Foolish Questions

I settled on Pie-apalooza, primarily because the other options were less appealing. Pie-tastrophe, for instance, sounded a bit more dire than the subject warranted. Pie-Circus was just a bad idea all around, of which we will never speak again.

So, one night, for some convoluted and now largely forgotten reason, we got to reminiscing about TV dinners back in the Sixties, which is a whole ‘nother subject, and then kept traveling down that road till we got to the topic of frozen pot pies.

During Mary’s childhood, her mother was on a natural health food kick, but one where the rules constantly changed, depending on what wild theory of nutrition was currently in vogue in and among her circle. Rules like, no citrus with dairy this week, white sugar is white death next week. When you eliminate ingredients like sugar, white flour, dairy and the like, couple it with really not-good cooking ideas, like baking fish for an hour, minimum, you’re left with, well some pretty unappetizing options. So when Mary got a frozen chicken pot pie, she loved it!

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As an example of how slow it got towards the end of this summer, I actually did a taste test of frozen chicken pot pies last week, which I’ll write about in exhaustive length later. So there’s that to look forward to. Advance tip – avoid the Banquet pies, unless cost is the first, and only consideration, in which case, bon appétit!

Anyway, as of today the tourists have largely gone home, which is a seriously good idea. That’s because in Colorado if you’re out in public with out-of-state license plates between September 1^st and start of snow season, on September 15^th, you’re legally fair game to anyone who has a tourist hunting license. Just a friendly warning. We Coloradans have lots of guns, and hiking around in the backcountry looking for game is just exhausting. And we have too many tourists. The creation of Tourist Hunting Season has been a real boon to gun owners, gun manufacturers, local residents tired of tourists, and the deer, who are now free to gambol about, at least for the first two weeks of September.

Mary has been a busy little bee this summer, because besides running Mousesavers, she’s been engaged in a single minded effort to plan travel to every part of the world there is, no matter how remote and isolated, as inexpensively as possible. Inexpensive being a relative term, because whereas the Lonely Planet type people might be quite happy with a yurt to sleep in, Mary does have certain minimum standards, and will pay to maintain them. Standards like functioning heating, for example. Which is what makes this year’s trips all the more remarkable.

Sure, we start off the travel intensive portion of the year with a Disney cruise, but that’s business. And so is the Disney cruise immediately following the first Disney cruise – it’s also business. So much business. We should take a break and go and check out the Florida Keys.

Then we tour Southeast Asia, because it’s there, and Mary wants to see it. I tried to tell her that by using a Viewmaster it would be just like you were there, in glorious 3D, but without the heat, humidity, or insects the size of small dogs. But she wants to see some temples, so we’re going to go and see some temples.

In return for dragging my portly carcass through the hellish sauna that is Southeast Asia, I get to go to an Ice Hotel in Sweden, in December. Sometimes, I wonder how the two of us ever managed to hook up in the first place, never mind get married, when we both have diametrically opposed ideas of what makes a perfect environment. I believe that everything south of Atlanta and north of Sydney is uninhabitable, and should be marked as such on the maps. On the other hand, Mary feels that anything north of the Mason-Dixon line and east of the California state border should be regarded as accursed winter wastelands fit only for mastodons and the primitive proto-humans that hunt them. So, it’s pretty awesome that she’s agreed to come along to Sweden with me.

And who knows where the New Year will find us? Timbuktu? Novia Scotia? Branson, Missouri? We shall see.

Remember when you were growing up, and you had that ‘hippie’ third period English teacher? You could tell he was a hippie because he had a beard and always wore sandals to work, but with socks, because the school administration frowned on teachers wearing sandals without socks. They also frowned on sandals, but I don’t believe it had ever occurred to them to put a ‘no sandals’ article in the teacher’s contracts, so frowning was pretty much all they could do. Anyway, before the English teacher was fired for getting arrested at a No Nukes protest, thus allowing the school board to invoke the ‘moral turpitude’ clause of his contract, he’d have at least one class session a semester where he’d encourage the class to talk about their dreams. Mostly, the boys would talk about how they dreamed of owning a really awesome muscle car, and how their lives would then be complete. Girls would talk about, well I don’t really remember, because all of us guys would be fantasizing about how cool we’d look sitting behind the wheel of a ‘Cuda, or a Trans Am.

Anyway, when I brought this particular subject up recently, the following your dream thing, not the muscle car, Mary pretty much quashed it right in the bud. With extreme prejudice, I might add. I think it’s pretty unfair, that at this point in my life, my own wife won’t support me in my dreams.

My dream, of course, is to own a lighthouse.

A majestic, old-fashioned historic lighthouse, located somewhere on the coast of Maine, or somewhere else New Englandy. I think it’d be grand, and the government has some for sale, really cheap. A real steal, considering you’re talking about historic hundred year old buildings and all! Of course there’s a requirement for the buyer to maintain and repair the structures, which looks a bit challenging when you’re located on a rock surrounded by several miles of water. I’m not sure if Handyman Connection would make a house call. I’m also not sure if they have a lighthouse repairman on staff.

There are a few other drawbacks as well, as Mary pointed out while she was in ruthless dream quashing mode. The nearest Starbuck’s is probably like three or four hours away, minimum, which represents an unconscionable degree of isolation in America today. Kiss delivery Chinese food goodbye. I’d have to learn to drive a boat, and considering my skills, or the lack thereof with standard automotive conveyances, boat captainship would probably entail several all-new disasters. And finally, being dependent on satellite Internet would inevitably result in me going full Jack-Nicolson-in-the-Shining mode, sooner rather than later.

So even though there are actually honest-to-god lighthouses for sale (cheap!) it looks like I’m not going to get to buy one. Maybe I should go and buy a Trans Am instead.

I was out and about playing in traffic on the Information Superhighway, when I came across this article about a new ship for Norwegian Cruise Lines. I was little intrigued, mostly appalled, and a bit hungry, because it was late night snack time (11:02 to 11:14 pm), also known as the evening elevenses, to differentiate it from the morning elevenses, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, six thousand people on the same ship? My god, the lines for the buffets must be positively biblical. I’m not quite sure I’m using biblical in exactly the right context, but I think it fits even so.

While paging through the website for the NCL Epic (which you have to admit, is a pretty appropriate name, considering what the buffet lines must look like), I also found that they have an area, called the Haven, where the people with solid gold bank accounts can congregate far from the madding crowds. Said congregation is unlikely to be concerned with plotting to take over the world, because they’ve already done that. Looking at the rooms in the Haven (Where You Never Have To Worry About The Commoners!), I discovered that along with the oppression of the working classes, they also have round beds. Wow! Says my thirteen-year-old self, who is likely to pop back into being at the drop of a hat.

What?!? Why is the espresso maker at the foot of the bed? It should be on the night stand, just like I have it at home!

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It’s summer, we’re not travelling, much, so there’s no new news. Okay? Now let me get back to my book.

Well, though things might be slow, there was still some activity around the old homestead. This weekend, I made a cake. A layer cake with orange frosting, from scratch, because I can. This may all be part of Mary’s evil yet ingenious scheme to transform me into a 1950’s housewife, but I’m not quite sure yet. If I get a string of pearls for Christmas I’m going to be a little unnerved. No, make that a lot unnerved. I’ve been told, by my brothers-in-laws, that in order to assert my masculinity, I now have to make ManCakes. These are the same as regular cakes but utilizing masculine themes. Like GI Joe. Which is masculine, I suppose, if you are twelve years old. Which fortuitously, just so happens to be both my intellectual and emotional age. So my next cake may have GI Joe looking suitably masculine on top of the cake. Then we’ll pull him off, and lick the frosting off his very manly combat boots. What do you suppose a masculine frosting would taste like? I’m opting for bourbon and cigar.

Ah, I see I am not the first person to have developed the concept of the GI Joe Cake. When you Google GI Joe cake you get a digital crap-ton of hits. Though I think I might be able to improve on some of the efforts, or maybe not. Apparently making a tank cake is difficult.

Also there’s a new Doctor. Rejoice! I’ll admit it, I actually sat down and watched the live announcement, because I’m a nerd. No a MasterNerd. Like a Master Chef, but without the marketable skills. Unless you can actually make GI Joe Mancakes and get paid for it? I thought not. Anyway, I now have a new Doctor, as I said, that I can bend Mary’s ear about, for hours and hours, to her obvious undying delight.

You know how poets and writers and people who produce television shows are always trying to convince us that our soulmates are people with whom we form this almost immediate psychic connection? Upon meeting your soulmate, a bell the size of Australia peals in the heavens, the clouds part and a rainbow appears, sometimes more than one. Unicorns and ferrets gambol in the fields, and there may, or may not, be trains thundering through tunnels. Sometimes, the trains don’t get to thunder through any tunnels till the second, or even in rare cases, the third date.

So when you meet your soulmate, according to the above scenario, you just know, unfathomably, that she (or he) is the one. You can start taking those long walks on the beach, or stroll through the rain, arms around each other, blithely ignoring the fact that one or both of you will probably come down with a cold that will develop into a long-term case of bronchitis. And that’s fine, if that’s the kind of thing you’re really looking for. I mean the long walks on the beach, not the bronchitis. However, I think that the key to finding your soulmate, the one who really truly gets you, at least seventy percent of the time anyway, is to find out if they can quote extensively from Monty Python.

See, that’s my soulmate, and she has an unerring sense of when a catchphrase is warranted, and even which particular catchphrase is appropriate. A real soulmate knows the proper time to use the phrase “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Or when to growl “…and don’t skimp on the pate!” A true aficionado can launch into a rousing rendition of the “The Lumberjack Song” in the sketchiest of circumstances. I mean, really, this is a little appreciated art since lumberjacks just don’t come up all that often in conversations nowadays.

So fellas, and gals, if you meet a potential significant other, and they can use any of the following phrases, in the correct circumstances, then you should snap them up before someone else comes along and steals them.

“He’s pining for the Fjords”

“I’m not dead yet!”

“Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Know what I mean?”

“Oh. Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help, help, I’m being repressed!”

And finally,

“The Larch”

Purple mountains majesty and all that jazz…

So earlier this week I forayed forth on a solo backpacking trip, the first of the year. Which makes it sound like I get out several times every year for exciting backpacking trips through the mountains of Colorado. The truth is that I’m really good at planning backpack trips, but less accomplished at actually going on said trips. I finally ran out of excuses last week, so off I went.

I’d have been perfectly happy to have taken Mary along, instead of leaving her behind to run the business, and watch the house. But, for Mary, the idea of hiking up mountains, sleeping in a tent, and eating reconstituted freeze-dried lasagna with meat sauce (which tastes pretty much like you would imagine) comes in just behind that of a root canal performed without Novocain. Besides, as I understand it, there was, while I was gone, a burrito festival, in our house, where Mary attempted with a great deal of success to consume all three daily meals in the form of a burrito. This, apparently, is something I would not allow if I were home.

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And today, I’m not even talking about the beer, though that too, is pretty awesome. Well, pretty good, in any case. Hey, I like it! Don’t judge me!

But as I said, this time Heineken has done something completely outside the box. Check out this travel promotion they ran recently at JFK airport.

Mary and I would do this in a New York minute. Because, you know, it’s at JFK. Man, if I’m going to have to explain the jokes, the posts are going to get even longer than they are now. Sure, with my luck, we would probably end up in some Third World war zone, like Pakistan, or Burma, or Cleveland, Ohio. And all of our stuff would be stolen the minute we arrived, and Mary would have to sell me into white slavery, in order to get enough cash to get back to the US, so she could raise the money to buy my freedom. And she’d almost inevitably get distracted with the new pool boy, Antonio, and it would be months, if not years, before she remembered I was still being held hostage, but by that time the money would be all gone, as well as Antonio. In the meantime, I’d be forced to do the most vile things imaginable in order to survive, like scrubbing floors, or defragmenting my captor’s hard drives. It all sounds like the plot of a Lifetime movie, though with the roles reversed. Throw in an evil twin (hers or mine, it doesn’t really matter) and you’ve got the Tuesday 8:00 pm slot all sewn up.

Of course, it might not turn out like I described, but even if it did, I’d at least learn a new skill, like floor scrubbing.

SS Hummerzine, Pride of the St. Petersburg Land Yacht Fleet

Observed outside our hotel in St. Petersburg and submitted for the reader’s perusal. I’d just like to point out the irony, if that is the correct term, of a massively upgraded, American Army designed combat support vehicle, converted into a capitalist land yacht, available for rental by what appear to be a bunch of bros, for a brotastic evening out, in Russia. Truly, this is the twenty first century.

I’m not sure why the limo has additional headroom. Perhaps for dancing? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a stripper pole on-board. Maybe a disco ball, too.

And of course, at the back, there’s a rear deck. Covered at the moment, because it’s 11:00 pm and the sun is still pretty bright. But later in the evening, I’m sure a few of the gentlemen who are renting this All Terrain Battleship, would repair to the rear deck and sit out under the stars sipping cognac and enjoying a fine Havana, conversing about the affairs of the day, classily.

I strongly suggest a whole bottle of this stuff before getting in a Russian cab!

One night, while in St. Petersburg, we needed a taxi to get back to our hotel after dinner. Seems simple. And getting the taxi was, just asked the waiter to arrange for one after we finished our meal, and the driver was waiting in the lobby when we came downstairs from the restaurant.

The real fun started after we got in the taxi. Total distance to our hotel, probably a mile, maybe two as the crow flies. On St. Petersburg streets, maybe three or four miles total, what with all the canals and such. We did the trip in five minutes, tops. I think it was five minutes, but it’s really hard to say, because as any physics student knows, time slows down as you approach the speed of light, and also when you’re terrified out of your wits.

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