Arrant Nonsense

(A) I love love love it when all Ben's sarcasm circuits are firing.

(B) Ben should not go to sleep with his Glock .40 in his hand. Ever. No matter how threatened he feels in the middle of nowhere. Because waking up with the thing under his chin and his finger on the trigger is bad.

(C) I came across a werewolf book called "Naked Brunch" by an author named "Sparkle Hayter" while on my agent hunt the other day. The fact that this person has been published since 1994 (and thus long before Twilight) does not make this any less funny.

(D) Have my favorite paragraph I've written today: He'd seen the petroglyphs around; you couldn't throw a rock anywhere in Moab without hitting one. He hadn't realized that the Anasazi people had been carving the pictures of horned creatures wearing their hearts on the outsides of their chests from life. The goblins of Goblin Valley were apparently real, only they weren't small, blue, or prone to nose-picking accidents. And holy shit, no wonder they were worshiped as fertility gods.

(E) We're taking the Cessna up to Odgen and the Auger Inn for a hundred-dollar hamburger tomorrow. Good times.

Yesterday, we got a new printer. This means I can send out the Cow story again. Yayness. However, in attempting to get the wireless thingy to actually work, I managed to frell up our "network" (such as it is). I solved that problem today by rebooting the modem, which has gotten me back on the interwebs but still doesn't solve the "how do I get this thing to work wirelessly" problem.

Oh, hey, I may even be able to print labels again, which might make my subs look a little more professional-like. We shall see, I guess.

Today, we took the Cessna to Moab to look at some property down there. Of course, when we got there, the FBO had just sent their crew car out with someone else. Enterprise had no cars at all, so we couldn't rent one. Fortunately, I'd called the real estate agent yesterday to give him a heads-up, and he was able to pick us up at the airport and drive us around. Lunch at the Moab Brewery, and now we've got a decision to make. There's one I like, a whole heaping lot (two acres backing up to BLM land, what's not to love--except it's... out a ways. But. Still. Two acres backing up to BLM land).

Also, our local airport has at least three red foxes living there, and I saw all three of them today. I got pictures, although the camera couldn't zoom them in very close because they were way out there, but it was cool nevertheless.

We've got a double rainbow right now.

We got the airplane back today and it's PRETTY. Pix soon.

I have now formatted the Cow Story for WotF. 47 pages ZOMG.

I found the screencaps I'm missing for KKBB (thank you to the lovely and effulgent quicksilvermad) and will be DL'ing them tomorrow. Because those are huge files which will require much time. And then we'll see if I can create a KKBB mood theme.

In not-so-nice news, yes, I'm sick. And I'm drawing a complete blank on where my 250 words for the day are going to come from. I'm not sure I'm going to get them. But since I've hit my goal for the week already, and I'm sick, I'm not going to sweat it. :p

Just been scarce online today. We drove up to Brigham City today to get the striping on the plane finalized--we're getting the Cessna painted in our continuing quest to not participate in the recession. Yes, there will be before and after pix, along with a few in-between ones as well.

So, we went up there and then waited about 45 minutes for the guy to actually show. Then he and the Hubby spent (I swear) two hours hashing that out. Fortunately, I had the feeling that it was going to take forever, and I took along the laptop to get some writing done. I managed to scribble over a thousand words. Go, me.

And thus, I bring you...

A SNIPPET.

Seeing as it's Snippet Saturday and all. Not a snippet from what I wrote today, however. Is still in raw form. You no can haz. Haz this instead:

( Hrm. Probably oughta cut this for, well, sex. Ish. Also, there's some dubious consent going on here. Enter at your own risk. )

So, the Hubby went to Macon yesterday and looked at an airplane, with an eye towards us buying it if we thought the finances would work out. I found myself hoping this morning that it would be a piece of junk and the decision would be easy.

Yeah. Not so much.

Okay, first of all, it's an Aero Commander 500B, which is a plane the Hubby has always wanted. This is THE PLANE, guys. But they usually cost more than, say...your house. Yeah.

This one...doesn't. Not only that, but if we can sell it within three years, and as long as nothing horrible goes wrong with it, we can probably turn a profit on it.

However, the initial outlay is a little scary. We'd probably go into debt to do it, although selling the Cardinal and cashing out the mutuals would actually give us the cash to do it. The fixed costs per year would be something like $10,000--before we actually go anywhere in it.

But the going places would be easier. It's a twin, so it's got a longer range and it goes faster. Of course, that means it's correspondingly more expensive to run. But then, it's not like we've used the Cessna all that much, so...

We have much to discuss tomorrow.

In other news, the blank fic doc, it doth mock me... Also, the first group of results (Honorable Mentions and Semi-Finalists) from Q1 of Writers of the Future was supposed to be announced today, but there's nothing in my inbox. So I don't know if I didn't even place this time, or if I'm in the Finals. Probably didn't place. *sigh*

I have an "END" at the bottom of the Giant Bugs fic. OMG, finally, y'all. It came to a little under 2800 words.

I'll sit on it for a few days (probably until after LTUE, which starts Thursday and runs through Saturday) and then go over it again. I think I'm going to take the A&tS story to LTUE to be workshopped; hopefully someone there can tell me what the frell is the matter with it.

And now I have to figure out what's next. And if I could finish it by the end of this month, that'd be peachy.

In other news, the Hubby is in Macon, GA, looking at an airplane. And I honestly don't know whether to hope it's a good one, or a sucky one...

...in the airplane. We'd planned on just an hour flight, but it stretched to an hour and a half. We went from Airport Number Two, down to Provo, over to Tooele, and back. The Hubby had planned on landing at the Tooele airport, but some people were parachuting into it, so we just headed home instead.

We had a lovely flight alongside the Wasatch Mountains, with a great view of Utah Lake, and the BYU campus. We saw some of the Copper Mine, and sailboats on the Great Salt Lake, and the new Larry H. Miller Motorsports complex. It's funny how the landscape really doesn't look real from that altitude.

Da Boy had a good time, apparently. We're talking about heading to Boise this week. The zoo has baby Bat-Eared Foxes. *flails*

( Pix of the plane and Da Boy under the cut. )

And then we picked up S2 of "Lost" at Walmart for $11 less than usual (yay for getting it the week it goes on sale!). We're going to marathon it and hopefully finish watching before S3 starts Oct 4. One disk down...

Hubby is home with it. It flew great. Yay!

Now we have to figure out where we're going to take it first. Rapid City, SD, sounds good. There's Mount Rushmore, which is all kinds of kewl, Bear Country USA, and Reptile Gardens.

Last time we went to Reptile Gardens, lo, many many years ago, we got there right when they opened, and we were still there something like four hours later. One of the employees apparently noticed, and he approached us. "It's really nice to see people who take the time and really look around. Would you like to come back behind the scenes and see what we've got back there?"

Heh. WOULD WE!

And it was So. Cool. We got to see newly-hatched snakes, he got a cobra to hood for us, saw some spitting cobras actually spit...Dude. It was awesome. So I'm hoping we can go back there. Not that I think we'll get to do that again, but the place is really really neat for people who like reptiles.

Today was better than yesterday. For one thing, I only left the house to go to the chiropractor. I didn't have this big elaborate expensive thing I had to do that would cost us dearly if I screwed it up. So that was a shiny thing. My back still hurts, and I still can't touch my knees, but it's minutely better than it was. Yayness.

For another, my S2 Farscape DVDs came today. To my surprise and pleasure, they're four-disc sets instead of the two-disc, double-sided sets I was expecting. I looked at Amazon's reviews, and apparently they had trouble with the two-sided discs, so...here we are. Yay!

In honor of getting them, I made a wallpaper. It's probably not all that, as wallpapers go, but it's mine and I like it and I share it with you. It's snaggable if anyone wants the silly thing.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full-size pic:

1024x768

In other news, the Hubby made it to Colorado in the new plane okay, although it wore him out. Apparently we need to get a GPS for it, stat. He may stay an extra day; he hasn't decided. Depends a lot on what the weather does.

In other other news, the Angel Scriptbook comics I BIN'd on eBay three weeks ago still haven't arrived. *sigh* I'm about ready to give up on eBay for comics. Because, dude. I emailed the seller, but with the holiday weekend, who knows when I'll hear back from him. I hope to hell they didn't get delivered to my front porch while we were at Little Brother's wedding, and then someone took them. Because that would suck.

But since this is my LJ, I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

I get a call from the Hubby this morning. The airplane is a very shiny thing, so I can go ahead and wire the money into the guy's account. I call the bank. Can I do this with a phone call? Oh, hell no; I have to come down and personally sign stuff. Guess it's a good thing I didn't go with him to Iowa. We'd have been sort of screwed.

I didn't shower today. Yayness.

Well, we want to get it done ASAP, so I forego the shower, hop in the car, and head to the bank. The routing number isn't coming up on their system. Yayness again. They call the Help Desk, which is actually helpful, and we get that. Fill out the paperwork, I sign it, we're good to go and ready to launch. I leave.

Now, keep in mind that the Purple Cruiserberry is nearly out of gas. I was planning on getting some on my way home.

You know what they say about "best laid plans"?

Yeah.

So, I'm sitting at a light, and I check the paperwork again, just to be sure. CRAP. The account number is wrong. I should not be doing these things when I'm tired and hurting, no I should not.

Alas, it is no easy thing to get back to the bank. I have to actually get onto the freeway and make this huge-ass circle. But I make it back to the bank before they've done the wire transfer, so, disaster averted; we've just avoided putting over $60,000 into the wrong bank account. I leave. I attempt an (illegal) left turn out of the bank parking lot.

Yeah, remember what I said about being nearly out of gas?

The car dies right in the middle of the road.

Out of the aforementioned gas. Yayness, yet again.

Fortunately, I'm on a slight incline, so I can back it back into the bank parking lot in neutral, which I proceed to do. One of the super-nice folks at the bank gives me a lift down to the Chevron station on the corner, where I have to blow five bucks on a gas can. I buy a gallon of gas, she drives me back to the car. I manage to get gasoline on myself while putting it in the car. Yet more yayness.

Have I mentioned that Da Boy is with me, and he's being a royal pain in my ass? Yeah. That.

I get a couple more gallons of gas on the way home. Whee. The gal asks the standard "How are you today?" I smile weakly and say "You really don't want to know the answer to that question." She is sympathetic, bless her. I love living in Utah. People here are actually nice. I ask myself if the day can get any worse.

Never ask that question. You'd think I've watched enough Joss Whedon shows to know that by now.

So I get home. To find that the city, in their infinite wisdom, has picked Labor Day Weekend to dig a two-foot-deep hole directly in front of my driveway, nearly all the way across it. "Didn't you get a notice?" the workmen ask. "Um, NO." Crappity. "When's this going to be fixed?" "Tuesday." "SHINY." Not. How the hell am I supposed to get into my garage? They haven't even left anyplace to park on the street; they've dug out in front of EVERYONE's garages--except for the neighbor that got tired several years ago of the puddle in front of his driveway and fixed it himself.

However, the people that lived in the house before us put cement where a grass strip used to be, and the curb is more of a wheelchair-friendly incline than anything else, and my driveway is rather huge. So, I manage to drive up onto the sidewalk and only get a little bit in the grass (hoping I didn't run over the sprinkler head) and pull into the garage.

Then I come into the house and collapse into a puddle of goo.

Da Boy was upset because he missed Thomas today. I told him to suck it up; we have a DVD from the library. Grawr.

And now, I'm going to bed. I will be taking kradical's "Dragon Precinct" with me. It's an enjoyable read so far.

To put the icing on the cake, the CAP on my day? When I went to preview this entry, my browser froze up on me. Thank the intraweb gods for "autosaved drafts."