June 2013 – Is this June’s journal already? It seems like I just finished writing May’s!

For those just tuning in…

I am in the midst of a multi-journal writing frenzy as today is the due-date for the July journal and I am catching up the two delinquent ones at the same time. Meanwhile, let me know if this extraordinarily rude photo makes you laugh or if it offends you.

June was a time of travel and travails

As I write this, I’m sitting in my RV spot in the parking lot of the Bristol Renaissance Faire. But boy did I travel this month. The first weekend of June we finished – up our run at the Georgia Renaissance Festival, did our post show debriefing with the management, packed down our FIVE shops -Two of Heather’s for Souvenirs, Heather’s clothing booth, The Garland booth and the Rose business - including (surprise!) having to rent a U-Haul to attach to Heather’s tiny Honda to transport her clothing stock. That’s foreshadowing by the way. We were on-the-road and out only an hour later than our noon Thursday, festival-dictated deadline and that’s with the last minute hydraulic repairs I did and the unexpected trailer rental. We did a leisurely drive to Kansas City – staying for a repeat visit in an RV park we’ve parked in before and due to my “So obvious I cannot believe I made it” mistake arrived at our normal RV Park in Independence one full day before we were scheduled to arrive. There was no room at the inn – though the park did graciously put us in a short-term spot so that we at least had electricity for the night. The following morning we fed our Zombie – just look at the photo, moved our house into its spot and settled down for a multi-week stay. Or rather, Heather and Scarlett did. We were firmly in place by Saturday, spent a little time with friends (and amazing photographer) Ann Brown and Bob and by dawn’s early light Monday morning, I was back on-the-road for a thirteen hour round trip to Minneapolis. I’d purchased a smaller, less-likely to destroy Heather’s car trailer from Jef and picked it up that Monday afternoon. Next I high-tailed it to downtown Minneapolis where I loaded almost 15 thousand dollars’ worth of stained glass that we have been storing for several years. A while ago we unsuccessfully tried to launch a stained glass business in what is now Heather’s Clothing shop in Minneapolis. I returned around midnight Monday jacked –up from coffee and chocolate consumed to prevent me from becoming a single-vehicle-accident statistic. The original plan was for me to leave again the following Tuesday morning but sheer exhaustion and the fact that I needed to have Dish Network come out and aim the satellite dish because of the odd location we were in this year – covered by shade trees that aren’t normally a problem in the winter – I had to postpone to a Wednesday pre-dawn departure. Wednesday I drove over thirteen hours one way to arrive in Hammond, LA. You see - I had sold all of the stained glass and needed to deliver it to its new owners. I once again took advantage of the hospitality of Bob and Jamie Haeuser, arrived, went (pretty much) straight to bed and was on site in LA by eight the next morning. A quick offload and inventory, a little look-see at our dungeon and my maze and I was back driving home struggling with an intermittently failing AC unit on the truck. Finally on Saturday, more than a week after I arrived, I got to settle down a little and enjoy KC. Briefly.

All was not well in my world…

Listen to me, I want you to stop whatever it is that you are doing right now and ensure that you are using some form of back-up system on your computer. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate, that first Saturday when we were moving-in to our RV spot I was having some computer issues. In my slap-dash attempts to repair them I managed to destroy the registry and break my computer in a way that was (thankfully only almost) un-recoverable. It wouldn’t (and couldn’t) recognize the operating system. Wouldn’t boot. It couldn’t be forced back to a restore point. Broken. Hard Crash. On the plus side: I back up my entire hard disk like a fiend each week, on the downside – I had cancelled the operation of at least one of the more recent saves because it slowed the computer down. Upside: we have a tech in KC who agreed to look at it. Downside: it was broken so badly that even though he copied the entire hard disk – anything associated with windows, or in a windows specific folder was un-recoverable. In the end, I was forced to wipe the drive and to restore (after downloading the files from the online support section) from a previous image of my disc. All of my files, all of my programs, settings email, quirks… everything on my computer thankfully was restored back to Saturday June first. All the work I had done between then and June 17^th, including the initial start on the May and June journals and all of the email was just gone. I could have been so much worse. I now back up twice a week. I won’t ever cancel a back-up again. I’m looking into some more redundancies too. So – if you’re not backing up your entire system go to this website right now and download their simple, magical software and embrace true peace-of-mind. (They should put me on the payroll!)

 

Even with the Computer woes unresolved I had a lovely Father’s Day.

My biological father is what clinicians describe as a “Piece of shit”; more on that another day. I never really cared much about Dad’s day until I became one. Heather (and Scarlett) always spoil me. Since we were in town for this holiday we invited Heather’s dad over and had a multi-generational Father’s Day and Skyfall luncheon. Earlier that day Riki’s Father’s day card and his Birthday gift to me arrived, making for a very funny photo. Grandpa Bob and I talked guns, watched Bond, and loved our daughters. It was a great day. I also want to publicly thank Riki for the great gift. Sharyn Watson bought me a set of custom, Watchmen grips for my .40 1911 – named “Paris” since it’s a “Trojan” model STI. I’ve recently acquired a smaller, carry gun by Sig which resembles the Trojan. Riki got me these tricked-out grips so that I have a matched set and now I refer to the smaller gun as “Ulysses”. Yes. I am just like that.

Funny story about that new trailer…

I admired the tiny trailer when Jef bought it in Arizona. It came up for sale and thought that it would be just the right size for Heather and her burgeoning clothing business. When I picked it up - and after I signed the check – I looked at it and was convinced it was too small to be useful. I was able to get all of the glass; again nearly 15 thousand wholesale dollars’ worth into it with room to spare and I discovered I could easily and comfortably transport one dozen of the full-size plastic tuppers heather used as well as a goodly amount of other stock, in its surprisingly spacious confines. A dozen! She couldn’t possibly need more than that right?

Wrong.

Heather gave it a valiant effort redistributing and repacking her vast amounts of stock and whatnot. Our RV spot looked like a yard sale. Many tears later we determined that there was just no way, no matter how we re-packed, how much we left at the various shops or even what we additionally packed in our travel trailer it just wasn’t going to be practical to use this tiny, freshly-bought trailer for her business. When you factor in the cold, hard fact that her business was only going to continue to grow in the next few years it became clear that we were going to have to buy a bigger trailer. That’s where we ran into a problem. A standard U-Haul 5x8 trailer weighs about 900 pounds. Just six hundred pounds of stock – easy enough to reach with only those dozen totes – and we’re bumping-up to the maximum towing capacity of our Honda Element. Uh- oh. What’s kind of amazing and a little terrifying is that within only a few days of this realization we were driving out of the Honda dealership with our 2013 Honda Odyssey minivan. Please don’t tell Dave Ramsey that we financed it. At least my wife is a wizard when it comes to vehicle shopping. She got the element in 2011 new at the same price as a two-year-old car. In fact, when we traded it in, they offered us more for it than we owed. We also got this new vehicle at less than what we saw most of the comparably equipped two-year-old vehicles were going for. It has ALL of the toys. I love my 2000 Ford F350. Love it. But I’m giddy whenever I drive this new beast. Funny story – you’d think it would be me – the chaotic comic who fancies himself a Rockstar who had problems embracing the practicality and joy of a minivan but NOooo. Heather actually teared-up at not only the thought of giving-up her sporty little element, but also at the simple idea that she had become a minivan owner. So – we don’t call it a Minivan in this house. Allow us to introduce to you our newest shuttlecraft: The Galileo Six!

We arrive in Bristol after a beautiful, easy trip

One of the nicest things about this year’s schedule is that except for one trip from Minneapolis to Charlotte, we can take our time with all of our transits this year. Heather, Scarlett and the two youngest dogs loved our new “shuttlecraft”. Me, our trailer and Inari were transported in or by the trusty Ford. We left KC late, spent a pleasant early-for-us evening in an overly friendly RV park in Iowa (?) and arrived at a reasonable hour in our Wisconsin parking-lot home. Our arrival and set-up coincided with the “Supermoon”, nice. I did get a kick out of the sign in our parking lot. We took a day to set up our home and then our friends the Jousters were kind enough to once-again help us set-up Heather’s caravan-dream of a tent. They might have done it because they are truly cool guys and girls; they might have done it in consideration of my wife’s cooking at another “Jouster Appreciation Party”. The good news kept rolling in. We originally negotiated a four-week engagement here in Bristol; they offered us the other two weeks we had opened in the calendar. We now have the ideal schedule. I have eight weeks off in winter, four in summer and – if the schedule is the same next year – all the work I’d ever want.

You know my family is from New Jersey right?

You’d think that the last thing I’d want to do after all of the insane travelling I’d done in June would be to make another long-ass trip. You’d think I’d want to just sit on my ever-expanding butt and relax before the whirlwind that is Bristol opened and I had to go back to work. Well sir, you were only partially right. I did NOT want to do any more travelling but I packed my wife, kid, suitcase and THREE DOGS! (That’s too many!) Into our new minv--- excuse me “Shuttlecraft” and we drove half-way across the country to New Jersey. My two amazing and beautiful half-sisters had organized a family reunion and the birthday celebration of Selena’s two sons around the opening in our schedule. I’m so glad we made this trip. Selena has been out to visit us in North Carolina twice; no mean feat when you consider that her husband won’t fly. It also allowed me to meet my youngest nephew. It was so interestingly prosaic. Pool parties, and Guidos, kids, family enjoying my wife’s amazing cooking. At once both “Nothing special” and “So magical”. Scarlett got to participate in not only the birthday piñata, but in the post piñata scrimmage; she fought like a champ. I got to meet some more distant relatives. I swam. I ate and I even took all three families to what may have been the most comfortable movie experience ever. We saw Man of Steel, 3D, at a theater that featured reclining couches. So decadent. We got the boys some other stuff too – but I wanted to be the cool uncle who came in and took everyone to the movies. All-in-all the trip was an extravagance that wasn’t in our budget at this time – but I’m absolutely glad we did it anyway.

Finally we return to Bristol and our VAST front yard.

As opening day of the Bristol Renaissance Faire approached we returned to our cozy little home in the great vastness of the Bristol parking lot. I mentioned in April that Heather, Scarlett and I had appeared on a TV interview program called “The List” and that it was possible that it might go national. It did. When we were passing through Ohio on our way to New Jersey we coincidentally received a call from some friends of ours that they had just seen our interview… In Ohio! Additionally some of my Facebook fans reported seeing it as well. Even my brother saw it in Tennessee. Nice. Anyway; I’m not certain if they used this line or not but I said in the interview that our life is just like anybody else’s only our front yard changes every two months. I love our Desert neighborhood and “Spice Trader’s Café”. I love living behind the drum booth in Georgia and sharing that wonderful garden. I love the KOA in Minnesota (and the heated, indoor pool) and I love how close my house is to my stage in my lovely neighborhood in Charlotte. I have now started to love our massive “yard” here in Wisconsin. It sure makes walking the many, many dogs easier and Scarlett loves the space. It’s a little scary on the weekends, lots of traffic and too many people noticing where I live, but Monday through Friday – t’s a pretty good set up… as long as they aren’t resurfacing the dirt road at seven am or mowing at seven thirty!

SO it’s time to finish up this month, this journal and to move on into the present.

We’ve said all that we really needed to say and done all that we needed to do with June and this journal chronicling it. Heather accomplished a bunch in setting up and opening her shop – working that magic only SHE can accomplish. Scarlett helped. I took care of paperwork and made yet-another crazy trip, this time driving to Minneapolis and Back to fetch some supplies for Heather’s shop though I did get to stop to eat one of my favorite burgers all year. Let’s wrap this up so I can finish Next month’s entry okay?!