Christmas Themed TortugaPalooza: Spies In Charlotte

I’m watching this special on scary movies....

Heather is out shopping with her best friend in Kansas City... London is asleep on the couch behind me; Jasmine is sleeping under the table.

It is January fifth... so I’m ten days late... but I still think I have my journal in before the other dudes.

It is a misty, chill day in KC... (actually, Independence, MO). Before she went off to shop therapy, Heather and I had a bit of an argument about faith and belief... A fun argument (for me, seemed to be frustrating and aggravating for her) Fun because I value her sharp mind and her command of ideas and language.

But all that I guess is for the Jan Journal... here’s what went on in December:

• We go to a nice dinner
• The family helps me get the tickets ready for Palooza
• We visit my ex wife
• We finish Louisiana Renaissance festival, get some work done and leave
• We arrive at mom’s, and get stuck
• Frankie D’s House
• Palooza Two, the final showing
• Breakfast with dear friends, and Christmas shopping
• What do you mean, I parked in a river?
• Christmas with the Kranks
• My December gifts to you
• After some repairs we arrive in KC
• It’s easier the second time
• Happy New Year!

SO... when last we left our intrepid adventures, Heather and I had just finished the photo shoot in New Orleans for Omar’s up-and-coming Video game: Agent Sadisco.

Jef’s wife Sharon had flown out to the bayou to visit her hubby, and after the non-stop partying in the quarter, we thought it would be nice to go out to a swankier, more adult evening; just Jef’s family, and mine. Riki was entertaining a guest elsewhere, and it was nice to dine somewhere upscale. It is still somewhat weird for me, the former vegetarian to eat steak or meat at all really... so of course, I had duck (sorry Daffy!).

 

Grown-ups dinner

Helping me get ready

Little Gray Daughter helps

With the final Palooza show just a few days and 800 miles away, I had loads of work to do. I had tickets to print, cut, stuff in ‘Will Call’ envelopes and box up. I had bags to pack, stuff to organize... and the house to move. Of course I enlisted the help of my entire family. Heather and Jazz... not so much. But London jumped right in to help. To be fair, Heather cut most of the tickets, did all of the labeling... and I could not have gotten by without her... but it sure will be fun watching her read the first part of this paragraph!

Speaking of my Delicate Flower of the Orient; I grow more and more in love with her each day. I mean sure, she’s pretty and all that, but she’s also graceful, classy, smart, funny. Even a little, pleasantly weird... She keeps me smiling, and guessing and often... swearing. Heather and I went to dinner with my ex-wife Diana at her home in Baton Rouge. Now admittedly, my relationship with my ex is different than most folks in our situation... but how would you have handled the evening and the meeting if you were in Heather’s place? It was a lovely dinner and a lovely time.

Finally, The Tortugas finished their run at the Louisiana show. We packed our gear in record time and Riki and Jef scattered like leaves in the wind. Heather and I went at a more leisurely pace... Our next engagement was Friday night in NC, and we didn’t have to bring the RV. It was just easier going to the plantation. My mother and her new Fiancé are building a plantation twenty minutes from the festival (more on that later).

The next two days following the festival’s close saw Heather and I packing up our trailer, breaking down the various parts of the Maze and Test of Strength, and heading twenty minutes up-the-road to mom’s. We made a brief stop to get some tire work (which we’d postponed) done. And then off to Mom’s.

 

Baby, meet my ex-wife

Thermoblock looks like styrofoam legos!

It makes strong, insulated houses though

As I mentioned, Mom and her Fiancé are building a plantation style home on twelve acres in a small village called Folsom in Louisiana... They’re building it out of a weird product Frank discovered called Thermoblock. It stacks together like Styrofoam LEGOs... but when completed, concrete poured down the hollow core, and stuccoed, you have walls that can resist hurricane-force winds, that have both thermal insulation AND thermal inertia.

I have talked before about the workshop they have built, and the small, clever apartment... One of the great things was I had my Mother and Frank hook-up an electric socket outside for my RV (which was done wrong, as it turns out - more on that in a minute). They had a septic system with a sewer hook-up for our home. It was perfect. We’d stay for free, celebrate Christmas with my mom, and avoid the expense and confusion of a long trip to Charlotte just for the Palooza show. But first we had to get into our spot, just behind the shop.

We didn’t make it.

It hadn’t rained in weeks. There was a drough: the level of the lake, the center of the Louisiana Festival site, was really low. So of course it rained the morning we had to move, and I got our house (and my truck stuck) in the mud behind the workshop. At least the trailer was relatively level. We ran a set of loooong extension cords out to the trailer, and slept in a field, in the mud, that first night. The fog swallowed our house whole and it set our schedule back one whole day.

 

I indicate my stuck in the mud-ness

The fog creeps in to swallow us

The next afternoon, after the ground had dried some, I failed miserably to get our home free. When Heather and I put our heads together we came up with a new plan. Heather did the stunt driving; I did the directing and muddy work. We got our house high-and dry, level, and plugged in... only to discover that they’d wired the electrical socket all wrong.

Our house is wired for 120 volt AC. Thirty amps power is good, but fifty is really good. You may not know that there are several wires that provide electricity to your circuit-breaker box; if you hook-up two of them together you can get 250 volts... you need this for your dryer, for example.

When you hook up 250 volts to your RV however... things start to smoke and glow.
Again it was Heather that saved our butts... she noticed the vacuum and the bedroom fan-light were operating weirdly. Fortunately, the living room circuit breaker blew, saving the computer, and the ridiculously large TV. But we did blow up the microwave and the beard-trimmer.

We switched to a different plug, packed our bags, and a day-and-a-half late departed for Charlotte, and the final TortugaPalooza.

 

---

Our good friend Frank was hosting the Twins at his and his lovely wife’s home. (Thanks, Frankie D!) Riki took this opportunity to model a pair of Heather’s pants. We were taken to a fabulous hole-in-the-wall restaurant, had a nice night’s sleep, and after a while it was show time.

There were surprises: our Minnesota Chapter-head, and good friend Kay Kinsey flew in for the show. Our amazing Chapter heads had whipped-up some great gift baskets, personalized even. We got some swell gifts, (thanks again you fabulous ladies!). Riki blushed when he got his Super Bear! And the show ... went off.

 

 

Riki has a great ass, just ask him ("Booty Wench")

Bullshit and Scaramouche - the same thing? (Book title: On Bullshit)

Riki loved his bear ("I Amaze Myself")

One for the ladies

I almost wrote that the show went off "without a hitch", or "went well" But neither could be further from the truth. The techs supplied by the venue had their head up their collective asses, equipment malfunctioned, software acted-up...

Jef spent a significant part of the show running his ass off and putting out fires.

But it was fun.

There were improvs, and surprises - including and end-of-the-show zinger cooked up by Sharyn (and I) for Riki’s birthday (more on THAT later too) Surprise guests in the audience, and on the stage (thanks again Frankie D!) There was confusion, chaos; I had to help Jef get his stockings straight.

It was Tortuga-style Theater at its finest.

 

Our transportation director looks on as Riki is surprised

I'm actually good friends with one ded bob, and GREAT friends with another

Our after party was also a surprise Riki Tortuga Birthday party (Thanks again Sharyn, and again Frankie D, and all the Chapter heads who made this happen... but mostly Sharyn). Some of our fans had very bad taste in clothing, and all of the troublemakers left with a big smile.

The next morning was packing up props, cleaning up, and a swell brunch with two very dear friends. Gifts were exchanged, food was consumed, and love was spread around.

 

The usual suspects, and Riki's surprise guest

Brunch with our gang

Then off to shopping. Nearby was Concord Mills Mall, and we did a little bit of last minute Christmas consumption.

This next is to the lovely Kelly Defeo:

Then back to Louisiana.

Where it started to rain... And rain, and rain.

I had parked our home behind the shop, in the slightly lower, but still high-and-dry level ground. Little did I know that I was actually in a run-off riverbed, or that the weather was about to turn really bad. It rained more than four inches in one day!

Andy wants me to only have about a dozen photos for each journal entry... sorry! [That's okay - I also want to be taller, and have all my hair back. I'm used to not getting what I want. - AB]  In the interest of showing you the full impact of the pre-Christmas deluge, I created this montage for you.

 

Parked in a riverbed, dreaming of a moist Christmas

For the rest of the holidays, every time we walked back-and-forth to the apartment from the trailer (and it was often), it was through ankle-deep (or deeper) water. When our tiny dog-lette had to go out, I had to carry her over the river to high ground, and back... or she would have drowned, and washed away.
Back and forth through the water.
We spent so much time with my mother that she actually asked if she was terminally ill, and didn’t know it!
The capper though, was when we saw something crawling up the driveway late one night... struggling from the mud and ooze and up the concrete drive was a real, live crawfish!

Shit!

Other than the mud, and rain, and mud, and rain, there was Christmas. Heather did most of the wrapping; London helped.
My nieces showed up for one of the gift opening extravaganzas, and my mother once again took a huge shine to everything about my fiancée. From her cooking (and Oh GOD did we eat! Ham, Turkey, Sake... days and days of eating) to her crafty-ness in gift-wrapping, I was told repeatedly that if I screwed up with Heather, the family was dumping me and keeping her!

 

My family wrapping gifts

My nieces

Mom, loving Christmas

Ah, family!

We did have one little ‘incident’ however. We have all experienced this: one family member drinks too much and then gets all goofy on the holidays... doing something ridiculous in a corner somewhere while the rest of the family looks on. Why should my family be any different?

 

The first step is admitting you have a problem

He knows if you've been bad or good

And these last two shots are just for you to once-again feel all Christmas-y

 

Xmas goodies

Ho Ho Ho

Shortly after Christmas, was departure time for KC.

We had to have a tow truck pull us from the quagmire... So with the towing, the replacement microwave, the electric installation, and rewiring (properly this time) - our free stay at Mom’s cost MUCH more, than if we’d just come straight to KC. But I had time with the family.

We had a few minor hiccups getting to KC, some repairs I had to make before we could even get out of the driveway... but I could do them myself, so that’s okay.

We arrived rapidly and uneventfully in KC, and the going was much easier the second time around. Heather guided me into the parking spot (we have finally figured out a system that seems to be working; backing up is tough, and I need help. I’m slowly learning how to drive, and I just do whatever she tells me to). Another interesting repair (who knew you could break a spring shackle? Who knew I even HAD spring shackles?)... and we were home.

Our Christmas Palooza

At least all the cold-weather preparation work I did last year over several days time took less than an afternoon this year.

We are now repaired, level, comfortable, and settled into KC for the winter.

New Years was quiet, sedate, warm and wonderful. Once again we celebrated at the home of Heather’s best friends, (and our photographer) Bob and Ann. I spent a goodly portion of the night drinking little (I was our driver) and talking to Ann’s other models, and their husbands.

At midnight, New Year’s, I kissed the hottest woman in the whole world.

So the January journal will bring Heather’s Birthday, trips to Vegas, another cross country trip, and other things.

Let me say that I hope that everyone has enough out there. Enough love, surprises, joy, trials (they make you stronger), friends, challenges, triumphs, and relaxation in 2007. I count myself very lucky because I have so many really good things in my life... and you guys, you wonderful fans, friends, and supporters, are definitely one of my richest blessings.

Happy freakin’ New Year’s everybody!