Month: December 2009

50BC09: Book Number 51

~ lobablanca

I kind of forgot to post this one. I think it’s because I spent the better part of the year slowly making my way through it. When I finally finished it, I just placed it back on my shelf, not really registering the fact that, yes, this does count…even if it did take me almost a year to finish it.

This by no means should be taken as indication that it’s not a good book. Quite the opposite, really. Written by Desliu honcho Herb Solow and producer Robert Justman, Inside Star Trek: The Real Story is quite literally the only book you will ever need to read if you want to know the story of how the greatest franchise in television history began. Solow and Justman were involved from Day One, observing and participating and, most importantly, documenting. This is the most thorough history of the original Star Trek series that you can hope to find. It’s also one of the most honest, divulging in healthy portions the truth of what went on when everyone stopped being nice and started being real.

Wait. That’s MTV’s Real World. Never mind.

Seriously, though, this is a wonderful book, even if it will more than likely tarnish the mythology surrounding some of Trek’s stars, Gene Roddenberry included. However, it doesn’t change the fact that this was Roddenberry’s brightest gift to all us Trekkies worldwide. It simply shines light on all the others who had a hand in helping Roddenberry’s dream take root and grow.

I would make one recommendation, however, in reading this book: read Yvonne Fern’s Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation first. These two books belong together, dove-tailing in high serendipitous style. Fern captures an essence of Roddenberry that is at turns tender, irascible, irreverent, honest, obfuscating, and ultimately a wonderful and touching final look into the life of the Great Bird of the Galaxy. From there, Solow and Justman’s book will take you right back to the beginning of it all, allowing a completely different view of Roddenberry that at times seems almost antithetical to the man revealed in Fern’s book.

Does this make either book any less true than the other? Not at all. No one person can ever truly be captured in print. And no one person has only one facet or one persona (hell, I’m clocking about five of those at this point). It simply means that these authors all knew Roddenberry at different points in his evolution. I think both these books together provide readers with perhaps the most holistically satisfying take on Roddenberry you can find.

Final score: 5/5. I’d also like to amend my final score for Fern’s book. I guess I was suffering from a case of “I can’t give any book a perfect score” early in this challenge, so I docked her half a point. I can’t think of why I would do that, though, so I’m going to give it back to her. Call it Loba’s Prerogative.

And there you go: 51 books in a year. I’m actually amazed that I pulled this off. I know that I typically read a lot throughout the year…I’ve always got a book or two (or four) on the nightstand with a bookmark in it somewhere, but I never imagined that I could actually read 50 in 52 weeks. Maybe back when I was still in college and reading was not only what I did for fun but what I did for school as well. But not now that I have to contend with big girl things like work.

Will I be doing this challenge again in 2010? I don’t think so. As much as I enjoyed meeting the challenge, as the year wore on I found I was so focused on reading the full 50 that I was choosing books based on their length rather than how interested I was in reading them. I will be keeping track again next year, but this time I think I’m going to be focused more on reading all the books that I own but have never read. So, fewer trips to the library, more trips to my bookshelves. And instead of a 5-point rating system, the final score will be whether I keep the book or donate it to the local thrift store. And there you go…a preview of one of the things to come here at the lair in 2010. You’re welcome 😀

And finally, here is the list of all the books that I read this year. There are quite a few craptacular reads on this list. Luckily, however, there’s far more WIN than FAIL.

  1. 10 Most Beautiful Experiments, by George Johnson (3.5/5)
  2. The Dumbest Generation, by Mark Bauerlein (3/5)
  3. The Memory of Running, by Ron McLarty (4.5/5)
  4. Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation, by Yvonne Fern (4.5/5) (5/5)
  5. Stardust, by Neil Gaiman (4.5/5)
  6. The Eyes of the Beholders, by A.C. Crispin (3.5/5)
  7. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (2.5/5)
  8. Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson (4.5/5)
  9. Comic Wars, by Dan Raviv (3/5)
  10. It Ain’t All About the Cookin’, by Paula Deen (3/5)
  11. Calculating God, by Robert J. Sawyer (4.5/5)
  12. Walking in Circles Before Lying Down, by Merrill Markoe (3.5/5)
  13. The Anglo Files: A Field Guide to the British, by Sarah Lyall (4/5)
  14. The Almost Moon, by Alice Sebold (4/5 for prose; 3/5 for story)
  15. Captivity, by Debbie Lee Wesselmann (2.5/5)
  16. Resistance, by J.M. Dillard (1.5/5)
  17. The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H.G. Wells (4/5)
  18. The Last Lecture, by Dr. Randy Pausch (5/5)
  19. One on One, by Tabitha King (2/5)
  20. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (4.5/5)
  21. Golf Monster, by Alice Cooper (4.5/5)
  22. The Stars Like Dust, by Isaac Asimov (2.5/5)
  23. Rapture for the Geeks: When AI Outsmarts IQ, by Richard Dooling (2.5/5)
  24. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exup

50BC09: Book Number 50

~ lobablanca

And slipping in on the very last possible day of this challenge, Book Number 50: Nathaniel Lachenmeyer’s 13: The Story of the World’s Most Popular Superstition.

I found this book while wandering about in a used bookstore up in Toronto and, being the macabre little minx that I am, I simply had to have it. I guess I’ve always had a bit of a hot/cold relationship with the number 13. Like most southpaws, I embrace this number that most right-handed people shun (although my personal favorite number has always been 9). However, it wasn’t until reading part of this book that it dawned on me that I grew up in a house that had 13 as part of its number. How that slipped by me all this time actually disturbs me a great deal.

Lachenmeyer does his best to explain the mythology of “unlucky 13.” Truth, though, is that there’s really not a whole lot known about it or its evolution as a superstition throughout the centuries. He spends a lot of time hypothesizing about its pagan roots, its Christian roots, its pop culture roots, even its odd fast food roots. There’s discourse about the presence of 13 at Christ’s Last Supper, and how this may have been the reason behind the original superstition about avoiding 13 guests at a dinner. There’s talk about the Knights Templar and about Wicca and about PT Barnum and Oscar Wilde. There’s a section on how filmmakers forever altered the path of the 13 superstition when they changed the name of their horror flick from Long Night at Camp Blood to…Friday the 13th. And let’s not forget the original 13 colonies here in the States or all the instances of 13 on the back of the one dollar bill.

All very interesting. But if you’re a geek like me, you’ve heard or read about most of these things. I did find it interesting to learn about the Thirteen Club, a social club begun in New York in the late 1800s, its members hell-bent on disproving the 13 dinner guests superstition. I suppose you could say they were successful, since I don’t recall ever hearing someone freak out at such an occurrence in my lifetime. Actually, though, not even Friday the 13th has the same power that I remember it having on people when I was a kid. Guess it’s time for some new superstitions…something like if you look into a mirror and say “Skank” five times fast, Paris Hilton will appear behind you with a night vision camera and a roaring case of chlamydia.

Ick.

Final score: 2.5/5. This was an okay read, and I did learn some things about the 13 superstition that I didn’t already know. However, it was very repetitive at times, I guess because there really isn’t that much out there about this superstition. Plus, I was quite surprised and a bit disappointed that Lachenmeyer never once mentions the relationship between lefties and 13, which is an actual phenomenon that many left-handed people acknowledge either believing or at least knowing about. National Lefthanders’ Day is even celebrated on August 13. Sometimes that’s even a Friday. Ooh. Bonus.

So, there you go…but I’m not finished yet. There’s a bonus book review on its way…

It’s Not an Illness If It’s This Organized

~ lobablanca

Yes, this is one of the several containers that my parents have in storage for me. Yes, every single bit of its contents could be tossed tomorrow with no serious repercussions…

…if having part of my soul recycled into dollar store toilet paper falls under the category, “no serious repercussions.”

Honestly, though, WTH am I ever going to do with calendars and TV Guides dating all the way back to 1995? Am I simply biding my time until I cross over into the age range in which it will not only become acceptable but expected for me to start decoupaging EVERYTHING in the house? I’ll just wile away my days, glugging sipping Captain Morgan and Dr. Pepper as I trim out Beverly Crushers and Dana Scullys for that extra special “Titian-Tressed Angels of Asclepius” medicine cabinet decoupage.

Okay, I need to stop, because that actually sounds fun…

Talk About Performance Anxiety

~ lobablanca

Oh but I do love those Kiwis.

This was a billboard erected (heehee) by an Anglican church in Auckland, New Zealand, for their Christmas service. According to this Guardian article, Archdeacon Glynn Cardy claimed that the billboard’s intent was to challenge the fundamentalist interpretation of Christ’s birth:

What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?

I bet this guy presides over a really fun group of parishioners. And if he doesn’t, he should.

I’m trying to envision how this billboard would go over in the States…say, in Bunnykill, Alabama. I’m not imagining anything nearly as amusing or provocative, and that’s a shame. I’d actually be very interested in hearing the sermon that goes along with this billboard. Of course, I also used to get yelled at by our high school Bible teacher all the time because I had to keep questioning him.

Silly girl…don’t you know questioning is for sinners?

50BC09: Book Number 49

~ lobablanca

And of course the first thing that I write after my big decision…a book review 😉

This was a diversion read, as I am still making my way through a different book. Not that unusual for me, actually. I used to read two or three books at a time. After a while, though, you start to get all muddled about characters and plots and the next thing you know, you’re trying to convince people that you really did read a book in which Major Kira and Frodo tried to save Piggy from the Lord of the Flies.

What?

So Coraline was a Christmas present from my parents. We all watched the movie this summer and loved it, so I decided that I wanted to read the source material. My dad took great joy in informing me that the store clerk had to find the book in the children’s section. Although both the clerk and I explained to him that, though this might theoretically be a children’s book, it most assuredly was not a typical “sugar and spice” type book.

You’d expect nothing less than dark and frightening from the brilliance known as Neil Gaiman.

And what a wonderful story this was! As I already said, I loved the movie based on this book. I think it’s one of the best animated movies I’ve seen in a very long time (“StopMo Rulz!”). I also think that the use of 3-D added a new and welcome dimension (ha! See what I did there?) to an already nicely layered story. However, what’s even better is the fact that you don’t have to watch this in 3-D for it to still be an amazing and captivating film experience. Too bad you can’t say the same thing for all the movies currently out in 3-D.

Hmm.

However, I do know that rarely does a book make it to the screen without major changes. And there are some significant differences between Coraline the book and Coraline the movie. Most notable is the addition of Wybie, the foil/helper/awkward tween crush for Coraline. Nary a sign of him exists in the book and, although I didn’t quite mind him in the movie, I didn’t miss him one bit in the book.

Also, there’s a lovely British flavour to the book that is replaced in the movie by what I would describe as an American brashness. Whereas the book’s inhabitants all have a sense of reserved dignity to them, the Americanized movie characters feel far more in your face and…well, slightly annoying because of it. I do believe I enjoy the English Coraline and Co far more than their American counterparts. There is something to be said for reserve, you bloody Yanks.

Final score: 5/5. Quick, quirky, dark, and deeply satisfying. I’d highly recommend this and its cinematic sibling for anyone who enjoys a bit of Gaiman. Also, Tim Burton fans will devour this story quite greedily, I think.

A SIMulated Life?

~ lobablanca

To the denizens who have threatened to send out an APB on Sammy and me if I don’t post soon…haha. Of course we made it home in one piece. Sammy is a wonder car. Not even I can change that truth.

The drive home was happily uneventful. Little spits and spurts of rain here and there, but nothing terrible. We arrived back in our neck of the woods to find that most of the snow had melted. I think this is the fastest I’ve ever seen snow of this magnitude disappear so quickly before. Usually, it would take a minimum of a month before we could see the ground again. Ah, that global warming myth…

So Sunday was the day of rest. And errands. And Sims3. I spent a mortifying 2 hours just designing one Sim character. It was around about that point that I realized there was something really off in my universe.

Don’t get me wrong. I love The Sims. I’ve been a huge fan of that game since it debuted almost a decade ago. I can’t even begin to calculate how many hours days I’ve sacrificed to my Sims addiction. Of course, such calculations would then require that I figure how much of my life I have given and continue to willingly give over to video games, be they PC games, PS2 games, or now XBox 360 games (friggin’ Aerosmith Guitar Hero and Mortal Kombat).

As much as I love video games, and as much as they make me feel like I’m still a kid when I’m playing them, the simple truth is, I’m not a kid anymore. Time continues to eke forward, no matter how little mind I pay it. And so I ended up having a bit of an existential freak out as I was trying to settle down and fall asleep last night. Instead, I began running through the list of things that I always thought I would accomplish in this life before shuffling off to whatever universal waiting room there is beyond this.

Truth is, I never really made any plans for leaving a large dent on this plane of existence. I suppose you could say I’m unassuming (or as unassuming as any one with Multiple Internet Personality Disorder can be). I did once have a dream though. Just one.

I wanted to write.

Words, as many of you have no doubt figured out, have always been my passion. I love the beauty of language. How words can be combined to form shear joy or utter despair. Swords of the sharpest edge can’t compare to words wielded by a skilled writer.

Writing is what brought me out of the shadows when I was in school. I was always satisfied with standing out of the spotlight, doing the work that needed to be done, making the grades that my parents would find acceptable. Doing all that I could not to make any waves that would draw attention toward me. But then our 6th grade English teacher introduced us to creative writing. And that was all I needed. I devoured each assignment she gave us with a passion that I don’t remember ever feeling for anything else in my scholastic career.

Even when that section of our coursework was over, I continued writing. Silly little stories, always about my friends, always about imagined adventures taking place at our school. I found those stories a while ago. Oh, were they awful. But at the time, they were like Pulitzer winners to me. After a while, I began branching out, leaving behind the comfort of my familiar friends, and began creating new friends and new places. And the themes grew darker and sometimes more frightening. What else would you expect from a horror fan?

The point, though, was that I was constantly writing. Constantly finding new places to set up residence for however long it took me to weave my latest tale. I spent a month with snow-stranded friends being hunted at a lodge in Vermont. Then I traveled down to a tiny Southern beach community, to spend month with new friends as they unraveled the story behind their mysterious new classmate. Then I was drafted into Starfleet. I spent quite a bit of time stationed on a Galaxy-class vessel, weaving, unraveling, and re-weaving stories there.

That was more than 10 years ago. And what have I done since then? I earned a degree in English, which I used to secure a job writing policy briefs, speeches, and whatever other linguistic minutia my federal agency clients require of me. I’ve heard my words uttered by well-known government officials. Each time that happened, a little spark within me fizzled into darkness.

Loba Disclaimer: I do still love my current job. It’s far different from those early days. Far more computer geeky, and far less gov-speak. But what happened to my dreams of writing? Not even dreams of becoming a famous author…you know, the kind who gets their name printed on their book covers in fonts sometimes triple the size of the actual book title. No, I never dared to dream that large. I just wanted to write.

Now I realize that I spend far more time living in other people’s worlds than I do in my own. Whether it’s The Sims or some other video game, or whether it’s my attempts to read 50 books in a year (which, by the way, I haven’t yet given up on). Always someone else’s worlds. No longer mine.

So take this as an early resolution if you must (although, dammit, I detest resolutions): I will get back to writing. Not only will I get back to writing, but I will complete something by the end of 2010. Hopefully, it won’t take me quite that long, but if it does, it does. I’m not going to let this die within me. I used to love to write. Hell, I still love to write. Why else would I keep coming back to this lair (besides all you lovely denizens, of course)? So time to return to my other worlds. Time to get reacquainted with all my other friends. True, some of them have been occasional traveling companions for some time now. It’s time to give them a more secure home.

Who knows? If I come up with something that doesn’t make my beta readers vomit, maybe I’ll even attempt to be published. But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it…

Don’t Forget to Drink Your Ovaltine

~ lobablanca

I set out tonight, hoping to watch something with the parental units that was as un-Christmasy as you can imagine. Then I realized that TBS was yet again running their “24 Hours of A Christmas Story.”

Oh, how do you resist Ralphie? You simply can’t, can you? I think that A Christmas Story is to my generation what It’s A Wonderful Life was to its generation. Only A Christmas Story is actually enjoyable. 😉 So we watched it twice. And now the SyFy Channel’s Ghost Hunters marathon is playing. And I’m about to refill my wine glass.

Could this be a more perfect start to Christmas?

I wish for you all a wonderful day, regardless of what holiday or beliefs you may hold. In fact, I wish for you wonder and merriment every day. And I hope that 2010 holds amazements unimaginable for each one of you.

And here, before I depart, is a special holiday wish from my favorite dancing doctor. I designed this for two very special ImagiFriendsTM. I hope they don’t mind if I share it with all my denizens…but how can I resist?

50BC09: Book Number 48

~ lobablanca

It’s probably for the best if I stick with something simple for a while. Like book reviews. Although I’m sure you will all be happy to know that Sammy just received his Christmas Eve bath. I think I blasted enough mud and grass out of his wheel wells that I could build my own Smurf village. Yes, I went with the Smurfs.

So, anyway…Fun Home, by Alison Bechdel. This was another ImagiFriendTM gift. This is also another graphic novel, although I think it’s more appropriate to call it a graphic memoir, in both the literal and figurative sense of the word.

I’m amazed that two of the most powerful and moving memoirs have come to me in the form of the graphic novel. This, of course, falls as one of the two. The other would be the two-part graphic novel series Maus by Art Spiegelman. Both Bechdel and Spiegelman use the strengths of their artistic skills to bring to life their struggle to understand their fathers, and how the troubles and conflicts of their fathers’ lives carved out their own paths. Whether or not there is a positive lining to these truths is what ultimately Spiegelman and Bechdel are left to struggle with in their own unique ways.

For Bechdel, she is left to wrestle with the memories of her father, an erudite intellectual who invested far more time in the restoration and repair of old homes than he did in the strengthening and sustaining of his own family structure. The title comes from what she and her brothers used to call the family business: a funeral home her father inherited from his father. There are quite a few things going on throughout the telling of this tale, including Bechdel’s realizations about her sexuality and how these revelations become overshadowed by revelations of her father’s own sexuality and the “accident” that ended his life amidst the unraveling of secret sins that Bechdel and her family were left to process after his death.

Bechdel’s art work is gorgeous, clean, and intricate…sharp contrasts to the more primitive and raw imagery of Ollmann’s This Will All End In Tears. Thanks to the journals that she kept throughout her childhood, her storytelling is equally precise and intricate as she plumbs the depths of memory and tries to discover the truth of how her life and her father’s intertwined in such complex and ultimately bittersweet patterns.

Final score: 5/5. Too often I have heard fellow book geeks dismiss graphic novels as undeserving of attention or analysis. To them I say, you are missing some of the most amazing storytelling to come about in modern literature. Don’t let book snobbery keep you from discovering the depth of the materials such as Fun Home.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby…

~ lobablanca

Want to hear how I temporarily closed down I-95 South and gave Sammy an early Christmas mud bath?

So today was a good day to travel, I thought. It’s the day before Christmas Eve, which I know is typically the popular travel day for people who travel for Christmas…which, thankfully, are far fewer people than those who travel on Turkey Day. I knew, however, that I should expect some rough riding at least until I was beyond the tenacious and ample mounds of snow that snaked up the I-95 corridor.

Truth. I sat for about 2 hours just trying to get onto I-95, then ended up in sluggish, sometimes stop-n-go traffic from the 495 merge until around about Kings Dominion. For those not in the know, that’s a hella long time. Thank goodness once again for my iPod and awesome podcasts.

Once I hit North Carolina, however, things were smooth as silk. The snow was gone, the temperature was wonderfully warm, and the sun was shining brightly and strongly down on Sammy’s sleek silver and salty frame. I cruised along at the lovely standard speed of 70 MPH (another reason to love NC!), listening to P!nk dissect her marriage and Suzie Plakson explain how she Didnwannadoit. Traffic had broken up and spread out, and I finally found myself all alone on my own personal stretch of the road.

This is probably the most serendipitous moment of my entire journey.

I noticed that a car was getting ready to merge onto the interstate, so I switched from the right lane to the left lane so that they would have a clean shot at the merge. Next thing I know, the driver is rocketing straight from the merge lane into my lane. While I’m right there.

Three things happened simultaneously at this point: I honked, slammed on my brakes, and swerved toward the left to avoid being side-swiped by the driver.

Know what’s kind of cool about I-95? Both north- and southbound lanes have these grooves on each shoulder that, when you run over them, they rattle your car just enough to shake you awake. Apparently, enough people were falling asleep at the wheel that TPTB decided this would be a good way to shock sleepy drivers back awake.

Sammy’s front left wheel hit these grooves as I braked and swerved, which startled me enough that I swerved back toward the right in what I have deduced in retrospect was a rather overcompensating manner, which started Sammy wagging his little tail like an over-zealous puppy. Cute on puppies. Not cute on cars.

The fish-tail motion started to increase and next thing I know I’m spinning. And angry. Not scared. Not panicky. ANGRY. Angry at the stupid driver whose ignorance has left me feeling like I’m trapped in the spin cycle of an industrial washer. Angry enough that I was saying things about said driver that I think would have made my Navy veteran grandparents blush.

Thankfully, my anger kept me focused enough that I did what I knew I needed to do: took my foot off the accelerator, turned into the spin rather than fight it, and started to carefully slow down until I could regain control. A couple of spins later and all was still. And Sammy was parked in the saturated sogginess of the ditch running along the side of the interstate. Facing the wrong way. But safe. As was I.

Of course, safe is a wonderful thing. But so is safe and not sinking into mud. Which I was quickly doing. Not even rocking Sammy back and forth was going to get me out of this. So after several increasingly frustrated attempts, I finally cut the engine and climbed out to assess the mess and call AAA. That’s when the awesome gentleman in the AT&T service truck traveling northbound pulled over and asked me if he could help.

I may not have always depended on the kindness of strangers, but this guy and the winch on the front of his truck were my heroes, fo’ shizzle. He told me to hang on while he went up and turned around so that he could come over onto the southbound side.

That’s about the point when I became the center of some very unexpected attention. While waiting for the service truck to return, I glanced back at the northbound side and realized that two state trooper cruisers with their lights flashing were pulling over across from Sammy. I also noticed that another car had pulled over further up the northbound side, and a Black woman was quickly running over toward me.

I only mention her race because this woman was about as pale as I’ve ever seen a Black person turn. Seriously, she was nearly as White as me…and that’s saying a lot. It wasn’t until she kept repeating “I’m so sorry…are you all right…I’m so sorry” that I realized this was the driver who nearly hit me in the first place. She had turned around at the first exit she found and came back, apparently calling the police as she did so.

I assured both her and the two state troopers that I was fine, just stuck in the mud and waiting for the nice AT&T guy to hook his winch up to Sammy’s bum and yank him free.

[Before any of you ask, of course I didn’t refer to Sammy by his name or his gender. I didn’t really need the added indignity of having the cops giving me a breathalyzer test…]

That’s when the county cruiser, the ambulance, and the two firetrucks arrived, blocking all lanes of traffic as they positioned themselves around my part of the interstate that was becoming increasingly crowded.

And that’s when I wanted to crawl under Sammy and hide.

This was also the point when I realized that, although I was semi-oblivious to the danger at the time inside my anger warp bubble, people around me witnessed something that they translated as “That’s definitely going to have a bad ending.” This woman who called the police must have told them to expect the worst possible scenario. What she saw in her rearview mirror as she drove away obviously left her shaken and afraid…and left me very grateful that I didn’t see what she and others saw.

I spent the next 10 minutes assuring her and all the officers and rescue people that I was fine, that Sammy was fine, and that all I really needed was the nice young man in the AT&T truck to do what he was waiting patiently to do. They quickly dispersed, probably equal parts happy to see that their expertise was not needed and possibly glad to have a little innocent excitement in the middle of their shift.

The AT&T guy and the county cop hooked up my car and pulled me out and helped me do a walk-around to make sure that Sammy was still really in one piece. I thanked them both profusely. I’ve also just finished e-mailing AT&T and letting them know that they hire some damned fine people down here in the Tarheel State. And then I was on my way.

Of course, anyone driving past that part of I-95 after the fact probably stared at the loop-de-loop streaks of rubber along the roadway and the big streaks through the muddy ditch on the side of the road and wondered what the frig happened there. Let me assure you, it was just Sammy leaving his signature across the interstate. Honestly, he’s turned into such a diva.

Seriously, though, thank you to whatever patron saint or universal glitch that’s out there, watching over white wolves and their anthropomorphized cars. Thank you to the stunningly fast response of the EMTs, firefighters, and police officers who, thankfully, were not necessary. Even thank you to the woman who started all of this mess. Thank you for coming back, for apologizing, and for caring, in stark contradiction to the opinion I had of you as I was spinning right round, baby.

And to the drivers who were caught up in all the excitement…believe me, I’m sorry. I know what I would have been saying if I’d been caught in the backup, no matter how short it may have been. So, sorry about that delay. I hope you all got to where you were heading without any further delays. I promise I will do my best to refrain from causing any further interstate altercations on my way home.

As for Sammy? He is almost perfect. Seems that his recent alignment is a little off-kilter now, but other than that, he’s just very dirty. So it’s a power wash for him in the morning, followed by a fresh tank of gas for lunch. As for me? I think I’m going to enjoy the next few days traveling no faster than my two legs can carry me. I’m quite through with my attempts at impersonating a dreidel, thank you very much.