Boat Drinks

I gotta fly to Saint Somewhere ...
... I gotta go where it's warm.
--Jimmy Buffett, "Boat Drinks"

I never intended this to be a personal diary, and I already know today's post will read like a journal entry. This morning I have lots of little thoughts and no big ones at all. My apologies, Discerning Reader.

Spring is coming, but I can't stand winter another minute, so yesterday I broke down and booked a Caribbean cruise. We'll be sailing in May. This won't be a typical kind of trip for us--our vacations tend towards more exotic fare like biking through Burgundy or slogging through rice paddies in the backwaters of Vietnam.

But our budget is tight, and yesterday I wasn't in the mood for all the research and planning I always put into one of our "real" vacations. I wanted something easy. Right now a week of idle mindlessnessness aboard a floating tropical resort sounds pretty darn good.

Sounds good to Teri too. She's been working her tail off getting ready for the Big Read, a year-long campaign to promote literacy and library patronage in our state. The idea is to get everyone in the State of Alabama to read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" this year. Teri and her students have been heavily involved in the PR campaign and the formal kickoff is this morning on the steps of the state capitol. Teri is there as I write this, surrounded by librarians and politicians. You can read more about the effort by clicking here.

Between Alabama Reads, the coming ad team competition, the faculty fellows seminar series she directs, a major grant to combat student binge drinking she's overseeing and her full class load, Teri is one busy, busy woman. When May gets here and her calendar clears, she'll be ready for a little pampering.

I'm really proud of her, and I don't know how Teri gets everything done. Somehow, she does.

Our vacation is coming to us compliments of Uncle Sam. Our tax refund is more than covering the cost of the trip. I know, I know--it was our money and we shouldn't have loaned all that cash to the government interest-free for an entire year. But windfalls rock.

A recent series of visits to various medical professionals should eat up the balance of the refund. Between new glasses (I won't look like John Lennon, but at least I'll have his spectacles), a cavity that needs replacing and tomorrow's physical, the cost of good health in middle age adds up quickly.

I like the team of caregivers I have in place. Yesterday I added a new dentist to the roster. My last dentist was more concerned with getting additional revenue than the people in her chair, so I've decided to part ways with her tooth factory.

One of the blessings of living in Suburbingham is that we seem to be blessed with an abundance of competent medical practitioners. I never have to wait to get an appointment with any of my doctors, and they are all terrific.

My new dentist is Doctor Jayme. That's what the staff calls her and how she refers to herself. She's young, pleasant and I can tell she knows what she's doing. I feel a little oogy about combining her first name with her formal title. I'd prefer either using the surname with the title (Dr. Smith) or being on a first name basis. I've gone both ways with my docs in the past, depending. This is neither formal nor familiar--it's some kind of strange middle ground. I like her so I guess I'll have to adjust to this whole Doctor Jayme business.

I spent one day last week going through my manuscript to make a particular kind of edit. A reviewer correctly pointed out that I was using the word "had" too heavily (565 times, to be exact). It's a kind of verbal tic, and I looked at each instance of "had" in the book to see if I could make those sentences more active. After completing the task (it took the better part of a day), I somehow saved the master document so that I not only undid all my work, I simultaneously eliminated every "had" in the book, even the ones that needed to be there. Not good. Yesterday I spent another full day with a slightly older backup version beside the master to fix the mess I made. That was painful, but at least 400 or so unnecessary "hads" are history.

The form rejections from literary agents keep coming even as my popularity on the Authonomy writer website continues to rise and favorable comments continue to come in. Yesterday's form rejection letter had the following tacked on: "Don't give up!" That's something, anyway.