show. It was a sold out show. And it did not smell good.

It was too crowded to see a movie at the UFO museum, and there was no reason to stay in town to watch a regular movie that we could see just as well in Brownfield. So, we headed back. I think that was the opening day of the first Men In Black movie. We were surprised that the little failing down theater in Brownfield had it already. On the way out you get to vote on what movie the theater shows next week, even if you're not going to be in town next week.

So my friends went the next day and the day after that and Saturday and Sunday and just had all kinds of fun. I heard that Will Smith hung out for a while. A bunch of my friends were in the costume contest. Some of them got their pictures in magazines, and one of them was paid five hundred dollars to be on the book cover of a book about Area 51.

I spent the rest of the week stuck in a motel room in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do except go to Walmarts and maybe go to the movie theater, but we'd already done that on Wednesday.

So this year I was vaguely aware that it was the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash, and they were having the UFO Festival. I even looked at the schedule of events and such. I decided that it probably wasn't worth it. It didn't look like the serious UFO people were going to be there, and if any of my friends from the clubs are going they didn't mention it.

Turns out that the serious UFO people are going to be there, but they just didn't get top billing on the ad that I saw. The costume contest and such as that were more important. And there's a special screening of the 50s version War Of The Worlds followed by a talk with the actress who starred in it.

So maybe it would have been fun, but by the time I thought that it might be fun it was too late for me to plan a trip. Besides, we've spent all of our money on cameras and trips to Arkansas and such.

Thought I forgot about Coke Day?

Well, yesterday came and went without me blogging about Coke. What's wrong with me? I love Coke.

Okay, it's a bit late, but I thought I'd say a bit about the Coke Museum in Atlanta.

We went to Atlanta in 2000 for business. While we were there we did a bit of tourist stuff and a lot of food stuff. There's a big Krispie Kreme Donut place almost across the street from one of the places where we worked. We went to Mary Mac's and had stuff like fried green tomatoes. We went to The Varsity and had hotdogs and onion rings. We went to a Dwarf House and a few fast food places that they don't have around here.

And we went to the Coke Museum. And they tell you the history of Coke and you see new commercials for Coke and old favorite commercials for Coke and old ads for Coke. And we'd already been to some other soda museums here and there like the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco and also the one in Dublin, so it a lot of it was like that only much bigger.

Someone ahead of us on the tour was complaining that it was nothing but a big ad for Coke.

Duh.

What did you think you were going to see at the Coca-Cola Museum? Dinosaur fossils? What did you come here for?

Near the end of the tour there is a room with free Coke and Sprite and the usual. And have you ever seen one of those fountains that is supposed to look like someone is skipping stones? Water is shot from one platform to another and then to another in sequence, so it looks like the same drops of water are bouncing across the room. They had a few of those, except that Coke and Sprite were in the fountains.

And then in the next room there are samples of hundreds of sodas made by the same company as Coke, only they are for sale in other countries, and for the most part you can't buy them here. I liked a lot of it, but none of the really unusual stuff appealed to me enough to buy a six pack. So we made ourselves really sick drinking all the samples and then went back to the motel.

Iowa and Cookbooks

Well, people of this part of the blogsphere are supposed to talk about Iowa today. I have very little to say about Iowa. It is on the way to Minnesota, and I had the odd experience of stopping there once to get a hot fudge sundae, and we asked for nuts, and they looked at us weird and then brought out our ice cream covered with salted spanish peanuts. So I don't know what was up with that, if that's a thing people normally do up north or in Iowa or if those kids were just clueless or what.

At some point we were in or near Iowa the year after The Bridges of Madison County movie came out, and we went to see the bridges. The people in the area seemed to want to make it a tourist attraction, but there wasn't really anything to do. They didn't have much in the way or signs or good maps at the time. You couldn't even get to some of the bridges. I can't even remember an interesting place to have lunch or get ice cream.

Once we had to go to Iowa on business. We went to Mason City. Two days later there was like a blizzard or something, so we didn't get much done. I do not care for cold weather or snow or any of it. My husband liked the place cause that was supposed to be like the place where The Music Man was set, and there was Music man stuff at the fast food place we ate lunch.

But the main thing about Iowa is that it is the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk. He will be from Riverside, Iowa. For the last twenty-five years or so, Riverside has had a parade every July to celebrate. I have been to Riverside, and I've had my picture taken with the starship floats and such, but I have not been there during July to see the parade.

I'm pretty sure that Iowa has a Field of Dreams now, but I haven't been there. And I once lived near a place called Iowa Park, which was not in Iowa. And I once ate at either The Iowa Restaurant or The Iowa Cafe, but it was in Arizona.

I think that pretty much does it for me and Iowa.

So in between the on going drama and the ceramics class and the drama with the car, I keep thinking of cleaning the house and such. Thinking about it is usually all that gets done. So I'm looking around, and there's all this stuff.

I never realized it before, but so much of it is my stuff. I mean, I used to think of it as "our" stuff. There was my clothes and his clothes and my makeup and his camera equipment and his books and my books. But somehow I thought that a lot of the other stuff was "our" stuff. Well, this is "our" computer. And in the other room is "our" bed and "our" TV and like that.

But I used to think of some other stuff as "our" stuff. Like I thought that the Christmas lights and stuff like that was "our" stuff. But I guess it isn't really. He couldn't care less about Christmas lights. So I guess they are my Christmas lights and my wrapping paper and so on.

So I guess most of the stuff is mine. Most of the stuff that he has are books, and he's recently gotten rid of a lot of books, so I guess most of the books are mine now.

So we've got too much stuff, and a lot of the stuff is mine, and a lot of the stuff is books, and a lot of the books are mine. And I should get rid of some stuff. So I should get rid of some books.

A lot of my books are cookbooks. I like cookbooks. I like to look at them. I like nice tall ones with big glossy pictures. But I also like all the info on the side like how many calories and how much fat. I have a couple that are supposed to tell you how much it cost to make a recipe. The perfect cookbook would have lots of big glossy pictures and the nutritional info and the cost of the recipes, but I don't have one that it just like that. But I do have a lot of cookbooks.

I don't actually use the cookbooks. I just look at them. There's different kinds of cooking. There's the kind of cooking that people do to feel good. They spend all day preparing something so they can say, look, I made this, and everyone can tell them how much they like it. My husband likes to do that sort of cooking. There are drawbacks to this kind of cooking. You need a really good kitchen (which we don't have) and you need lots of time to cook (which he doesn't have anymore) and you need lots of fresh food (which we may or may not have) and possibly lots of cooking gadgets (which we may or may not have but probably can't find if we do have). The other drawback with that kind of cooking is that sometimes it costs so much to make something that you'd have been better off just going to a restaurant.

I don't do so much of that kind of cooking. I did more of the kind of cooking that you do just because you need something to eat and either don't have the money or the time and energy to go to a restaurant. That kind of cooking usually involves a box of macaroni, a can of tuna, and maybe a can of vegetables.

So I get out these cookbooks and I look at the pictures. Sometimes it inspires me to make something a little better than the mac and cheese with tuna and veggies. Sometimes I make mac and cheese with tuna and veggies, and then add a sprinkle of paprika and/or an herb garnish on the plate.

It's not like I've never cooked anything that didn't start with a box of macaroni. But I really don't use these cookbooks much, and even when I want to try a recipe, I don't even want to take the cookbook into the kitchen. I might make a mess and ruin the picture.

So I'm trying to go through the books and find ones that I'll never use and get rid of them. Or, at least, that I should copy the few recipes that I might use and then get rid of the rest of the book.

I just thought that was a brilliant idea. I'd get rid of a lot of books that way. And then I'd have the recipes I might actually use in a notebook where I could find them. And the recipes would be protected in plastic, so I might actually be able to take them into the kitchen.

In the past two weeks I've only managed to part with five thin books and empty like two inches of shelf space.

Maybe I'll try again later.

Favorite Eating Places

I've been tagged by Dmarks, so I'm supposed to describe my five favorite restaurants.

Like a person could really narrow it down to five. Please. Maybe five categories. Or five kinds of food.


Let's see. A long time ago, in a town about 125 miles away, there used to be a Mexican food place called El Babos. I have no idea if I even spelled that right. It was probably the only Mexican restaurant that I went to as a kid. I like all kinds of Mexican food now, but nothing is quite as good as the memory of this place. The tacos had red shells. There were other kinds of tacos there, but the ones we ate were red. Mom used to order the guacamole there, and back then I did not eat guacamole, it just looked too weird. There was something else that we used to order there, but I don't even know what the thing was called. It was spherical and orange, probably a breaded and fried thing. It had a bunch of stuff inside held together with cheese, and there was another piece of cheese on top of the thing. I don't know what it was and I have never seen anything like it since. The restaurant was in Wichita Falls, and we moved away when I was eleven. The restaurant closed either in the late seventies or maybe the mid-eighties. There is still a Mexican restaurant in that building, but it isn't the same.

The Mexican food in New Mexico usually seems just a little different than the stuff in Texas. We like a place in the Mesilla area of Los Cruses. A place called La Posta has a room full of parrots. I think the place is closed on Mondays, and it seems like half the time we drive through the area it is on a Monday and we don't get to go.

Probably our favorite local Mexican place is Campo Verde in Arlington. It is filled with Christmas lights and has a miniature train up near the ceiling. Like most Mexican places, they serve chips and salsa, but they also serve queso and the chips have chili powder on them. I used to really not like beans, but they have a black bean soup with cilantro that I tried to copy. Someday when I have money I'm going to try the rattlesnake fajitas.

We might have a new favorite Mexican place now. We just discovered Abuello's last week. My husband really liked a soup he tried with lime and chicken. The regular salsa was excellent, and they also had a habanero salsa.



Also a long time ago in Wichita Falls was Fido's Pizza. It wasn't my favorite place at the time, cause the other kids went to Shakey's Pizza, but after we moved away I really missed it. The sausage pizza was covered with fennel seeds. I just thought that was what everyone did to sausage pizza, but I haven't seen that anywhere else. Once a great while I make it myself that way, but that really isn't the same either.

Speaking of pizza, we have been to Mystic Pizza twice. Like in the movie Mystic Pizza, in Mystic Connecticut. You wouldn't think that two people from Texas would end up at the same east coast pizza place two years in a row, but it somehow worked out that way. We had a basic pepperoni and sausage and everything on it usual kind of pizza one trip, and the next trip we had a weird seafood pizza. Both were good.

My husband really liked a pizza place in Omaha called Mi Casa or something like that, but I wasn't that impressed with it. I thought it was a lot like the pizza in box kits that we used to make.

Our favorite local pizza now is the white pizza at Pizza Sarajevo. I think that is in Carrollton, or maybe Addison. I had no idea why it is named that or if the owner is from there or if Sarajevo is known for it's pizza or what. We don't live near the place, but we used to get pizza there sometimes when my husband worked near there.


When we first started dating again, my husband and I liked a Chinese place called Jimmy Dips. It was our special place for a while. We were married for almost a year before my parents met his mom, and that was the place we took them. The place is closed now. I think it had something to do with widening the freeway or something. My husband once asked for sweet and sour pork to be made extra spicy. The lady taking our order corrected him, and said "sweet and sour pork is sweet and sour," but she brought him a side of chili sauce anyway. That's still one of our little jokes.

To be honest, almost any place with the words Chinese Buffet in the title has been my favorite restaurant at some point. Once we were going to eat at the place mentioned in the song Werewolves of London, but once we got there it either looked expensive or crowded, and we ended up eating in the basement next door. I have no idea what the name of the place was. Most of the stuff in the area had similar names to the place in the song, so if you didn't say the name carefully it sounded like you said something nasty.


I like just about any seafood place in Maine. Maine gets a bit weird with the lobsters. Every place seems to sell lobsters. In the summer you can get lobster rolls at McDonald's, but those probably aren't the best. Everything seemed to be "and lobsters" or "and seafood" in combination with other things that did not make sense. Like there was some tire place "and lobsters." People sell lobsters from pickup trucks in parks and on the side of the road.

There was someplace in Bar Harbor where we got a good lobster dinner for less than fifteen dollars. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, just that it was a short walk from most of the tourist stuff we were doing. I think it's called a shoreman's dinner if you have steamed lobster, steamed clams, corn on the cob, red potatoes, and blueberry pie. If you eat the same meal on the beach, it is called a clam bake. We didn't go on a clam bake because it cost like three times as much, and we probably would have gotten sick on the boat ride back.


My favorite barbecue place is K.C. Masterpiece in Kansas City. My husband and most people who really like barbecue places will disagree and vote for someplace where someone yells at you and then serves you nothing but meat and bread on some brown paper. Not me. I like a nice restaurant where they serve lighter things with the meat, like maybe a salad. Try to go at lunch, cause after that it gets real expensive.


I should probably stop now. Maybe I should tag David in D.C. We went on a tour of DC once, and they let us out in Georgetown for lunch, but the electricity had temporarily gone out in a lot of places and we just ended up at Uno's Pizza. David can tell us what we missed out on.

What do you think? Anyone else want to play?

The busiest travel day of the year

I'm sorry that more of you didn't like the story about the drunk Tom Cruise guy I posted over the weekend. Anyway, I'm going to be very busy today and I don't have time to come up with anything brilliant. So I'm going to transfer an old post from the other blog. I think from now on, I will just post the rest of those in chronological order, instead of trying to find something relevent to something someone else posted.

(the following was originally posted on another blog on November 23rd)

Yesterday was the busiest travel day of the year.

Well, that's what the day before Thanksgiving is supposed to be. But I hardly ever travel on that day, because most of my family lives here. In fact, when I was little, one set of grandparents lived an hour away, and the other set lived about two or three hours away, so that we did our traveling on the holiday itself and didn't have to deal with any traffic at all.

But after my husband got a job that involved a lot of travel (mostly in Texas), I did have to deal with the dreaded Wednesday before traffic a couple of times. And yesterday was one of those times. But yesterday's traffic wasn't bad at all, at least where we were.

So Monday we had to drive a few hours away, to the place I spent the first eleven years of my life. There's nothing to do there. It is quite boring. Next month, there will be Christmas lights to look at, but this week, nothing.

Still, I went anyway, to spend a little time with my husband. We drove by my old house. The people who live there now are really into the spirit of things and already have a lot of Christmas decorations up. The two front yard trees are gone now. I wanted to look in the back yard and see if the plum tree was still there and if the storm shelter was made good use of, but I didn't look. Nor did I look in the backyard of the house across the street to see if the Fort was still there. I think it was, maybe I just couldn't see it because it was painted a different color.

We had lunch at The Glass Kitchen, the world's only drive-thru where you can actually understand what is being said because you talk to a real person instead of a microphone. It has never made sense to me why everyone does not have this same design. It wasn't quite as good as I remembered from my last stop in town (I should have asked for a chili-cheeseburger, but those are so messy), and I'm always surprised how small it looks. When I was a kid it seemed like a really big square building, like a Walmart, but no, it's just a little hamburger stand.

After working only two days, we headed home, and stopped at a small town that we used to spend a lot of time at about ten years ago. The Walmart my husband did business from was closed, replaced by a Supercenter outside of town. A Taco Bell/KFC had been added, but it was closed for renovations. More of the little shops on Main street had closed down, and very few of those remaining where open yesterday. We stopped at the soda fountain, and were told that the two old antique dealers from next door finally moved to California, and they both died soon after.

Not much to do there either, so after I finished my ice cream we got going again. There was hardly any traffic until we were almost home. We got to I-35, and there was the traffic waiting for us. Only I couldn't tell that much of it was really from out-of-town travelers. At some point we thought, lets just go ahead and get off at this exit and do a little shopping. And there everyone was, going to the mall. We didn't actually go to the mall, but a shopping center nearby. We mostly just looked at a few things and stopped for lunch.

So it was not a bad day before Thanksgiving, but it wasn't a really fun day off either. Now I'm off to decide which movie to see after we eat, then plan out tomorrow's shopping.

Happy Thanksgiving

Bizarre Billboard

My husband and I used to travel a lot, mostly within Texas. And when you are driving out in the middle of nowhere, you tend to notice the billboards. This is the only time I notice billboards. Billboards in the city are a complete waste of space.

Dumb things get advertised on billboards, and I don't know why. Billboards advertising specific things are useful. As I said, we used to drive around Texas a lot. So you look for Billboards telling you which motels have hot tubs or free breakfast or whatever. Billboards advertising nearby tourist attractions are a good idea. I like to know that if I need gas there's an Exxon at the next exit, and if I get hungry there is a KFC ten miles down the road. Stuff like that. And if I were a truck driver, I'd like to know where I could get a free steak dinner with every 100 gallon fill-up.

Those are all very useful billboard advertisements.

I don't think a billboard advertising alcohol is a good idea. I really don't like that truck driver to decide he needs a couple of beers after he's eaten his free steak dinner. People just shouldn't be reminded that it's Miller time or whatever while they're driving on the same road with me, or anyone else for that matter.

And I don't get the cigarette advertisements. The people who smoke are already hooked, and the rest of us aren't even going to read it. Now, maybe billboards advertising the quit smoking stuff would be a good idea here. The guy that just got a ticket because he went 20 miles over the speed limit after he realized that he'd smoked his last cigarette at lunch and he's going to need another one real soon, well, he just might be in the proper mood to think about trying to kick that habit now.

There are billboards for movies and other things that I don't think anyone ever reads. The only place we really notice advertisements for movies is at the movie theater and the video rental place. Or maybe the newspaper. But we're usually not going 60 miles an hour down the road looking for giant movie posters. Surely nobody cares about it then.

But the really puzzling billboard ad, the one that just doesn't make any damn sense, advertises vasectomy reversal.

I just can't imagine that anyone has ever been driving to Houston and saw this sign and thought, that's what I need. When I get to Houston, I'm going to call and ask about getting my vasectomy reversed. I had a vasectomy back when I was young and stupid, and I have regretted it ever since. But thankfully, I am going to Houston, and now I know that while I am there I can have it all undone. How wonderful.

I just can't imagine that they get any costumers from this sign. Is vasectomy reversal an impulse buy? Is that want people need to know on their way to Houston?

Apparently they need to know that on their way other places as well. But that is unfortunate for those people, because they have to turn around and go to Houston to get it.

Has anyone ever in the history of this place gotten a vasectomy reversal from them because they read a billboard?

????

Cool stuff in Kansas City this time of year

For three years my husband had a job that involved an annual fall trip to a place in Kansas, not too far from Kansas City. The trip allowed us to do a couple of things in Kansas City that we really enjoy, and because of the time of year, it coincides with the Kansas City Renaissance Faire and Halloween. (One year it also coincided with 9-11, which was an especially interesting thing viewed across the street from a military base, but that's another story.)

The Kansas City Ren Faire is pretty big and we like it a lot. And it is not so uncomfortably warm as it is in Texas (though one year it was so near freezing that people spent most of their time waiting in line for coffee). We watch people juggle, and listen to musicians, and watch the Jolly Roger's fight and sing. We also buy a lot of carnival food and look at artwork and say someday when I have money I'm going to buy that. We usually buy some small piece of jewelry, or something like that. One year we found someone selling fifty different kinds of honey (if you like a mild honey, I recommend fireweed.) If you are not dressed in costume, you are more likely to be pulled out of the audience to volunteer for who knows what embarrassing thing.

We have similar things in Texas (there's another big one near Houston this time of year, but I haven't been to that one yet), but we miss going to the one in Kansas City, and we were hoping that maybe the new job would send him to Kansas or Missouri in the fall so that we could go.

Saturday, the new schedule came in the mail, and it said...KANSAS!

So I got really excited for a moment, and then I checked the dates...and we don't get to go. We'll be going to Kansas a week too late to visit the Ren Faire. My husband will be working in south Texas on the fourteenth, and the last day of the Faire is the fifteenth, so there's just no way that we can make that.

So now I'm debating whether or not I should go on the trip to Kansas. There are places I like to shop and there are places we like to eat, but really it seems like a lot of trouble to go just for that. And I'd miss a week of the silly temp job, so I'd probably just have to quit so that they could hire someone else to fill the schedule that week. And I really shouldn't do that without a better reason than I want to go eat BBQ with my husband.

The other thing I like to do in Kansas City this time of year (that my husband says he is not overly fond of, though he does seem to enjoy it once he is there) is to go to haunted houses. Now, that may sound silly, I could stay home and still go to haunted houses (which I probably will) . But there are at least four haunted houses in Kansas City that are so popular that they open either the first weekend in September or the last weekend of August. No, I'm not kidding, there are haunted houses that open for the season in August. I've been to two of them, The Edge of Hell and The Beast. I've been to The Beast twice, so I'll say that one was my favorite, and I remember it a bit better so I'll talk about that one.

It is a large place, a four or five story warehouse, and it takes almost an hour to go through it. Near the beginning, there is a fog filled forest that is home to many werewolves. And you're supposed to find your own way out, but you usually can't. One of the werewolves is relatively friendly, and you follow him to the exit. You'll know which one he is because of his glowing hand. Later, there's a room with nothing really scary in it. As soon as you leave the room, you're in total black darkness, and you have to feel your way around. And then you hear someone laughing at you as you walk back into the same room. Or is it the same room? And then the same thing happens again, and you seem to be back where you started, but after that you're usually clear of it and the laughing stops. Every once in a while, you go up some stairs, so that you end up on the fourth or fifth flour of the thing. Now, unless you have a medical condition like my husband, or unless you are a big wimp like me, you exit the place by means of a giant spiral slide. (There is a similar slide at The Edge of Hell.) I got on the slide the first time, and once was really enough for me.

The main thing I remember about the one at The Edge of Hell was that at the top of the slide you seemed to be in heaven or outer space or something, but at the bottom of the slide you end up in Hell.

Anyway, it is cool place if you like that sort of thing. So if you happen to be in the Kansas City area this coming weekend, visit the Ren Faire. And if you are in town the rest of the month, see if you can visit The Beast or The Edge of Hell. All three are worth the time and the money.