Number two son was invaluable in helping me put the patch-stuff on the drilled-out cracks. I couldn’t have done anything without him.
And so, we have all the cracks now patched. I can breath a little easier as the pool fills.
Yay!
Pool Break
Yes, my pool is broken. I am busy today trying desperately to fix it. It looks like a total disaster at this point. I do not know how things will turn out.
Work today. Feel sorry for myself tomorrow.
Filed under Uncategorized
Another Little Inn
Last week in the family D & D adventure I told you about the closest thing our campaign has to a home base. That was the Broken Anvil Inn in Sharn.
But there are other places like that which also serve as the starting point for quests.
Let me tell you about the Purple Mermaid.
On a lonely waterfront in Aundair there exists a sad little ale house and inn that is losing business. Everyone is apparently apprehensive about going to a place where so many sailors who were regular customers have simply disappeared.
The proprietor is a festive and portly dwarf named Osric who is desperate for your business. It has gotten to the point of offering free beer to anyone willing to rent a room. Veteran sailors and adventurers, it seems, have paid for a room, went to bed that evening… or early morning, and were never seen or heard from again.
A storyteller sits in the bar, telling tales of a long ago voyage of discovery in which the crew of an ill-fated ship, the Lavender Leaf, happened on an undersea discovery shown to them by desperate mer-people and sea elves. It seems a great evil had taken over an undersea temple that housed a very powerful sacred relic. Great treasures were promised for aid in liberating the temple from an unnamed evil.
So, it is an interesting inn, with a promise of adventure. But there are obvious consequences to choosing to stay there. In the corner of the tavern room sits a sea wizard with an ominous look about him. Why is he waiting there? Are there connections between his presence and the disappearances? Do you really want to find out?
As always the quest must wait for the next turn at the D & D table.
Filed under Dungeons and Dragons, family, heroes, humor, Paffooney
When You Need a Little Sunshine
I am working hard on the yard and the pool to get the city off my back about missing repair deadlines that they didn’t actually set before. I paid their stinking 500 dollar ticket for having water in the pool while away on vacation. I am in a race to save the pool and not have the city send in a contractor to remove it at my expense since I can’t even afford to go on insulin for diabetes. I should be upset. I am probably going to lose this race.
But I am happily working on the pool when I can in the buff. Let ’em come and check on me and be shocked. I can still whistle Disney songs and think writer thoughts while I work. I am not insane. Merely coping. Three days to make the pool hold water. And it could rain all three of those days. Oh, well. I am wearing my drip-dry work clothes.
.
Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself
Auf Deutsch
Hier ist eine kleine Geschichte über die Verwendung von Deutsch, um eine Geschichte zu erzählen. (Here is a little story about using German to tell a story.) Ich habe es gelernt, Deutsch in der Schule zu sprechen. (I learned to speak German in college.) Aber natürlich habe ich es nicht sehr gut gelernt. (But of course I didn’t learn it very well.) Ich muss einfache Wörter wie “Schule” für “College” verwenden, weil mein Vokabular klein ist. (I have to use simple words like “school” for “college” because my vocabulary is small.) Ich habe echte deutschsprachige Leute gekannt. Meine große Tante Selma Aldrich kam aus Deutschland und sprach kein Englisch. Sie hatte noch einen dicken Akzent, als ich sie als einen kleinen Jungen kannte. (I have known real german-speaking people. My great aunt Selma Aldrich came over from Germany speaking no English. She still had a thick accent when I knew her as a little boy.) Die alte deutsche Dame, die in Rowan lebte, als ich ein Junge war, war ein Holocaust-Überlebender. Sie war eine echte Person, die es kennengelernt hatte. (The old German lady who lived in Rowan when I was a boy was a holocaust survivor. She was a real person who I got to know.) Aber auf deutsch zu schreiben braucht Google übersetzen, um die grammatik zu kontrollieren und die Worte zu füllen, die ich nicht schon weiß. (But to write in German requires Google Translate to control the grammar and fill in the words I don’t know already.) (Like “kontrollieren”) Also, wenn Sie Deutsch lesen und meinen Deutschen mit meinen eigenen Übersetzungen vergleichen, werden Sie wahrscheinlich einige urkomisch falsche und falsche Fehler finden. (So if you read German and compare my German to my own translations, you will probably find some hilariously wrong and misplayed mistakes.) What can I say? I am Iowegian. Ich wuchs nicht auf Deutsch.
Filed under humor, Paffooney, word games, wordplay
Mickey Sings More Blues
I paid the city more than 500 dollars in fines this morning for my pool having water in it during my two week vacation. What can I say? I’m guilty. I drained the pool again before we left, but it rained while we were away.
That’s nothing compared to the penalties they will impose if I don’t have the pool running and up to code by Monday. They will choose a contractor to come in and remove the pool at my expense. More than eight thousand dollars. My finances are not yet recovered from five week-long hospital stays my family needed between 2011 and 2014. I am looking at losing the house to the bank after living in it since 2005. And the pool had unrepaired cracks in it when we bought it. You live and learn. Hard lessons are probably good for the soul, but more than a little too painful.
So I am trying desperately to plug pool cracks and get the pool running again. I did it successfully once before. But the deadline is upon me.
I guess city governments simply can’t allow criminals like me to live in their city. They are working hard against me. After all, I am a former school teacher, a writer, a blogger, and a goofball. That’s only a step away from being a terrorist, right? Oh, yeah, and there is more rain in the forecast before my deadline occurs. It has rained three times since the case against me was filed. I really need a break. But God seems to want to break the wrong thing. Fun times ahead.
Filed under angry rant, feeling sorry for myself
Bottom of the Ninth
Yes, it is the bottom of the ninth. I am up to bat, but down by a half dozen runs. How do I pull it out of the fire? My fat, I mean. I am busy mixing and mangling metaphors again.
I tried a bit of nude pool repair today. I got one crack secured and plugged. I spent about fifty per cent of the time wearing only sunscreen. It was hot. I got done as much as I could. And then it rained. So only one run in the eighth. I sealed at least part of one crack. But there are twenty-three still to go. And I have to make the pool hold water by the 9th of July. And it is supposed to rain again tomorrow. I suppose doing this as a fool naturist is stupid and self-defeating, but it was cooler in the hot Texas sun. I don’t think I will be doing that foolishness in public after all. But fixing the pool is not completely impossible. Just mostly.
I took a hit to my numbers on this blog by not posting for three days. But I published multiples in order to get caught up, and people are reading and liking them although they are full of the same nudist nonsense I have been pursuing for a week now.
But I am six runs behind. My fat behind may have gotten slightly sunburned. I need to score seven in the bottom of the ninth. Can it be done? Possibly. But I need to bare down and concentrate on the pitches coming over the plate.
Filed under autobiography, baseball, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, metaphor
Stardusters… Canto 54 (A Day Late)
Canto Fifty-Four – Aboard the Bonehead
Farbick spent a great deal of effort in the inky darkness talking to Stabharh. The lizard-man was now the closest thing he had to an actual ally. Starbright didn’t count as an ally as she had become more of a lover and indispensible resource. Stabharh told him all about Senator Tedhkruhz’s war on the Galtorrian people and how single-minded ambition had gradually chewed up and destroyed the biosphere of an entire planet. The Senator had been absolutely remorseless and blood-thirsty, at first because it was highly profitable to the Senator’s backers, and then because it allowed him to eat up his betters and defeat the more powerful, but less ruthless leaders that stood in the way of Tedhkruhz’s rise to planetary domination.
“How do you suppose we can preserve ourselves?” Farbick asked. “You seem to have a real knack for survival in all these war stories you have told me.”
“Well, I didn’t exaggerate… too much. Bahbahr and I did survive, didn’t we?”
“Bahbahr is dead now,” Starbright reminded them unhelpfully.
“Yes,” said Stabharh flatly, “I never figured on out-living that fat greedy slug. I have no plan for what to do now… though I would really rather not die if I can put it off at all.”
“I think one of the secrets to survival,” offered Farbick, “is relying on others. Bahbahr obviously owed his survival more to you and your efforts than he did to his own superiority.”
“Yes,” added Starbright, somewhat more helpfully this time around, “and Biznap and I would both be dead already if it hadn’t been for you, Farbick.” She gave him a loving squeeze around the middle for emphasis. He hugged her back in the oppressive blackness.
“So, maybe,” said Stabharh, “we need to stand together and help each other instead of treating each other as enemies.”
“Yes. I like that notion very much.” Farbick knew that Stabharh could not see him smiling because of the pitch darkness, but for his present purposes he thought that was a very good thing. He was not planning on turning on Stabharh, but he thought the key here was in working out ways to get others to turn on their own masters… and he was well aware that Stabharh was very unfeeling toward his former employer as he betrayed him and caused that employer’s sad fate.
“We have to convince the members of the Senator’s surviving crew to turn on him for their own good,” said Stabharh. “They have to see that following that evil lizard-man is choosing their own eventual suffering and death.”
“Why are lizard men so determined to keep doing bad things until they die?” asked Starbright innocently, but again rather unhelpfully.
“We are mostly raised to believe that it is weakness to offer help to others. If someone is weak, they should die… or be killed and eaten.”
“Do you still believe that?” asked Farbick carefully.
“Well, yes… but I now see that you have made the opposite choice a number of times already, Farbick… and have been quite successful because of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“You could’ve killed Bahbahr and me a number of times instead of doing what you did. You gave us a chance to live on and make better choices. Instead of killing me when I was trapped in the force field, you kept me alive until the Senator landed and took us all as his prisoners.”
“At that point, keeping you alive long enough to offer to Senator Tedhkruhz kept him from killing us and eating us immediately. We helped each other in the long run.”
“I think it will help us even further,” said Stabharh. “I think I have a plan in my evil little brain that may just get us out of this terrible dark hole. Wait a minute… thinking this hard hurts sometimes… but… YES! I know just what to do!”
Farbick bit his lip in the darkness. This was either going to be a good thing that helped the three of them, or a very bad thing that at least put an end to their troubles.”
*****
The Evil Senator Tedhkruhz
Three Days Offline
This is actually Monday’s post… the last make-up post.
I am now working on the third consecutive day of being without internet service. I quickly see what a disaster World War Three, the Cyber-War, is going to be.
I mean, there is plenty to do. I am trying to save my home from legal pillaging by the city trolls, so I must work in the yard. I must also desperately work on the pool. And since I may have to blog about it for nudists… I am going to try doing it wearing only sunscreen. (Not the yard work in the front yard… in the back yard that is fenced in and tree-filled… with the gates tightly locked, of course.)
This is me not actually nude… just joking around with my Cirque du Soleil clown nose and risking a sunburned back.
And I am reading a brilliantly funny book by Terry Pratchett called Raising Steam, about bringing steam trains and train travel to the fantasy medieval world he calls Discworld. I miss Terry Pratchett. He passed away and will never write another one. And there are only a precious few left that I haven’t gotten to read yet. But, he won’t be around for the third installment of the World at War Saga. I hope I am not either… but I am probably too stubborn to just die on my own. I am expecting now to be murdered by a Trumpcare death panel.
I am also trying ferociously to write and publish novels. I have so many stories left to tell, and not enough time to plant the fields of imaginative rough-draft fiction, water them with re-writes and editing, and then try to harvest them by publishing.
I no longer suffer from childish illusions that my fiction is going to change the world for the better, the way Dickens’ once did. I know I am probably writing them only for the ash-pile, or the myopic alien squid-man that will uncover them as part of his psychotic obsession with xeno-archeology.
So there is plenty to do, but I can already see the problems that will come if everybody’s internet and electronic world breaks down at the same time. Especially if it ends up being permanent. I can’t pay my bills without internet banking and access to the websites I use to pay things I owe. I can’t do any further publishing work without being able to email the publisher. Not having internet is basically the end of the world I have been living in since I retired. No Netflix, no Google, no email, no Twitter (Hey, it’s not all bad after all, now is it?), no access to the website that is deciding whether to send me to Bluebonnet Naturist Camp or not (is this list of problems actually getting better?), no television, and a decided lack of communication with the outside world (which means no bad news about Trump and the crazy government. Woo Hoooooo!)
So, while I can cope with not being online, how long can I really hold out if the Trumpian Troglodytes pitch us back out of the information age? Think of it… a new age of coal and Trump-branded real-estate all run by a narcissistic orangutan and his piratical racist banker boys. Not very long, I suspect.
Filed under humor, insight, irony, Paffooney, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Catch a Falling Star 
Evidence There is a Living God
A humorist does well to remember that you should not joke about religion. God does have a sense of humor. But it is a sense of humor backed by the ever-present threat of being struck by lightning. And among religious types, a sense of humor is about as common as a nudist wandering into the midst of a porcupine convention just as the thistle-pigs begin arguing about whether or not God is actually a porcupine.
On the question of God and whether we actually have one, or whether he’s alive or not, we often turn to philosophers for insight. Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher with a hard to spell name. People often turn to him for evidence of god and the accompanying God-thoughts.
But it is entirely possible that Nietzsche did not get the absolute last word on the matter.
Nietzsche was a bit of a poozer when it comes to questions about God. He said that God is dead because the big guy in the sky didn’t seem to be active in the world. At least, not since Bible times.
And if we are supposed to believe that God Jehovah is real because he’s written down in a magic book that so very many people believe in, then why isn’t god Thor to be believed in anymore? He’s written down in some very old books too. And isn’t the story about how Thor almost drank the ocean dry on a bet just as impressive as Jehovah parting the Red Sea for Moses?
But Nietzsche wasn’t a complete and total poozer. He did have some wonderful things to say along with the klunky and hard-to-understand God stuff he said.
It takes a big mind in a big head to think of making the stars dance just by generating chaos-waves in your big old head. That’s the kind of big idea that could become a religion of its own… if Nietzsche wasn’t already dead, of course.
But I tend to believe there really is a living God. My sister posted an old picture of some of the reasons why on Facebook today.
My thing one, thing two, and thing three (in the baby carrier with her feet up) are all the reason I need to believe in miracles. Thing one was recently promoted to Corporal in the Marines. Thing Two has applied for a job at Walmart, and thing three will be a sophomore in high school this fall. Grandma Aldrich is in the middle between thing one and my sister’s girl. The little blond one on the left is my sister’s kid too. All of them are miracles in human form. Grandma Aldrich is gone now. She died not long after this picture was taken. But her life resonates through mine, and through me to my children and nieces and nephews also. I would not be me if it wasn’t for her.
So there is proof of a living God. Everything that exists cannot be erased from existence, even when it disappears from memory. So we are all eternal. We all have touched the stars… at least, in a metaphorical sense. And our bodies, science has proved, are made of star stuff in a literal sense. So it is not too much of a stretch to believe we can make the stars dance.
And if my quasi-religious joking around has God thinking about how to apply a good thunderbolt, well, I was making fun of Nietzsche… wasn’t I?
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Filed under commentary, family, humor, insight, inspiration, religion, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as autobiography, friedrich nietzsche, having faith, making fun of Nietzsche, religion