Countdown to th....

We have found an apartment in downtown Keene NH.
We are both working, we are NOT traveling. The Adventure is done and now I am just facing the usual craziness of day to day living which severely limits my story possibilities.

During the Adventure I wrote a lot of stories about people. Strangers, people that I had just met, people that I saw from a distance and never quite met. People that I would have liked to meet.
I could write about these people without them being insulted because of the simple fact that they were NOT going to read this blog. Many times I would give them my calling card with the address of this site and suggest that if they wanted to read about whatever had just happened they should look it up. I would go with the assumption that they would never look it up and so I could write about them without embarrassing them. Of course, I have always tried to be nice, and I only had to remove one post through the entire trip, but writing about people that I am going to be seeing next Thursday and again the following Tuesday would affect what I may write, and I imagine would affect how my friends behave around me.

So anyhow, I won't be writing about all of the wonderful people that I am meeting every day because I will not be meeting that many new people. In fact I will be meeting very few new people.

Now the good news is that I have started writing a lot more lately. I went through a real dry period for a while but for the last month or so I have been writing chapters for my novel.
I haven't figured out the entire story line but the bits and pieces are shaping up. I also joined the local writer's group, but they only meet once a month.

Last week I had to write a post about our buddy Cris losing her battle with cancer. I have to write when I get emotional. It helps me even if I don't come to any clear-cut conclusion in my writing. Venting. Sorting things out.

What surprised me was that there are still some people that check in.
I still cannot tell how many folks are reading the page versus the HIT count. The HIT count includes all of the folks that get here by mistake and don't actually read anything.
My next site will have to include a simple check box to mark if you have read the post.
People don't enjoy rating an article because they don't want to be insulting. A thumbs up will do it. I'll avoid the whole up/down dilemma by maybe displaying a sideways thumb.

The question is what to call my site. My site that will be full of little stories that are not about new people that I just met. OK, maybe it won't be FULL of little stories, but there will be SOME stories. Real good ones. I think.

I don't know what to call it. "I.am.they" sounds a little pompous (even though I AM They).
"Gruntled" is already taken.
http://ChromiumCrustacean.com is too difficult to spell.
http://WarrenW.com is a little too personal.
http://warrenwitherell.com is more of the same.
http://peakpeeker.com is planned for a project that I am going to do some day.
http://derekforreal.com has already done more than enough and deserves to be retired.

Still thinking...

The Safety Flag

We pulled up to the PB&J before heading up the hill.

There was the usual assortment of vehicles at random angles in front of the store. I was stopping for milk but the bulk of sales at the PB&J is beer. Milk was the “convenience” at this store, beer is a “necessity”.
...”Honey, I'm just running down to the necessity store for my beer, smokes, and lottery tickets, do you need some milk while I'm there?”

As I walked from our car there was a pickup truck loaded down with pieces of a telephone pole in front of me. The pole was quite a score. It had been violently snapped into at least two pieces and then the remaining parts had been cut into ten foot lengths which hung out of the back of the truck at awkward angles.
The unshaven passenger slumped down in the cab looked really pleased with his awesome load of extremely toxic firewood that was free free free.

What stopped me in my tracks was the warning flag that was affixed to the end of this very long load.

In accordance with New Hampshire state law, loads that extend beyond the taillights must be marked with a red flag to avoid having a tailgater being skewered.

Now these two future firewood barons had probably come across this stash of insect-proofed lifetime-guaranteed firewood right there on the side of the road just waiting for harvesting at the peak of perfection. After their truck had been loaded to approximately 230% of it's maximum load capacity these two guys realized that they need to find a flag to avoid breaking the law.

Time for some Yankee Ingenuity. It seems that there is a new variety of Budweiser called “Select” that comes in bright RED 16 ounce cans.

Are you aware that stomping on an empty can of Budweiser “Select” creates a very serviceable red flag that can be nailed to your load to satisfy the letter of the law while simultaneously “red flagging” local law enforcement? Try it for yourself.

As I was chuckling to myself I saw the driver of the truck happily bouncing down the front steps of the PB&J with, you guessed it, a six-pack of “Select”.

Two quick pops of beer cans, the engine fires up, a quick U-turn and off go two of the happiest lumberjacks you've ever seen.

Maybe the cop that was on duty that day had his radio turned up loud enough so that he couldn't hear the “RED flag” clanking in the wind.

“Hey man, like, how did that cop know that we were drinking?”

A teenager hanging around the fire.

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Get your own

Pacing around in the lobby of the maternity ward

Beth and I moved back to the Hamster Ranch last Monday because Mama was going to let go "at any time" and we were going to take the pictures of the event.
Monday: it was hot and nothing happened.
Tuesday: it was even hotter and nothing happened.
Wednesday: things were calm (and hot) until evening and then "the storm" moved in. First the wind came. Amazing. The porch light was on and we see this fine mist blowing sideways past the door. I stuck my hand out and it didn't get wet... it was a fog of pollen. Beth stuck her head out to see where it was all coming from and instantly realized her mistake. Her eyeball was instantly coated with pollen and she bent over and started blinking and rubbing her eyes frantically while I looked over my shoulders to make sure that there wasn't a herd of bees zooming in for a free meal.

Then the lightning came. Oh yeah, then there was the gush of water. This wasn't just "precipitation", this was a wall of water that would have set off alarms if we were sitting in a submarine at the moment. Lots and lots of water. Ooooh look, one of the guests for the B&B is coming up the driveway. I hope she can find the door because I would rather not run out there.
But wait! Carl realizes that the door was open on the camper so that it could air out and Carl knows that this wind was going to rip the door right off. So he got out of bed, pulled on his pants and scurried out into the darkness.
The guest splashed through the door and dumped one load of luggage and then splashed out again, when she came back in she was still standing in the doorway marveling at the weather when out of the darkness popped Carl. An eighty year old man dressed like one of the guys from the Chippendales, barefoot, jeans, red suspenders, and absolutely no shirt. Fortunately he also forgot his glasses and hearing aids so he wasn't aware that he had popped out of nowhere and had scared our guest so badly that the storm suddenly seemed trivial. Carl wasn't aware that the person that he was stepping by on his way back to bed was somebody that didn't know him, and he really didn't care, he was going to bed. Noel told our guest Enid that "That's Carl, he lives here" and left it at that. Enid told us about how she had made it up the hill before everything had let loose and was glad to be here even with the "all male revue" part of our little B&B. I would like to note that I was wearing most of my clothes at the time. I was pretty proud of that.

We all settled down to watch a movie and the lightning was still zapping around. I spent a lot of time out in the glass room enjoying the light show, and Beth was in her room reading. I came in to sit back down on the couch and Barnum had taken my spot (Barnum is the farm manager disguised as an orange tabby), well I was bending over to negotiate with the cat when lightning hit a tree right behind the house. Barnum's eyes opened up to the size of.... wait a minute... did I already write about this? wait here, I've got to check something...
.
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OK, I'm back, Yep! I had already written about the lightning strike. Sorry. Well anyhoo, I hadn't told you about Carl the male dancer or Enid, so there you go.
Anyhow, as I was saying, Leslie was on her way with proper eatin' supplies and we partook (which is the past tense of partaken) of strawberry shortcake ice cream and anything else that we could shovel in. After a lot of chatting tweaked the lighting for the Barn-O-Cam so Noel would have a good view of the Mother to be if things started to happen.
Leslie, Enid, Noel, Beth and I all went to bed. Carl had been sleeping a while and Barnum wasn't going to be sleeping for quite a while if his wide eyes were any indication.

Ten minutes after we were in bed Noel let out the alarm. "It's happening, lets go!"
We all jumped up and pulled on our stuff and headed out to the barn.
Mama was laying down but jumped up as soon as our large crowd stumbled into the "viewing area". We backed out of the barn and stayed as quiet as we could while we waited for Mama to feel safe enough to proceed. We slowly stepped in to sneak peeks. While Mama paced around I ran up to Noel's bedroom and turned on the VCR to record everything. When I got back down to the barn I started taking some pictures.
There was a splash that was similar to the deluge that happened earlier in the evening and we knew that her water had just broken. [insert scratch and sniff sample here]

My camera is lousy in dim light so I wasn't expecting much.

Then through the viewfinder I saw a large white egg where an egg wasn't supposed to be.
I dropped my camera to see what I had been looking at and quickly wished I hadn't.
I went out of the barn and told Beth that she should get back in there so that one of us was going to see this in all of it's grand lubricity.
Beth trotted in and I tiptoed carefully.
Mama dropped to the floor right against the wall that the camera was mounted on so that she could assure her privacy and avoid the paparazzi. Noel went in to see if she could help. Mama looked back at Noel with a "let's get this over with" look and started to push. Five seconds later Noel called for Beth to help and of course, Beth was all too glad to dive into the activity. I was attempting to take photos while Noel is barking out commands to Beth "grab there, move this, now, OK, hard, yes, perfect, wow, good" and lots of other things that just confused me.

Noel had told us that the delivery would be in the form of a hundred pound "envelope" and then when the foal is out of the envelope and then it is like somebody puffs into the the foal balloon and everything inflates and takes shape. That was a pretty good description except that the "envelope" looks more like a bright white lubricated condom that you might see on the "Paul Bunyan in Las Vegas" DVD. Noel showed no signs of queasiness while sitting on the floor next to a condom that was as big as she was and in fact she didn't notice me jump like I did when she suddenly tore into the condom right above the baby's face and she wiped the forehead and yelled out "It's a CHESTNUT!" and then happily unwrapped the rest of her present.
It had a banana shaped head with large ears and very very long legs with knobby knees.
Mama kept looking back and seemed impressed with her little wet chestnut colt.
The entire delivery took about 90 seconds. There was more wetness and grossness and wonderment in that minute and a half than I have seen in a very long time.

I have some pictures of a long awkward goofy looking creature nose to nose with mama.
Then mama stood up, the umbilical cord breaks and the goofy baby is officially on his own.
At this point we were supposed to sit back and wait for the kid to figure things out.
At this point we had NO idea that our long night was just getting started.
more later...

Waiting for the puppy...

Remember how I was whining about nothing exciting happening and nothing to write about and how whining was really the most important thing that I could whine about?

Well here we are on the cusp of a new puppy up here at the Hampster Ranch.
I know, I know, we don't live here anymore, but we came back for the big event.
These creatures are prey animals so they only drop their hundred pound package during the night and they do it quick. Stop eating, a little kicking, lie down, a few grunts and stand up again. Then it's time to eat again. Noel has a camera set up in the barn so she can know when to run down there, but we had a whopper of a storm, and when the lightning hit the tree behind the house the barn-o-cam got fried along with the electric fence unit, some fencing, and my Tivo.
Noel called around for people that had old video cameras that they weren't using and we found that there were several available that were missing their power supplies, so I did some fudging and patching and we now have a functional barn-O-cam so we can wake up and run when the time comes. Beth and I have been here for three nights already but tonight is the night... for sure. Milk dripping from the appropriate places and other signs of impending changes.

So tomorrow I shall have some interesting pictures, I will leave out the "surprising" ones and just put up the cute ones. Tonight... for sure...
When the lightning hit I was face to face with Barnum (the primary farm cat) and when the big bang actually banged, Barnum's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as he wondered just HOW I was making that noise. I was surprised that his eyeballs didn't fall out. As I looked around Beth came out of the bedroom and she had the same eye condition plus her hair was standing on end from all of the static that was in the air. Pretty cool. You should have been there, it was pretty cool.
I couldn't finish enjoying the moment because Noel put me to work fixing things so we could monitor the "progress" during the downpour.
Today I finished fixing the fencing and now we are watching a movie while waiting for Leslie to arrive with the proper supplies to get through this ordeal (whipped cream and shells for the strawberry shortcakes).