Company's coming

Company's coming.

That phrase is among my favorite constructions in the English language. It's right up there with "dinner is served," "there's no charge for that," and "would you like a shoulder rub?"

Over the next few days I will have company and be company.

Some time today a dear friend will pull up to the driveway of our Bayberry Estate for a long-anticipated visit. When he arrives, the chicken will already be on the grill and some of the fancy beer he likes (probably left over from his last visit) will be on ice.

We'll eat, drink, laugh and share stories. He and Teri might pull out their guitars and jam for a while. They might not. Depends on the mood.

Our guest won't notice the house isn't spotless, and he won't care if he does spot a few dust bunnies hopping around. The "maid" only comes to our house on Saturdays, so a mid-week visit won't find our home at its most pristine. Teri cares about this kind of thing. I don't.

I enjoy having company, but I'm a firm believer in the three day rule. I want you to visit, but not for too long. After a few days, I'm ready to go back to my routine and I want my house back.

Three days is about how long it takes for my guests' charming quirks to turn into annoying character flaws and for the joy I get from serving them to turn into burning resentment for the lingering intrusion.

Since this will be a one-night stay, my guest will be in no danger of wearing out his welcome. After a short night's sleep, we'll wake up early on Thursday and haul down to New Orleans where we'll descend on the home of another friend for a long weekend of laughter and music. There will be six of us altogether, and we'll be together for four nights.

Four days--uh oh. I hope we don't get booted out of there.

Since I'm going to be away doing "research" and in no condition to operate a computer or keyboard, this corner of the webiverse will be dark from now until Tuesday. Come back then, since the next few posts are likely to be lively and full of the kind of wry, pithy insight you've come to expect from this forum.

Company's coming! I'm excited.

I have tennis elbow, which is doubly unfair since both elbows are sore and I've never played tennis. If I lift anything heavier than a paper clip these days, my elbow cries out in protest from the strain.

I think this nasty little condition is a side effect of the diet and exercise regimen Teri and I are on. Other unpleasant side effects of the program include periodic sweating, muscle aches, constant gnawing hunger and an insatiable desire to eat Cheetos. These symptoms lead me to conclude that the quest for good health is a disease in itself.

The exercise portion of the diet and exercise program consists of me torturing myself in my basement. It's a real chamber of horrors down there and filled with all kinds of midieval devices designed to inflict pain and suffering on the human body.

First, there's the treadmill. Each time I get on it, I make myself go one calorie further than the time before. It doesn't sound like much, and it isn't, but those "one more" calories add up after a while. I don't mind the treadmill so much since I can distract myself watching TV while I'm in hamster mode.

But the weight machines in the basement, or the rack as I like to think of them, are the real source of my misery and the likely cause of my tennis elbow. Two or three times a week I add to my self-inflicted suffering by moving chunks of iron around in various ways. Every time I work out, I add a bit more weight to one of the exercises.

After several months of this, there are no signs that I'm in danger of developing a muscular chest, six-pack abs or guns for arms. I can't really tell a difference when I force myself to look at my body in the mirror, which is a little disappointing, to tell you the truth. But lifting weights hurts while I'm doing it and leaves me sore after, so it must be doing something for me. Right? Right?!

So far, Teri and I have lost a combined 34 pounds and counting, so good things must be happening from all of that discipline, deprivation and self-torture.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

Today is my last rack day for a while, since I'll take a break from the diet and exercise plan while I'm in New Orleans. I've never been so ready to embrace an unhealthy lifestyle.

Rehabilitation as a euphemism

Thailand just joined the BYE League of Nations.

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I remember a time when I struck up a conversation with an elderly woman in Avignon, France. The exchange was fairly basic since my mastery of French is limited and she spoke no English at all. She asked where we were from. When I responded "Nouvelle Orleans", her face lit up and she clasped her hands to her heart. Then the old lady forgot I didn't speak her language well enough to keep up and launched into an animated and extended monologue.

"What did she say?" Teri asked me when the lady finally stopped talking. Teri relies on me to translate on our trips. In four trips to France and several more to Quebec, Teri's total French vocabulary is still limited to "what cheese is that?"

"This nice lady said she had never been to New Orleans, but it is the city of her dreams," I told Teri. "Then she said a bunch of other things. Either about the beautiful sights of New Orleans or the price of carrots in the market, I'm not sure which."

I feel the same way about Thailand and India as that French woman felt about New Orleans. Both are places I've never been but I fantasize about. I love the cuisines of both countries. The architecture, religion, cultures and physical geography of Thailand and India fascinate me. They both seem exotic in a way most of the world isn't any more. They're mysterious places where, in my mind, the scent of fragrant spices is always in the air and genuine adventure waits around every corner.

I wonder if that French lady would have been disappointed if she actually visited New Orleans and if it was better for my home town to remain the idealized city she could only dream of seeing someday. I wonder if my own visions would be shattered by visits to Thailand and India. Are Bangkok and Delhi more like Peoria or Brussels these days than the exotic cities of my fantasies?

I refuse to believe that. There must still be exotic places in the world filled with wonder and aventure, and some day soon I plan to see them for myself.

The other day I visited a friend at a Suburbingham "rehabilitation clinic." The man I was visiting is an octogenarian recovering from emergency colon surgery.

I had never been to one of these places before, and my visit frightened and depressed me. It was such a sad place. It's not quite a hospital and not quite an old folks home. A rehabilitation center is where you go following a hospital stay when you aren't sick enough to require the kind of attention you receive in a hospital but aren't well enough to go home and care for yourself.

This was a big place filled with long hallways and hundreds of rooms. Most hospitals these days look brighter and cheerier than I remember from my youth, but this place seemed dark and institutional and very, very impersonal. Most of the patients were quite elderly. The ones who were able eased slowly and carefully down the long straight hallways using walkers or wheelchairs, but many of the patients were bedridden.

The handful of people I saw who appeared to be under 70 seemed morbidly obese and I wondered about that. Heart attack? Diabetes?

The hallways and rooms were clean and the staff I spoke with were all pleasant and helpful. But this was a place where unhappy transitions and realizations occur, and there was no way to pretty it up.

It was clear, just looking around, that the word "rehabilitation" was a euphemism for many of the people residing there. Only a handful there had any chance of ever being rehabilitated to a state of health.

My visit made me think about things I don't like to think about. How we tend to warehouse our elderly and infirm. The morality of choosing to die rather than play out life's string in pain and suffering.

My father experienced rapidly declining health in his last years due in large part to decades of heavy smoking. He eventually quit smoking, but the damage to his lungs was already done. Once in a private talk he told me he would end his life himself if his health degraded to the point where he didn't want to go on. He said he had an agreement with a physician to provide the right kind and quantity of drugs when that time came. He wasn't asking my opinion, merely sharing his plans.

I wonder how many elderly people have worked out similar arrangements with trusted physicians.

My father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly, so he never came to the day when he felt it was necessary to implement his plan. I'm glad for that, but I'm not sure why it matters to me.

Into the void

I'll be honest, I got nothin' today. Let's try this again tomorrow.

Storm warning

Honduras just became the 46th country to join the BYE League of Nations. I think I'll celebrate this momentous addition by making a brief League of Nations goodwill visit. How does next month sound?

I've never been to Honduras, but, as it happens, Teri I will go there in just a few weeks. Honduras, I'm looking forward to meeting you in person at long last.

In 1969, Honduras got into a war with El Salvador over a soccer game. You've got to love a country that takes sports that seriously.

In 1998 Hurricane Mitch tried to wipe Honduras off the map and darn near succeeded. That storm killed about 5,000 people, left many thousands homeless and took out most of the country's roads and crops. I remember that one. It was bad.

I'm glad we'll be visiting in happier times.

Speaking of storms, there's some chance my home will be destroyed by a tornado on Saturday. Okay, I'm being a little overdramatic, but the weather guys here are saying that Saturday is shaping up to be a real doozy for us.

We can get powerful tornado-spawning storms in Alabama this time of year, and the forecasters are saying that the conditions are setting up just right for that kind of weather here on Saturday. If you go to weather.com and check out the forecast for Suburbingham, you'll see they've already posted severe weather alerts.

I feel sorry for the hundreds of thousands of fans already descending on nearby Talladega for a big weekend of stock car racing. When those storms do come, there's no way to shelter them and they will be exposed to the elements. The timing is awful since the weather here has been sunny and mild for several weeks and will be nice again as soon as this storm blows through.

Teri and her students will be driving home from Mobile on Saturday, and I'm a little nervous about that. We'll have to wait and see how this thing plays out.

People lose their homes to tornadoes around here from time to time. All in all, I'd rather live in tornado alley than a hurricane zone.

I've lived in two places that have been devastated by hurricanes. For several years I lived in Homestead, Florida. A couple of years after I left, the place was creamed by Hurricane Andrew. When I went back for a visit a few years later, almost everyone I knew was gone and I barely recognized the place.

I wasn't as lucky with the second one since I was still living in New Orleans when Katrina came to call.

The thing about hurricanes is, when a bad one comes your way, everyone around you also takes the blow. The infrastructure for miles around is damaged. Nobody has electricity and stores don't open for days, months or even years. Basic services like mail delivery or garbage pickup don't operate normally for a long time. Everyone in the area who still has a house needs to make repairs, so there are long waits for skilled laborers and they come at a premium. Post hurricane living isn't fun for anyone.

Tornadoes are different animals since they create a narrow path of destruction. A tornado might flatten your house, but it won't hit everyone else you know. You might get wiped out by a tornado, but most people in your town won't be. You might suffer a devastating loss, but you'll still be living in a functioning community with the resources to help you rebuild your life.

I'm as attached to my home and the stuff inside it as anyone I know, but the biggest lesson from Katrina is that you don't need a ton of stuff to live. Stuff can be nice to have, but it doesn't define you.

I've known several people who have lost their homes to fires, and of course a bunch of folks who lost everything to Katrina. The psychological blow of that kind of loss is enormous. I remember how everyone was a little crazy in the months immediately following Katrina. Friends and acquaintances would break down in tears in the course of a normal conversation, and people would have spectacular meltdowns in the middle of the grocery store. Too many people committed suicide.

The cool thing is, when disaster strikes, life somehow regenerates and goes on. Most everyday people are more resilient than you might think. They carry their scars for life, but they do heal. It's an amazing thing to see, really, the way people can start from scratch and rebuild their lives.

I don't want to live through a tornado or go through another Katrina. Once in a lifetime was more than enough, thank you. But it's good to know that I could start over if I had to. Empowering too.

So, bring it, Mother Nature. I'm ready for you.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

Day of wonder

Here's a lovely picture. It's an Iris from our back yard, one of dozens of yellow and purple irises in bloom at our place right now. A couple of years ago, Teri's colleague Jade thinned out her flower bed and gave some of her bulbs to Teri. These passalong plants grew strong last year but didn't flower. As you can see, this year they are spectacular.

Ginger, another of Teri's friends, also thinned her own herd recently and Teri planted those bulbs last weekend. I wonder if they will also prosper and bloom and what they will look like when they do. We'll find out in a couple of years.

I recently sent a message in a bottle and now it's bobbing gently across the cyber sea. I wonder if it will be found and returned to me.

Sending a message out to sea in a bottle is a hopeful and whimsical act. I've only sent the metaphorical kind, but I think I would automatically like anyone who has done this for real.

Teri is away for the next couple of nights as her University of Alabama students compete in the annual collegiate advertising competition. Well over a hundred schools participate in this event. You've probably never heard of it, but it's a big deal in Teri's world.

Students from across the nation are given the same case study for a real company and then develop advertising campaigns based on the guidelines in the case study. This year the sponsor is State Farm. Each team creates a book that outlines their campaign and then pitches it live in front of a panel of judges in district competition.

The winners of the sixteen districts go on to the national finals in June.

Teri has been the ad team advisor at three different universities for something like 20 years. She's a coach whose team plays only one game a year, and if they win they get to go to a second playoff game.

She's very good at this. Over the years, her teams have won the district competition a bunch of times, and placed in the national finals several times (last year her team came in second in the nation). Once her team won it all.

I'm reasonably certain no other ad team advisor has the kind of winning track record Teri does. She's kind of like the Bear Bryant or Coach K of her sport. Now if we could just figure out a way to get 90,000 people to come see her students play, we'd be rolling in dough. It's unfortunate she is the best there is at an obscure endeavor.

Her team competes tomorrow. Wish them luck. I wonder how they'll do.

I don't thrive when Teri is gone, which gives my wife immense secret pleasure. She likes the idea of me at home alone pining away for her. She never says it outright, but we've been married long enough for me to tell what she's thinking.

When Teri's away, I transition into the lifestyle of an unkempt hermit. I hide away from the world and tend to ignore personal hygiene for the duration. For reasons I don't fully understand, I also go into housecleaning mode when she's gone. When I know she's close to home on Saturday night, I'll shave off the stubble and grab a quick shower. When she walks in the door, Teri will find a home cooked meal, a spotless house and a well-groomed husband waiting for her.

I like to be alone sometimes, and this is my last chance to be a hermit for a while. I'm about to turn into a very social animal. Next week I'll be partying with 50,000 of my closest friends at Jazz Fest in New Orleans and the week after that I'll be sailing glassy (I hope) seas with my bride.

I enjoy the solitude, but I also like being with friends. I wonder why that is.

Hank's diet tips

Cute picture, eh?

That's Scram, the Prince of Bayberry, in a state of repose after a day spent patrolling his domain. Scram is content to be a prince and has no desire to become the King of Bayberry. The reason, as Teri likes to say, is kings have responsibilities.

Want some diet tips from a fat guy? You've come to the right place today.

Teri and I both reached new low weights for the year when we weighed in this morning. Between us we've dropped 34 pounds over the last few months--19 for Teri and 15 for me.

We're sure of how much weight we've lost, but we we don't know our exact weights. You see, we have this junky old bathroom scale, and it gives results several pounds lighter than the scale at the doctor's office. Our cheapo scale is better at estimation than precision and it gives readings that vary by a couple of pounds every time you step on it. If you step on the blasted thing four times in quick succession, you're liable to get four different results. Our scale gives a different reading depending on which part of the bathroom tile it is sitting on, so I can coax a couple of bonus pounds of weight loss by moving it to the right spot.

When I weigh in, I strip down and move the scale to the precise spot on the floor where I know I'll get the best result possible. Then I step on the scale several times and record the lowest number that spins up. It's kind of like playing roulette. You watch the dial spin, hold your breath, and pray for the right number to appear.

My best guess is this process results in the number I record being somewhere around a seven pounds less than my actual weight, but since I'm consistent in the way I cheat, I always know how much weight I've actually lost or gained even if I don't know exactly what I weigh.

Teri is doing great and would like to lose only a few more pounds. She's worried because she has some fabulous clothes that are fast becoming too loose to wear. I have much further to go on my "journey," as the fatties on The Biggest Loser like to call it. I'm not going to be happy until my bathroom scale shows me 50 pounds lighter than I am today and my man boobs are gone for good, so this journey is going to be a long one.

How are we doing this? Well, it's a pretty simple formula. Just common sense, really. Here's what I think is working for us, in decreasing order of importance.

1. Be determined. Every diet book that says you can lose weight without being hungry is full of crap. Weight loss is hard work, and it's not always fun. Temptations abound and it's difficult to steer clear of them when every molecule of your body is screaming for a box of Popeye's fried chicken. You really have to want to lose weight to succeed at it.

2. Eat less. Smaller portion sizes make a huge difference. This is the hardest part for me. If something is good, I want to keep eating it until I'm stuffed. Training myself not to pile up my plate and to skip seconds and thirds hasn't been easy and is an ongoing struggle.

3. Eat different. We're eating very little meat these days. We have red meat or poultry just once a week or so. We also have a small serving of seafood a couple of times a week. Bread, cookies, cakes and candy are nowhere to be found in our house. Fried foods--forget about them.

Instead, we've substituted loads of fresh fruits and veggies and massive amounts of brown rice.

4. Stop snacking. I'm an evening snacker, and I've largely given that up. When my butt is parked in my easy chair in front of the boob tubes at night, my sweet tooth starts itching. To keep from going off of the deep end, these days I'll grab a piece of fruit or put a little peanut butter on a rice cake. Sometimes a cup of tea does the trick.

5. Avoid restaurants--especially fast food restaurants. I love greasy fast food, and I sorely miss my dear friends Papa John, Mickey D and Wendy. If you face facts, you'll admit that a lot of fast food is delicious, but I'd much rather avoid fast foods than stay fat.

6. Exercise. Contrary to what the diet books say, I don't believe moderate exercise is as important to losing weight as simply consuming fewer calories. But it's difficult to stuff your face when you're on a treadmill, so I work out most days.

7. Avoid processed foods. The manager of our local grocery ended up bagging my items last week. "Wow, you're totally a perimeter shopper," she observed. I asked her what that meant, and she told me that a perimeter shopper is a person who only buys items from the outer perimeter of the store--fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy--stuff like that. The perimeter shopper avoids all the cans, boxes and bottles of processed foods in the aisles and the fat and sugar laden temptations of the frozen food section. I'm not a purist, but that does describe the way we buy groceries these days.

8. Drink less alcohol. Beer, wine and spirits have loads of calories, and they also break down my willpower in a big way. After a couple of drinks, that emergency frozen pizza finds its way into in the oven. Teri and I enjoy the occasional cocktail on the porch at the end of the day, but these days our cocktail of choice is as likely to be a glass of sugarless iced tea as it is to be something more potent.

9. Break the rules once in a while. If you can't stand it any longer, go have a Big Mac or some pizza or that slice of key lime pie. On Saturday, Teri and I broke down and stuffed ourselves silly at our favorite Mexican joint. On Sunday I scarfed down four delicious homemade cookies at a friend's house. So good! The key is to make these indulgences infrequent so they don't derail the diet.

In the next few weeks I'll be in New Orleans for Jazz Fest immediately followed by a week long cruise. There's no way I'll be able to stick to my current eating and exercise regimen while I'm away, and I won't even try. I'm going to live it up. But when I get back home it will be back to healthy eating and quality time on the treadmill.

Sonic wake up call

Puerto Rico just checked in and I suppose I'll grant it admission into the BYE League of Nations even though it's not a nation at all. Puerto Rico is officially an unincorporated territory of the United States, whatever that means.

At one time I worked with a man born and raised in Puerto Rico, and one of my less enlightened colleagues said to him "you'd better not cause any trouble or we're going to have to deport you." I pointed out, gently, that Puerto Ricans are full citizens of the United States, and since we were in Georgia at the time, there was nowhere to deport him to.

It's easy to get confused about this. Puerto Rico is an island (actually several, but one big one) out there somewhere in the plantain eating tropics. The people there speak Spanish and the culture is about as far from Yankee Doodle Dandy as you can get.

I was once in New York City when the annual Puerto Rico Day (or whatever it's called) parade was being held. It was warm and sunny, and I had flown into New York a day early for a business meeting and had the day free.

Unaware of the parade or that it would roll in vicinity of the museum I planned to visit, I hopped the subway in the direction of the Met. There are close to four million Puerto Ricans living on the mainland, and every one of them was on that subway train that day. The men sported Puerto Rican flags and the women proudly displayed as much cleavage as possible while still being street legal. The mix of sexuality and patriotism was a heady brew and has always made me think fondly of the place.

Even though Puerto Rico isn't a separate nation, it fields its own team in the Olympics. A former colleague in the textbook business was a guy from the Midwest who had been a decent wrestler in college. Not nearly good enough to get on the U.S. Olympic team, but pretty good. Somehow he managed to wrangle his way into the Olympics anyway--as a wrestler for Puerto Rico. This guy, with his pale white Irish skin, was as Puerto Rican as I am, so something about the arrangement didn't seem right to me. He didn't come close to medaling at the Olympics, but he had a great time.

Since the flag counter widget on the right hand side of this page counts Puerto Rico as a separate country, I will too, and I hearby grant this unincorporated territory full rights and privileges as a member of the BYE League of Nations.

It's a slow news day in Suburbingham, although there have been a couple of items of modest interest.

We slept in this morning and were blasted from our bed by a sonic boom we later learned was caused by the Space Shuttle Discovery screaming over the Bayberry Woods on its way to landing in Florida. It was quite a wakeup all.

Teri spotted a bunny in our yard this morning, the first one we've seen in a while, so it hasn't been a slow news day at all, now that I think about it.

I went grocery shopping today and captured deals galore--four avocados for a buck, a big tube of Crest for 60 cents and many other wonderful bargains. Best Year Ever budgeting has turned me into the most frugal shopper you can imagine. If it's not on my list and on sale, we don't buy it. I'm the king of coupon clipping, and I use the couponmom.com website to sniff out the best bargains on any given week.

People keep complimenting Teri on her fabulous new outfits. Sometimes she tells them that her outfit that day is made up of items she picked up for a buck or two at the thrift store, sometimes she just says "thank you" and smiles to herself.

Last week I picked up a roll of dental floss that was on sale for half off and ended up being free after I used my dollar coupon. Free is a great price point, but this week we improved on free and scored the best deal of all.

I'm a huge fan of Community Coffee's medium dark roast (it goes by different names in different markets). It's my favorite coffee of all time. I love the stuff the way Donald Trump loves his hairpiece. During the ultra-frugal BYE, I've deprived myself of the luxury of drinking my favorite brew in favor of whatever brand was half off at the supermarket. Oh how I've missed that nectar of the gods.

Well, Community Coffee is making a huge push to infiltrate the Greater Suburbingham Area, and a guy I know recently went to work for them. He hooked me up with several three dollar coupons and told me of an area grocery store that had a $3.99 a pound special on Community Coffee.

Teri passed by that store on the way to work armed with her three dollar coupons. Not only did she get to use them, she saw the bags each also had coupons for an additional dollar off attached. The store allowed her to use both coupons, resulting in our being paid one penny per pound to take the coffee off their hands. That's right, they actually paid us to load up on the best coffee on the planet.

I must be living right.

A tale deferred

I swore to myself I would be honest with myself and with you when I founded this forum nearly a year ago. I also promised myself I wouldn't hold back here--I would make my life an open book as I recorded the events surrounding this odd year-long experiment. We're about 90 percent of the way through the BYE, and I have been able to keep my promises for the most part.

Today will be the exception.

I've struggled since Saturday with what I was going to tell you today. Saturday was a big day for me--a day that had been marked in my calendar for many months. I knew all along it was going to be a difficult day, and it was--even more difficult than I imagined.

On our way there, Teri asked me if I had a plan. I didn't. Not a clue.

Driving home in silence on Saturday night after I failed to execute my non-plan, Teri asked me if I wanted to talk about it. I didn't and I said so. But, being a girl, Teri tried to get me to open up anyway and share my innermost feelings for my own good.

She soon saw I really wasn't up to the conversation, and she sat quietly in the passenger seat as we headed in the direction of our Suburbingham home.

Sunday was a good day since I was occupied and distracted from the moment I woke at 5:30 a.m. until the time I collapsed in bed on Sunday night. I didn't have any time at all to think or reflect or otherwise get in touch with my inner feelings about the day before. I didn't want to anyway.

I was busy because Sunday was one of my assigned days to be "on duty" as a deacon at our church. This kept me running (sometimes literally running) non-stop from early in the morning until early afternoon. After locking up the church after the second service, I had just enough time to run home, change and grab a quick bite before going to a two and a half hour meeting that adjourned just in time for me to rush to another, even longer meeting.

My crazy Sunday schedule left me no time to think, and not having to think about the important things is sometimes good.

Today, I knocked out a couple of thousand words in my latest tome, mowed the lawn, and generally put off talking to you as long as I could.

I'm still not ready to talk about it, and there's really nothing else I could talk about today. I'm sorry since this puts you in the unenviable position of reading about what I'm not writing.

It's a shame, really. It's a great story and one years in the making. I could tell it in a way you would find fascinating. You'd laugh, you might cry and you'd almost certainly be angry at points along the way. It's the kind of story that makes you think, Discerning Reader. It's also a story I'm not ready to tell. Yet.

Father and daughter

Click here to read all about Teri's teaching award and why they gave it to her. Go ahead, I'll still be here when you get back.

Pretty groovy, huh? For those of you thinking of posting comments reminding me I "married up," don't bother. I already knew that.

Teri's students have won a bunch of awards lately from professional PR and Advertising organizations for work they've done in her classes. There have been so many recently I can't keep them all straight.

In addition, Teri's father, John Kline, received Troy University's main teaching award last week. Click here to read about that and see a picture of Teri's dad hoisting the hardware.

When was the last time a father and daughter both won significant teaching awards in the same year at two major universities? My guess is never and this is a first.

A-Day

To be a true Southerner you have to love football. Really love football. Specifically, Southeastern Conference football.

Football is the second religion of the Deep South, and the 100,000 seat stadiums of the SEC are its cathedrals. It's hard to convey to outsiders just how important SEC football is in the life of Southerners and to their self-identities. One of the most popular radio programs around here is devoted largely to SEC football. The show is several hours long and runs each weekday year round. Given the teams play only in the autumn and only 12 games a year (up to 14 if they're lucky and go on to title and bowl games), those radio shows can get mighty dull in June and July. Somehow they manage to fill the air time.

There are ten universities that comprise the SEC--twelve if you count Vanderbilt and Mississippi State. I was fortunate to attend an SEC school, the University of Georgia, and I graduated a few months after we won our one and only national football championship in my school's 225 year history (of course we've only been playing football for 118 of those years). Go Dawgs!

My adopted home state of Alabama is blessed with not one but two SEC schools, and everyone who lives here strongly identifies with one or the other. To be a citizen of Alabama, you must declare fealty to Auburn or 'Bama. You must love one and hate the other--rooting for both schools just isn't done. It doesn't matter if you attended either institution or have even set foot on campus--you're either Auburn or Alabama for life.

This creates a bit of a quandary at our house. As a graduate of another SEC school, I'm exempt from the normal rule of citizenship and am free to cheer for either Auburn or Alabama as the spirit moves. But Teri has no such option. She graduated from Auburn University and teaches at the University of Alabama. She loves both institutions, and her loyalties are deeply divided.

One glorious Saturday a year, everything in the state comes to a screeching halt for three hours as Auburn and Alabama play each other in what is known around here as the Iron Bowl. No commerce is conducted, no weddings or funerals are held--absolutely nothing is allowed to get in the way of the game. It's Christmas, New Year's and Mardi Gras all rolled into one.

Last year Alabama narrowly defeated a plucky and stubborn underdog Auburn team to preserve its undefeated record. 'Bama then went on to win the national championship. As an Auburn graduate, Teri cheered for her alma mater, but she wasn't disappointed when 'Bama won. Since Auburn had no championship hopes at that point, and a loss to Auburn in the Iron Bowl last year would have made life miserable at her office, she was okay with the result.

'Bama is used to winning national championships, but last season's was the first in a long time. They've won somewhere between eight and a hundred and seventeen titles, depending on whether an 'Bama fan is doing the counting. They definitely have a superiority complex in Tuscaloosa. 'Bama fans are a smug bunch.

Teri's building is next to the football stadium, and every day she walks past the oversized bronze statues of Bear Bryant and the other national championship winning coaches, arrayed like a proud Roman Pantheon outside the stadium gates.

Teri called me today as she walked past The Bear and gave him her daily greeting. She wanted to report the absurd scene on campus this morning. People were busy erecting large tents on the quad. Clothing vendors had set up shop. Satellite vans representing a host of TV stations littered the parking lots. Crowds of people (clearly not students) were everywhere.

Tomorrow is A-Day.

Football starved Alabamians have one event to look forward to between the end of the season in early January and the start of the next one in early September, and that's A-Day. A-Day is a glorified practice session held in the stadium in the spring. It's a mock game and someone keeps score, but since the players on both sides of the ball are on the same team, the results don't count and they do their best not to hurt each other.

It's been glorious here all week and the weather forecast calls for picture perfect conditions again tomorrow, so something like 90,000 rabid fans are likely to show up at Bryant-Denny Stadium for the spectacle. That is, to watch a football team engage in a meaningless practice. Teri has to vacate her faculty parking spot by 5 p.m. today in order to hand it over to some lucky A-Day attendee.

"They've lost their minds. I can't believe how worked up everyone is over this," Teri shouted into her cell phone. "It's just a practice--THEY CAN'T LOSE! Someone needs to tell all these people that NO COMPETITOR IS COMING."

Meanwhile, 160 miles away, Auburn's football team will hold their own A-Day scrimmage at Jordan-Hare Stadium tomorrow, drawing a similar and equally rabid crowd.

A-Day--just one of the many reasons I love living here.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Hell's waiting room

I'm not the only one who thinks fireflies are groovy. Check out the comments from yesterday's post. And add your own.

Bulgaria is the second Soviet Bloc country to join the BYE League of Nations this week. добре дошъл. I don't have any good stories about Bulgaria, but I do have a pretty good one about a Bulgarian.

The only Bulgarian I've known fairly well is a neighbor from our days in New Orleans. Let's call her Maya. Maya met and fell in love with an American man who was working there and, the next thing you know, she's an American housewife and real estate agent.

Before I met Maya, my mental image of Bulgarian women was of squat, miserable, toothless creatures living in peasant huts and resembling the potatoes they loaded into the wooden carts they dragged down the dirt paths of their squalid villages.

That wasn't Maya. Maya was charming, outgoing and downright bubbly--especially when she'd had a few and got all flirty. She was also, well there's no other way to put this, hot. Now when I think of Bulgaria, I have an entirely different image in my head, but I don't want to visit there and have my dreams shattered.

Maya had a kid in high school and I'll never forget a bit of conversation I overheard between her son and one of his school chums. We were all standing on the St. Charles Avenue neutral ground waiting for a Mardi Gras float to pass, which might be the best place on earth to catch snippets of interesting conversation.

Anyway, the boy's buddy says to Maya's kid, "you know, you're mom is really kind of hot."

"I know," her son said in a resigned, almost mournful, tone. Holy Oedipal complex, Batman!

Despite my confused mental images, Bulgaria sounds like a nice place. It's relatively prosperous (among the top third nations in the world in per capita GDP) with lots of sights to see. Bulgaria has beautiful mountains, the Danube River, Black Sea resorts and other attractions that make it a place Greeks and Germans love to visit. Maya talked about the good wines produced in Bulgaria, and I didn't believe her until I did a little research and found she wasn't joking.

I just got back from the DMV. Ordinarily I'd rather be bent over with my pants down and at the receiving end of my doctor's latex-gloved finger than visit the DMV, but, you know what? It wasn't that bad.

For those of you in Bulgaria, DMV stands for the Department of Motor Vehicles. It's the government office where you go to get a driver license. Side note: I always thought it was called a driver's license, but apparently driver license is correct.

In America, everyone drives, and that means everyone must visit the DMV once every few years to keep their license up to date. In the United States, your driver license also doubles as the official form of identification almost everyone uses, so it's an important document to have.

I've held driver licenses from six different states, so I've been to a lot of DMV offices in my life. At best they're sterile and impersonal places. At worst they're dark and grubby waiting rooms from hell.

Many of the people who work at the DMV seem miserable, like they wish they were anywhere but behind that counter helping you. There's almost always a long line. Correction: there are almost always a number of long lines, and I usually find myself waiting in the wrong one.

One thing common to every DMV office I've ever visited is a plethora of crude handmade signs giving unintelligible directions that often contradict the instructions given by the other handmade signs plastered everywhere. What's up with that?

If I were made dictator of a state, I would make sure DMV offices are bright and cheery, tastefully decorated places. There would be lots of them with plenty of parking and convenient to the places where people actually live. These offices would be filled with the bright and shiny workers who live to serve. DMV offices would be models of efficiency--places where the computers hum, there is never a line, and the employees occasionally break into joyful song and dance routines. Does it make any sense at all that the one government office everyone has to visit must be so depressing?

When I last went to the DMV four years ago, I had just moved from Louisiana to Alabama, so I had to go to a "special" line that operated only at "special" unadvertised hours. I arrived too late to get my license that day.

When I returned the next day, I was sent home because I didn't have the proper proof of residency.

On my third trip the place was closed--for something called Confederate Memorial Day, a holiday recognized by the Alabama DMV and no one else in the world.

I spent most of the fourth day sitting on an uncomfortable bench waiting for my number to be called. It was a long wait since their computers crashed as I walked through the door. Persistence paid, and eventually the State of Alabama agreed to make me a legal driver of their roads.

Today I made my way to the exhausted courthouse of the tired Suburbingham city of Bessemer. Once upon a time, Bessemer grew up and prospered on the now defunct steel industry. It once had a thriving downtown, but it's now only a shell of its former self--not quite a ghost town, but getting there. After setting off the metal detector and getting a cursory body search, I was allowed into the courthouse and the cramped and dingy DMV office inside.

By some miracle I found the correct line right away. I had hit the DMV lottery since there was only one guy ahead of me and he was almost finished. I was in and out in ten minutes. I even got the woman behind the counter to crack a hint of a smile by comparing her photographic skills with the person who took my picture four years ago. "Don't put it on me. I take a good picture, but I can only do so much," she said.

Luna luce

The Ukraine has become the 43rd nation to join the BYE League of Nations (вітати). Did you know that Ukraine is the 8th most visited nation on the planet? I didn't. Granted, a lot of those tourists are Russians heading to Yalta and other Black Sea resorts for some much needed summer sunshine. The Black Sea resorts are the Miami Beach of Eastern Europe.

Ten minutes of research reveals that there's a lot to see and do in the Ukraine--beautiful cathedrals, natural wonders, old castles, historical cities. Plus, you can have a plate of chicken kiev in Kiev. That could be fun.

I've had french fries, french bread and french onion soup in France, although in France those dishes are just called fries, bread and onion soup. Well, not exactly, since the French tend to indiscriminately speak in their own language, and they use the French words for fries, bread and onion soup over there when they actually mean french fries, french bread and french onion soup. Confusing.

I've had peking duck in Beijing (the Chinese are better hosts and actually called it peking duck in Peking). It might be time to fly to Kiev and add another culinary/geographical mashup to the life list.

Hmmm, so I've got a new country to add to my growing roster of places to see before I die. The Ukraine--who knew?

Teri came home tired and feeling a bit melancholy last night. It had been a tough day of work. Her students aren't where they should be in a couple of classes and she's having to crack the whip to get them motivated as the semester draws to a close.

It was already dark when she got home, and she retreated to the solitude of her comfy chair on the back porch to sit and think for a bit before turning in. A few minutes later I heard her squeal with joy and I ran out to investigate.

Fireflies. Fireflies everywhere.

Fireflies are amazing and delightful creatures. Two nights ago there were none. Last night there were dozens flashing everywhere in our back yard and in the Bayberry woods beyond. There were more fireflies out last night than we have ever seen in our yard, and the sight of them immediately lifted Teri's dark mood for the rest of the evening.

Both of us flashed back to a night years ago when we stood on a hill overlooking a vineyard outside of Siena, Italy. It was a perfect night and we were taking a stroll and basking in the afterglow of a fabulous meal at an intimate restaurant.

We crested the hill, looked down into the rows of grape vines, and there they were.

Fireflies. Fireflies everywhere.

There were thousands of them lighting up the vineyard. There were so many that the grapevines themselves glowed. I've never seen such a thing before or since. What a moment. What a night.

When we returned to our hotel after our amazing walk, I asked the guy at the front desk the word for firefly in Italian. He didn't understand the word firefly, but after a bit of pantomime, he knew what I was asking. The word I think he came up with was luna luce (pronounced loo-chay). I translated or mistranslated this to moonlight. Maybe he said luce luna (we'd had some wine that night, after all, and I might have transposed the words). According to Google Translate, the Italian word for firefly is lucciola, so perhaps I just misheard him or he thought my pantomime was of the moon. But in our house fireflies will always be known as luna luce.

Meanwhile, in the here and now, we are experiencing the most beautiful spring of our lives. It's been a couple of weeks since we've turned on the heat and there has been no need for air conditioning at all. The days have been sunny and warm and the nights have been crisp and cool. Everything is green and the fireflies are dancing.

As I type this, my office window is open and the birds are singing outside on a bright clear day. This morning the first of Teri's irises bloomed. Here's a picture of it next to one of our dogwood trees. This glorious spring has been our reward for getting through an especially brutal winter.

Today the Ukraine can wait. If I won a free trip to Hawaii or Tahiti today, I'd have to decline the offer. Right here, right now I'm in paradise and there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

Meet my imaginary friends

Teri and I spent most of Saturday as part of a group painting the interior of a friend's house. The friend, a single woman, hadn't painted the place since she bought it ten years ago, and it was overdue for a touch-up. She isn't the "handy" type and her modest budget didn't allow for hiring real painters, so a group of volunteer amateurs banded together to help her out.

I planned to write about the experience today, but I realize I don't have anything funny or insightful to say about painting walls. Unless something goes horribly wrong, reading about painting is about as interesting as watching it dry.

Well, there was the comment from one of the painting party who said "now I understand why so many house painters are drunks." I'd never thought about it before, but it's true that painting is mind-numbing drudgery.

Painting is also hard work, and after a day climbing ladders and contorting our bodies to reach difficult spots, everyone was tired and sore. I went straight home and collapsed in my easy chair for the duration. Teri eventually came home, but she stopped first at the Suburbingham nail joint for a manicure and pedicure from a first generation Vietnamese woman who calls herself Brittany. Teri was anxious to get the splotches of paint off of her hands and wanted an excuse to chill in the massage chair the nail place provides for its customers.

Wow, that was dreadfully dull. I'm boring myself today. Let's change the subject, shall we?

I've had strange dreams the last few days. Last night one of my dreams gave me an idea for a cool new resident of Constantinople, Alabama and I've passed a pleasant day in that town watching him come to life today.

I need to stop having these dreams or I'll ruin my book. For a small city, Constantinople already has far too many residents. I'm still not halfway through the first draft of Academic Affairs (working title) and I've already got 47 characters in the book. It's to the point where I've had to create a detailed spreadsheet to keep them all straight. Many of them play minor roles, but I'm going to have to "off" a bunch of them in the second draft to keep the reader from being completely lost and to keep AA from turning into a phone book.

The newest addition to the cast, the character I dreamed up, is a man named Shad Kirkwood. Most people think Shad is named after the fish, but it's short for Shadrach. Kirkwood is the wealthiest man in Catahoula County and one of the wealthiest men in the state, perhaps the nation. He owns more than half of the land in the county and is involved in many successful outside business ventures. He is rarely seen and is a bit of a mystery in a town where mysteries are hard to come by. You see, in Constantinople everyone already knows everyone else's business.

Would you like to meet some of the other cast members of AA? I'm in the mood to show a few of them off to you.

Eli Townshend is our hero and protagonist. He's the interim police chief of the Alabama Tech University Police Department. He's held the title of interim chief since the previous chief retired. He wants the permanent job, but so do others who are waiting for the selection committee to act. Eli is also a deacon at the First Baptist Church of Constantinople. Eli is a local boy who has never quite lived up to his potential or his own dreams.

Sandy Townshend is Eli's wife and a biology professor at ATU. Everyone in town knows she's having an affair and is planning to leave Eli. Everyone, that is, except for Eli.

Doug Kimmel is the brilliant young professor of biomedical engineering who dies of a stroke on page one. We will learn about a hundred pages later that he died of extremely unnatural causes.

Colonel Heffler is a hard nosed out-of-towner who wants the dead professor's hard drives for reasons he refuses to explain.

Tyrone Williams is the star running back and Heisman candidate for the undefeated ATU Bears football team. When Eli arrests him on the eve of the LSU game, all hell breaks loose.

Coach Mack Samson. Head coach of the Bears football team (kickoff chant for the green and gold--"Go bears! Maul 'em! Grrr!"). Coach Mack is not a nice man and he will stop at nothing stop Eli from thwarting his ambitions of SEC glory.

J.D. Fox, the senior pastor of FBC Constantinople. A decent guy, but he's walking a political tight wire as his members approach a congregational vote on whether to allow women to be ordained as deacons. When First Methodist Church across the street installed a woman pastor a few months back, it brought this long-simmering issue of the role of women in the church to a head.

Dr. Clarissa Jones-Owens is a university administrator clawing her way to the top. Everyone on campus calls her The Viper because she "strikes without warning."

Skeet Ferguson is a captain on the ATU force and Eli's close friend. They're also rivals for the permanent chief's job.

Barry "Dump" Lewis is the Catahoula County Sheriff. Dump says he's one election away from retirement.

Dr. Fred Nickels is the county coroner. Eli has known Doctor Fred his whole life.

Chip Hester is the district attorney. A fussy, almost prissy, little man, he's a lot tougher than people give him credit for.

Those are just some of the imaginary friends I'm living with these days. Constantinople is one crazy town.

Come fly with me

A few years ago, I was flying somewhere almost every week--usually on business. Some weeks, with connections, I'd have six or more takeoffs. I'm fortunate that, for every takeoff, I've always had a matching successful landing. Well, there was that one close call at DFW, but we eventually made it to the ground in one piece.

I don't have a clue how many flights I've been on, but it's a lot. Enough to earn me elite status on Delta for several years running and more free drink coupons than I can count on Southwest. I still have enough miles banked from all those business trips to take me anywhere in the world on Continental.

I once got a Mexican guy sitting next to me blitzed on a long multi-stop flight to Tampa on Southwest. He had so many free beers from drink coupons I was handing out to everyone around me that the airplane ran out of his preferred brand by the second leg. His mastery of English was rapidly failing due to his growing fog, but he still had the nerve to complain about having to switch when he got the bad news.

The flight attendant, one of those indomitable Texas women, gave him a look with ice-water eyes and said with a sweet smile "shut up, Pedro, they're free." The guy thought about that a moment, nodded his head, and meekly ordered a Bud. I discreetly packed away the rest of my drink coupons and she gave me an approving nod.

True story.

It's been a long time since I really enjoyed flying, and these days I do as little of it as possible. My last commercial flights were last June--to Paris and back. It's inconvenient to get to Europe in a car.

Several things have combined to make flying a pain.

The increased security post-9/11 has definitely increased the hassle factor. I accept the invasive level of security at airports because I don't want to be killed by a crazed terrorist who thinks blowing up a plane full of innocent people will somehow take him to paradise, even though I know that most of what the TSA does is just to reassure us that they're doing something.

The new nude-o-scan machines now being installed in airports are a little over the top, though. I don't even like my doctor to see me naked, and I really don't groove to the idea of Luvinia at the TSA checkpoint passing judgement on every little detail of my manly physique.

Then there are the planes themselves. These days most airplanes leave packed to the gills. Airlines have become very sophisticated at the art of load management, which ensures that every seat is taken on almost every flight. Gone are the days when you could expect to spread out over an open middle seat.

The planes also feel more crowded because the airlines have managed to cram more seats into the same space on many of their airplanes. Also, the seats are the same size they were fifty years ago while the average American has become quite a bit bigger over the last half century.

Now, with bag check fees imposed by most airlines, people are trying to cram all their worldly goods under their seats and into those overhead bins. I've seen some heated moments on more than one flight recently when center of the universe types removed other people's stuff from the overhead and replaced it with their own.

Remember hot meals on long flights? I do. Charging for a pillow or blanket? Give me a break.

I've noticed some airlines these days play games with flight cancellations. If a flight isn't full enough, you're likely to have a suspicious last-minute "mechanical" or "weather" issue that puts you on a later packed flight. Some airlines do this more than others, but it's not a very nice trick to pull on paying customers.

Two items in the news this week have convinced me that it's only going to get worse for all of us. European budget carrier Ryanair is considering installing pay potties on short flights. Excuse me, pay potty (singular) since they're also planning on removing two of the three toilets on each airplane to add six more seats.

Also in the news, U.S. carrier Spirit Airlines will be charging customers for bringing carry-on bags aboard their flights.

I have a pretty good feeling for how that meeting went:

"How's it going, Darlene?"

"Pretty well, Frank. We're flying at ninety-eight percent capacity and our revenues are up two percent since we instituted the bag check fee, but the fee has created some secondary problems for us."

"Really? What problems?"

"Well, for starters, our customers hate us. Most of our comment cards and e-mails come addressed to 'Dear Satan's Spawn.'"

"That's okay, the sheep hate all the airlines, so that's not a competitive disadvantage. Anything else?"

"Yes, so many people are stuffing their luggage into the overheads on full flights that we're having to do way too many last minute bag checks at the gate. Those customers with big carry-ons are successfully avoiding the bag check fees and it's causing some departure delays. Three flights missed their takeoff slots last week and were delayed over an hour each because of this."

"Hmmm, I have an idea. Why don't we just charge customers for their carry-ons too. That way more of them will check their bags at the ticket counter. That will reduce the crowding in the overheads, eliminate the take-off delays and produce more revenue for us. It's a win, win, win."

"Frank, you're a genius!"

"That's why I'm the CEO and you're the VP for logistics, Darlene. You can thank me at bonus time."

I'm not mad at the airlines. They've got to do what they've got to do to make a buck. I'm just a little sad it has come down to this.

I have flights coming up next month and again in July, and I plan to fly on Southwest both times. The planes will be packed, but the hassle factor seems to be a little smaller on Southwest. Plus, Southwest is one of the few airlines left that doesn't charge me to check my bags.

Of course Southwest doesn't send me birthday cards any more since I stopped flying so often, and they used to send me two every year. Oh well, I don't mind the tradeoff.

We've got spirit, yes we do!

I've taught college students many times in the past, but this was the first time I'd spoken to a high school class. Come to think of it, this was the first time I'd set foot inside a working high school other than on election day since I graduated from Lakeside High in 1977.

Outside it was a sunny spring morning and every surface was covered in a thin layer of pollen, giving the world a warm yellow glaze. Being trapped inside at the mercy of amateur teachers with no grade on the line was the last place any of these seniors wanted to be.

I was about two minutes into my presentation and I thought I was doing okay, when the prettiest girl in the class leaned over to her BFF and stage whispered "he's so goofy."

I turned on the little provocateur like a starving wolf on a newborn lamb. "You're right young lady--I am goofy. What I'm not is deaf. My, my, your face turns such a lovely shade of red when you're embarrassed," I said as a heady mix of laughter, shock and awe swirled in the room and the now-mortified Miss Popularity buried her blushing face in her hands. To every nerd-boy who ever got dissed in public by the prom queen, you're welcome. That was for you.

From that moment on, I had them in the palm of my hands. There are times when humiliation is the perfect weapon in the arsenal of the public speaker.

At a weak moment in the depths of winter, a friend asked me if I would come and speak at her Suburbingham high school's upcoming career day. I tried to decline by pointing out out the absurdity of a career dropout and unpublished author giving career advice to anyone and especially to the flower of American youth. But she must have been short of qualified speakers because she insisted that I'd be great.

I forgot about the event until one day last week when a letter arrived in my mailbox reminding me about career day and filling me in on the details.

The format for the day was for the speakers to be broken up into panels of three based on their occupations. Each speaker would participate in two one-and-a-half hour sessions. There was the architect, the police officer, the military officer, the teacher, the forester, and so on.

I was on the communications panel and was placed with a public relations person for an area auto plant and a no-show third panelist who decided at the last minute that career day would be an ideal time to have elective surgery.

That left the two of us to hold the wavering attention of a class of high schoolers for an hour and a half. Twice. Ted, the PR guy, had planned to show all kinds of cool PowerPoint slides, funny commercials and videos of his manufacturing plant. His plans were dashed on arrival when he found there was no way to project all his groovy stuff. I planned to go low-tech and do an opening activity on the whiteboard, but the markers in the room were all dry and unusable.

This was turning ugly fast. The clock was starting to look like a formidable opponent.

When we were escorted to our first classroom, we found it occupied with the most miserable looking young man I've ever seen. The poor guy was slumped in a chair in the corner looking like he'd just been told his mother died. It turns out that Mr. Hooten, the earnest lawyer-turned-teacher whose classroom we had just invaded, wasn't upset by our presence. I'm sure he was thrilled we were there because our presence allowed him to devote all of his attention to breathing. He was suffering from some sort of respiratory malady his doctors had been unable to diagnose (allergies, I'll bet).

Ted was my age and had a career that started the way mine did. He was a beat reported at a small South Alabama newspaper before moving on to the Birmingham News and then to PR for the auto company.

The first session went okay, but when Ted and I ran out of gas with a half hour left on the clock and an awkward silence descending on the classroom, Mr. Hooten rallied from his private hell long enough to lob a few thoughtful questions our way. His quick thinking allowed us to kill off the remaining time and depart with a semblance of dignity.

After a convivial lunch of barbecue with the other career day speakers, it was time for the second show.

We were ready for them this time. They were ready for us too, since the students told me word of my earlier call-out to Miss Popularity had spread through the school like wildfire.

Mrs. Henderson (not her real name, I just can't remember it), owned the second classroom we visited. She had the day's date and the number of school days remaining (27) written neatly on her board. "Not like you're counting them or anything," I said to her. "Oh yes I am, and they are too," she replied.

Ted and I led a lively discussion of the changing nature of journalism, publishing and public relations in the iPad/Facebook era. This classroom had an old-fashioned chalkboard and plenty of chalk, so I was able to capture the kids with the opening exercise I was forced to abandon in the first session. The time flew by and the kids were fully engaged, laughing (mostly with me and not at me) and firing off great questions the entire time.

I actually earned a smattering of applause when I finished my bit and passed the baton to Ted in that second session. That felt pretty good.

An old high school buddy turned high school teacher gave me an ominous warning in advance that things had changed a little since I had last set foot in an operational school. I was shocked when I learned at lunch that the big public Suburbingham high schools each have three police officers assigned to them full time. Wow! These are the best public high schools in the state, and not the rough inner-city schools closer to downtown Birmingham.

Times may have changed, but these kids were wonderful and I had a great time with them. And it's true what they say; it really does smell like teen spirit in there.

An inconvenient day

Bear with me, I'm a little frustrated today.

Teri and I had our monthly budget meeting this morning and realized we've been spending money like the Zimbabwean government over the last few weeks. The coming month isn't looking much better since there are several more major expenditures just over the horizon. Spending more than you take in isn't a workable plan over the long run, and trying to match our infinite wants, needs and desires with a very tight and limited budget can be frustrating.

Teri is on edge after spending an uncomfortable hour in a conference call with a bunch of lawyers yesterday. The good news there is that we're not party to the suit they were calling about, and she can't be compelled to testify in their upcoming trial, but the conversation did dredge up some sad post-Katrina memories for her. Seeing Teri have to relive those difficult days when she's so happy now is frustrating for me.

I'm frustrated because of a gift I received recently. I have a friend (let's call him Steve) who operates his own personal Random Book Club. At odd intervals a package postmarked Houston will unexpectedly appear in my mailbox. Inside the package will be a well-used book that Steve has decided I need to read for reasons that sometimes elude me. Steve's gift books seem random and esoteric to the extreme(The Philosophy of Beer was one recent RBC main selection), but I have known Steve a long time and I know he carefully chooses each for his own reasons, so I read them.

The truth is, I love the Random Book Club. There's something so whimsical and, well, random about it.

Steve's latest Random Book Club selection left me frustrated and a little angry when I got around to reading it this week. It was a non-fiction book about a guy who somehow got an agent and a book contract with a major publisher without even having an idea other than he wanted to write a novel. He never wrote the novel. Instead he produced an idiotic, horribly-written book about a stupid game nerds play using the Google search engine.

As someone who has an actual novel completed and a second well underway, it's frustrating to think that this dope somehow got his book published with a real publisher and I haven't even come close. That Steve's gift still had it's one dollar remainder-bin price tag on it and that he spent more money on postage sending it to me than on the gift itself was small consolation. Thanks Steve. I can't wait for the next one.

Most of my frustration today comes from the day getting away from me and nothing "productive" getting done (unless you count BYE blogging therapy as productive, and I don't). I hate lost days.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. I had my day carefully planned. One mid-morning e-mail later and I was off to visit a friend in the intensive care unit of a Suburbingham hospital. That was followed by an impromptu diet-busting lunch date with another hospital visitor and a lingering conversation on the nature of life.

My friend's sudden illness wasn't convenient for me and was even less so for him, I suspect. Prior to the Best Year Ever, I wouldn't have allowed anything as trivial as a hospital visit to interrupt my day. I would have told myself that I would go when it was convenient, even though I knew full well that I was kidding myself. Convenient times never come and someone else would make "my" trip to the hospital.

Before my Best Year Ever, my calendar drove my life. This year, I've allowed my life to drive my calendar, at least to some extent. I like the way I'm doing it this year better, but the new way has its moments of frustration.

I've always been the kind of person who lives in the now, and I don't waste a lot of time wallowing in an ocean of regret for comissions and omissions of the past. Still, I feel sorry for many of the things I've missed over the years because they either got in the way of my all-important and unchangeable plans or simply weren't convenient for me. I can think of a lot of them--perhaps you were one of those who I wasn't there for at least once, Discerning Reader.

It's hard for a leopard to change his spots overnight, and I'm sitting here a little annoyed over losing time today that would have otherwise been productive. I know in my heart I used that time wisely, but still.

I'm also sitting here annoyed because I know much of tomorrow is already lost for reasons that will become clear in due time. Be sure to come back to this corner of the webiverse soon, because I'm almost certain the next BYE post will be the funniest of the entire year.

My inner carnivore

This and that:

Ecuador, Peru and Oman have joined the BYE League of Nations in the last few days.

Here are some things you didn't know about those three countries that I gleaned from Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge.

Ecuador (literally the Republic of the Equator) is home to some 5,000 species of butterfly. Its capital city, Quito, has the best preserved historic center in Latin America.

Peru is home to the oldest known complex society in the Americas, the Norte Chico civilization. Norte Chico sounds like the name of an upscale women's fashion store to me. By 1532 a combination of smallpox and the conquistadors brought down the Incan empires that had ruled Peru for centuries. After Brazil and New Guinea, Peru has the largest number of uncontacted tribes in the world.

Peru and Ecuador are adjacent and they had a border war that began in 1941 and wasn't completely resolved until 1998.

Oman is a hot place with temperatures that reach 129 degrees (54 C). The head of state is a sultan (groovy), and about 20 percent of the meteorites found on earth have been found in the central desert there. For some reason, hockey is popular in Oman.

I just read that Tiger Woods will have a security force of 90 people guarding him when he plays at the Masters' golf tournament this week. His bodyguards will include former Secret Service agents who have been given photos of his former girlfriends and instructions to keep them away from Mr. Woods should they show up in Augusta this week. Sad.

My first thought was that the amount of money this golfer is paying for bodyguards this week alone would be sufficient to maintain my comfortable lifestyle for several years.

Except for the Florida Gators, I don't usually root against anyone in any sporting endeavor, but I'm making an exception for Mr. Woods and his corporate sponsors this week. For him to triumph against his self-induced adversity and after a cynical rehabilitation would be wrong.

I'm not a fan of the sport, but I guess I'll watch some of the big basketball game tonight. Everybody loves an underdog, so I'll be cheering for Butler along with everyone else who ever saw Hoosiers. I fully expect Cinderella's carriage to turn into a pumpkin by midnight, but it's nice that these young men got to go to the ball.

I haven't forgotten about you, Walmart, The company whose slogan is "Save money. Live better," has experienced a drop in sales in recent months. You might think this has something to do with the economy, but I see it as proof that the boycott I instituted on Black Friday is taking hold. To revive their flagging sales, Walmart announced they will be dropping their grocery prices. Good for them.

It's been over four months since Teri or I set foot in a Walmart, and I promise it's possible to save money and live better without them. When I first wrote about my quixotic boycott, instituted because of the company's immoral marketing practices, a bunch of you wrote me to tell me how much you adore Walmart. That's cool. Last week I set a brief scene in my work-in-progress in the Constantinople, Alabama Walmart, so my characters still shop there, even if I won't.

We broke our Lenten meat fast a day early. On Saturday morning we had french toast with sausage patties and Saturday evening we devoured a steak, with baked potatoes covered in butter and sour cream. After a month and a half without meat and only a very little seafood, we were ready to indulge our inner carnivores.

I may or may not have cheated a couple of times over Lent since I had a Taco Bell burrito and a Big Mac from McDonalds in moments when extreme hunger overcame discipline and resolve, and there was something meatish in both of those items.

I can't begin to describe how delicious that steak and sausage was after a period of self-denial. I spent most of Saturday night moaning with pleasure in something close to a protein coma. I respect the decision of vegetarians to refrain from eating meat, but it's not for me. There's just too much happiness to be found in a perfectly cooked pork chop to stay away from meat forever.

Teri and I decided to abstain from meat for the period for several reasons. Exercising self-discipline can be good for the soul, and that was certainly part of it; but the main reason for avoiding meat for Lent was for our health.

We dropped all meat, bread, potatoes, sweets, fast foods and processed foods from our diet and substituted them with a diet made up of fresh fruits and vegetables, a little olive oil and lots and lots of brown rice. We also allowed ourselves a little seafood once or twice a week and a spoon or two of peanut butter in those moments of desperation.

The diet is working. Between us, we've lost nearly 30 pounds. I lost 7 pounds in March alone. Lent is over and we're not at our goal weights (Teri is not far off, but I'm nowhere close), so we're going to keep going. After Saturday's feast, which continued through Easter Sunday, the brown rice and veggies are back on the menu starting this morning.

I shouldn't be surprised we're losing weight on this diet. Our travels through Vietnam were a revelation for me in that department. Teri and I traveled all over that country without once seeing a really fat Vietnamese person. The diet there consists mainly of fruits, vegetables and loads of white rice along with occasional tiny portions of meat to add flavor and texture. Hmmmm. Sounds a lot like how we're eating now.

Going forward, we're going to allow ourselves red meat or poultry one night a week, and that weekly indulgence will be all the more special for the waiting.

Kid in a sandbox

Yesterday was both Maundy Thursday and April Fools Day, and the day was bookended with celebrations of these two very different events.

The weather was ideal with a high of 80 degrees (that's 27 degrees for those of you in most of the world). A light breeze blew, there was low humidity and not a cloud in the sky. Ahhh.

Early in the morning, and still in my pre-caffeinated phase, Teri and I began to map out our day. Teri had no classes to teach yesterday, so we had planned to spend a chunk of the morning acquiring plants and gardening supplies and then spend part of the afternoon installing our new green friends.

But Teri informed me that she had just heard a revised local forecast calling for "a radical weather change, with a freak late Arctic blast coming in from the north later today." It was disappointing, but our gardening session was off, she said.

Still groggy and in my wake up fog, I fell for her tale until she burst into laughter and "April fooled" me. Usually I'm on the delivering end of pranks in our house, so Teri was delighted with herself for "getting" me with her tall tale.

I have my moments, though, like the time the garage door "went crazy," trapping Teri inside. The door kept opening halfway and then closing again. It took her forever to realize that I was just around the corner in tears of laughter and that the spare opener was the cause of the demon-possessed door. Her priceless puzzled expressions and exasperated squeals were worth the brief beating I received when she caught me. Good times.

After a couple of cups of coffee, my morning fog lifted, and we were off on a glorious spring morning.

All of Suburbingham had spring fever yesterday. Everywhere we went, the roads were gridlocked. It seems everyone else also took the day off and was out and about in the spring sunshine. Traffic was frustratingly slow for a weekday morning.

That sheer number of cars on the road wasn't the only reason the roads were blocked.

Maybe it was spring fever or the increased traffic or perhaps the rising pollen count was having some kind of chemical effect on the brains of Suburbinghamites, but something was definitely impairing the motoring skills of the local populace yesterday.

There were wrecks everywhere, and we encountered every one of them in our travels on Thursday. Radio traffic reports sounded like the play-by-play of the demolition derby. Whatever was causing all of this vehicular carnage, it wasn't the road or weather conditions--they were perfect.

Teri planted herbs in her corner of our garden plot, while I put the vegetable plants in the ground. That's me looking like a happy kid in a sandbox, putting something green side up. I planted a number of different kinds of veggies including yellow squash, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant (oriental and globe) and peppers (cayenne and poblano). But tomatoes are the stars of my garden.

I love the taste of a home grown garden tomato almost as much as life itself. Store bought tomatoes don't begin to compare in taste or texture to the ones that come from my own back yard. Tomatoes bought at the grocery are literally a pale imitation of the ones I grow--they're not the same thing at all.

My tomatoes are juicy and come in vivid colors. They are alive with rich and complex flavors. They have a yin and yang of acidity and sweetness that dances joyfully across the tongue. The ones at the store, even the expensive vine-ripened organic kind, are lifeless and bland, with a dry, mealy texture.

I raise some of the modern standards like Beefsteak, Better Boy and Early Girl, but most of my tomatoes are heirloom varieties like Arkansas Traveler, Yellow Pear, and Cherokee Purple. My favorite tomato variety name is Mister Stripey--I always plant one of those just because the name sounds so trippy. They're tasty too.

Because I raise so many different varieties, at the peak of tomato season, I'll harvest baskets full of tomatoes ranging from the size of grapefruits to cherries and in colors from bright red to vivid yellow to rich pink to deep purple. And they will all be delicious. Until you've had a bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado sandwich on toasted white bread, you haven't lived. Mine come slathered in mayo and made with thick juicy slices of ripe homegrown tomato sprinkled with a bit of salt and pepper. I can't think of anything better. We call that delicacy a "blat" at our house, and if everything works out, in a couple of months I'll have my next one.

After planting, I watered in the new crop. Check out the picture. I wasn't kidding about how beautiful the day was. It's a late spring, so the oaks in the Bayberry Woods haven't leafed out yet, but everything is greening up fast now.

After watering the plants, we spiffied up and headed to a surprisingly well attended Maundy Thursday communion service. It was the perfect end to a day in paradise.

Happy Easter everyone!