Having time off rules!
My journal is due today, and barring some minor disaster or other inconvenience, it should be uploaded before the midnight deadline. It has become a bit of a race between we Twins… I hope I win again this month.
I have put the photos (and links) together already, looked over last month’s journal, even gone back to my character’s (more on that presently) facebook page for some suggestions… I’m ready to go:
We’re in our cozy spot in Minnesota, enjoying some time off
I’m surprised at how quickly time has passed, and how rapidly our new engagement in Michigan is approaching. Penn & Teller’s Bullshit is playing in the background, Heather is cooking dinner, and Scarlett is quiet, too quiet… I really should go see what mischief she’s getting into. It’s a lovely, Friday, late afternoon.
It’s time to slide down into the depths of my mind…
One day I will build a house with stairs like this
She's 18
Dakitty's birthday at movie night
Meet and greet in Georgia
So relax, take a slow deep breath, and visualize a stairway going down into the subterranean deeps. Not good at visualization? Check out the really cool stairway I will eventually build for our house you can walk leisurely down the stairs or – as I’m sure I will; SLIDE BABY!
As we descend into the darkness, there’s a landing ahead; on it stands a girl, in pigtails, check out the photo.
NO!!!! I’m a father now, that crap isn’t funny anymore!
We finally arrive at our destination at the bottom of the stairs: The memories from almost a month ago, and the end of this stairway-descent metaphor, whee!
In the final weeks of Georgia
There was the usual flurry of last minute functions. We had the combined Movie Night/Birthday party for Dakota, a fantastic Meet and greet with our fans, and a fine final weekend.
DaKitty’s party was swell, Heather made this wonderful three-layered cake; pink frosting, two different fruit fillings, two different cake batters… Yummy! I made DaKitty a “card” out of a Twilight poster and a bunch of those champagne poppers… Damn we’re nerdy!
The meet and greet was at the usual place, and attended by a lot of cool folks. The manager of the Bowling alley we’ve held it at for the last few years turned-out to be a fan, even posing for a photo with us. Chef Jax made an appearance, along with “The Other Scarlett”, and the Blue squad (Riki’s) once again fought the “Red forces of Righteousness” (I just made that up!) in laser tag – another superb evening.
Finally it was time to leave Georgia
booth closed up, stuff packed away, ready to pack the trailer
Scarlett hates long road trips
ZEMA
Zombie Attack Zone
All the usual stuff happened; Heather and her crew packed-down the two souvenir booths, The drum crew (with a little assist from me) shut down, boarded-up, and packed away the drum booth. We even stacked the kayak, and registers for the eventual trip to Minnesota.
There was good news: We signed a three year contract extending our run in Atlanta until 2013 (Yay!!!) and bad news: not only has our roof-top AC unit, the same one I replaced less than three years ago stopped working, but we’re also experiencing some serious problems with the hydraulic system that moves our room slides in and out on the trailer. The AC is only an annoyance; we still have a window-mounted unit from the last time the ac died… though it made the one night we slept on the road a lot less bearable. The Hydraulic failure, however, was a HUGE pain-in-the-ass. With the assistance of DaKitty, the GA campground manager, and Heather, I think we have gotten everything temporarily working … the slides cycled just fine for the KC and Minneapolis stops… and we have a trustworthy and cool RV repair guy here in the Twin Cities But our house being stuck in the half retracted position as we were trying to leave in the horrible, cloying, heat and humidity of Atlanta only added to my frustration.
On the way out of town, a stop to repair a slowly-leaking trailer tire, grab some lunch, secure some pets, strap the kicking and protesting child into her seat and we were finally on our way.
A brief respite from the narrative
Scarlett hates long trips, so let’s take a break. I have a folder sitting on my computer desktop each month. Into it goes a selection of photos, links, articles and… crap that I think I’d like to write about in the journal at month’s end. Anything that doesn’t really ‘fit’ into that month’s journal gets rolled over until the following month. I’ve noticed that I have rolled a series of things over for multiple months, so now it is time to write, once again about ZOMBIES!!!
Zombies aren’t just an obsession with me… apparently it is an international trend. I keep finding everything from books (Pride, and Prejudice, and Zombies was exceptional, and will soon be a movie starring Natalie Portman) to Movies, (Survival of the Dead, the latest George Romero film was quite disappointing), and such cool, random photos. It’s a funny world we live in.
But at least it’s not sparkly vampires!
The trip turned out to be a hundred miles longer than we’d planned
we take a detour thru Huntsville
crowded travel trailer, NOW with BOAT
Arch, with Sky
After we departed Georgia (delayed two hours by the slide issues, and a third by the tire repairs) and were slogging along through Tennessee, I got a phone call from my brother. Richard is an over-the-road truck driver and he gave me a short cut not listed on the directions given by Mapquest. The downside of the detour was that it added 100 miles to the trip (which is about $30 smackers, and two hours when travelling with truck, trailer, two cats, a dog, a baby… sheesh!) but the upside, extreme upside was that we didn’t have to climb Monteagle, a massive mountain in the middle of the state. Bonus: We got to drive right past the Davidson Center for Space Exploration in Huntsville, AL (SPACE CAMP!). There were rockets, and a museum – though we were disappointed that we were 15 days too early for the Star Wars exhibit. We got to see some beautiful parts of Tennessee, and Kentucky. We arrived late at night at a very quaint RV park in Cypress Lake Kentucky. There was easy parking, pull through sites, 50 amp power… but for us, no AC… it wasn’t convenient to mount the window unit for a few hours sleep. We not only didn’t extend the slides (we were scared to try lest they get stuck again) we couldn’t. The trailer was stuffed-to-the-gills, cash registers on the couch, plants in the shower, and a kayak on the living room floor. But fans, lights, and secure parking were totally worth the pittance we paid to stay there. We continued on our way the following morning; Fast food, bad coffee. We were battling both sleepiness and boredom as we raced before the ever more gloomy skies. We saw the Arch as we crossed the river into St Louis, and some hours later finally arrived at our customary spot in KC.
Regular readers of these posts will know Kansas City means, not only lots of good food: but hanging with the Browns; Drinking, Video games, and Taking photos.
Zoo trip with Carousel
…So I won’t tell you about that. I will mention that we made a trip to the Kansas City Zoo. It was very impressive, and would have been lots more fun if it wasn’t 93 degrees outside, and almost as muggy as Georgia. We went with dear friends Tanya and Kyle, and Tanya’s son Ethan (who Scarlett adores!)
Our daughter splashed in puddles, ate potato chips (at one point trying to charm them out of the hands of the man behind the snack counter) looked at monkeys and kangaroos -they have free-range kangaroos in one enclosure in the zoo… they can walk right up to you! She also spent a lot of time screaming at a Lion. . Because she’s been watching a lot of Go Diego Go, she kept shouting at the lion “Puma, Puma!” I think the lion was unfazed. We saw a sea lion show; Scarlett loved it, and didn’t call them “sea pumas” and Mommy and daughter rode the fancy carousel.
During the 8 days we were in KC we ate lots of BBQ; I was introduced to a new place called “LC’s”… Yum! As our time for departure arrived, and after our obligatory breakfast at BoLing’s for Dim Sum; we made some sad farewells and continued on our journey, finally arriving at midnight in our loading-dock home in Minnesota. That’s where we will remain until October, quite-likely our longest stay of the year.
Even though there our home is stationary, we have lots of travel ahead of us.
The joys of parenthood
The Tortugas will be driving out for each of the three weekends we’re contracted for the Silver Leaf Renaissance festival in Battle Creek MI. and two weekends at the Bristol Renaissance Faire, Riki’s and my triumphant 20th anniversary there. We also have a sweet sixteen party that we’re being flown out to the weekend before Minnesota opens… it has turned out to be a pretty nice summer.
Now it is time to wrap this journal up.
But I want to leave you with two final bits of fun: It is great being a dad, and I believe I certainly got lucky with the child I got. But lest you think she is a complete angel, let me tell you this. Shortly after we settled in Minnesota, Heather called me into the bathroom. “Look at this” she said. She held a tampon box filled only with empty applicators. “Now go look in the toilet” it was filled, of course with all the tampons that my child had laboriously pulled from the applicators. We should have known there was trouble when she was that quiet.
Finally, I want to leave you all with a music video, a lovely poem, and inspiration from two of the lights in my universe. Carl Sagan will always be one of my heroes, and this tribute makes me cry.
Have a great month.
PS. I asked the fans of the “Scaramouche Tortuga” page on facebook to submit some questions, which they did; here are the ones I will answer next month:
- What you have done to each other while passed out on beer or other substances... even stuff from long ago. I can only imagine the stories!
- What is the first thing you look forward to at each RenFest?
- What is it that you treasure most in your life and in all the things that you have done
If you guys have anything to ask, please feel free to hit me up in the contact page.
