My February Journal Written in April is all about January, also Boobs

Late, Late, Late

It’s late in the afternoon on April 7th. On the day-after-tomorrow we’ll hook-up the trailer to the newly refurbished truck and take a leisurely three day journey to our spring show in Atlanta.  We’re still here more than a week after the festival closed and it’s a ghost town. We decided NOT to take advantage of two weekends off between AZ and GA to take a trip to Kansas City to visit Heather’s dad; recently brought up lame with a very broken ankle.  We have instead relaxed, gotten a bunch of small jobs caught up on and enjoyed NOT running-around for a few days. Heather and Scarlett are at the home of some of our favorite people – Wendi, Ryne, Eris and Clio – and after getting a bunch of stuff packed-down for the trip I’m trying to catch up on some writing.  I’m in shorts and I HAVEN’T opened this journal with a nekkid photo.

Let’s set the dial on “The Wayback Machine” to the first month of the year in 2014 and also: to WORLD WAR TWO!!!

I sort of cheated on my writing responsibilities in January and published a letter (so far apparently fruitless) i'd written to Marc Maron instead of writing a journal – now I have LOADS of catching up to do.  I want to open with one of the most amazing things that I have ever gotten to do – This lil’ Tortuga got to ride on a real-life B-17 Bomber!

 

One of our fans – Kristin Purcell got in touch and explained that she was associated with the Confederate – excuse, the Commemorative Air Force: Arizona Wing. This is an organization devoted to restoring, maintaining and flying some of the most amazing Warbirds of the past.  Now, I’m a nerd. I’m a sci-fi nerd, a comic-book nerd a Fantasy nerd, a GUN nerd… but I’m also a bit of a Classic Airplane nerd and the B-17 is definitely one of the ones that have my attention the most. There are only 8 of these amazing machines flying in all the world and new Fan Club member Kristin set me up to ride on Arizona’s on “Sentimental Journey”  The ride she gave me the hook-up for would have normally cost a bunch o’ Benjamins but it was amazing, and totally worth it. I rode in the radio/navigator room. I played with the waist gun, they even flew down the road with the

Bomb Bay Doors OPEN! So cool! I have to tell you: the bomb bay is a LOT smaller than you might have imagined.  After my ride I got a special guided, behind-the-scenes tour (Again, Kristin was a HELL of a host) where besides checking out other bombers, fighters, classic planes (a MIG fighter!) and sitting on ordinance – I even got to hug-and-kiss my all-time favorite airplane the MUSTANG P-51!!! Fuck Yeah!!!

 

Also early in the year was Heather’s <Redacted> Birthday!!!

I have a great life. One of the best bits of evidence of this is that when Heather asked me in October or November what I wanted for Xmas – I really had no idea what to tell her. I pretty –much, we pretty –much have everything we want, and now it’s just toys, or more-likely experiences that we’ll blow our dough on. Also for Christmas we set a budgetary limit to prevent a nuclear escalation in our present buying competition… But since her BIRTHDAY is just a few days after Christmas – If I want to buy her something really expensive – without getting grief for it, I just buy it then. So this year I blew the budget all-to-Hell and got my girl better-than-perfect vision through LASIK surgery. In this family we tend to have multiple celebrations for each of our birthdays. My celebrations sometimes lasts a month and has at least two, sometimes more parties. So besides the perfect visual acuity we also celebrated my ageless wife’s scoffing-at-the-calendar day with a wonderful dinner at Sochu House; Asian Tappas, Korean liquor and great friends. But that was to some extent only the crystal-clear icing on the tasty B-day cake.

The Tortuga (Birthday?) cruise!

Back in 2012, Heather and I talked-about going on a cruise to celebrate her <Redacted> Birthday. As we discussed the plan it occurred to us that A) Riki’s Big FIVE-OH birthday was also during our off-time and B) With the majority of our business debt paid off the Tortuga Twins would be sitting on a HUNK of moolah at the end of the year. The project got a little silly after that. It became Riki’s surprise party – and all mention of Heather got misplaced. We got that straightened out and then somehow – even though we were very flexible and meticulous with everyone's schedule so that not only the three Twins and our significant others could go but so could many of our friends – Jef and Jessica ended-up not going after all. We soldiered-on and had a GREAT cruise regardless.

Don’t all Boat rides begin with a plane trip back to the city we just left?

We flew to Nola – It made more sense to depart from that port when we originally intended to take this journey – but whatever. We had a layover and damned-fine dinner in New Orleans with some of our favorite peeps and Jamie Haeuser was even kind enough to lend us her apartment in the French Quarter.   We had a relaxing morning in my favorite part of the city and then, after a cattle-like crush in the port, we boarded the Norwegian Jewel.

 

Tortugas (and Friends) on a boat!

Besides Riki and his girl Kristy; Scarlett, Heather and I we were also joined by Wendi – an old friend from Arizona; Jamie & Mike and their two kids and Sarina, an old friend of Riki’s from Minneapolis.  It was a great group. We had a great room – including a surprise from our buddy Bryon Howe in our cabin. We ate; a lot. There was TONS of drinking. Riki and I got pictures with Dora The Explorer. There was hot- tubbing. There were salon treatments. We shopped. We tubed in an underground river in Belize. We ate. We enjoyed sunsets; but not as much as we enjoyed the lack of cell phone service. We watched Dr. Who because we brought some DVDs from home. We were in bed every night before midnight… and loved it. I read a couple of novels.  We visited Mexico, (two stops) Honduras and Belize – though we never left the boat in Honduras because of weather and because Scarlett wasn’t feeling well. We ate. We enjoyed the “washy washy” guy and the crafty steward who not only cleaned-up after us but surprised and spoiled us with folded-towel critters.  We were worried that Scarlett would not have any fun, or prevent us from doing so – but they had programs in place just for her amusement. In the end – she pretty-much wanted to hang out at the kid’s club more than she wanted to hang out with us. We did get to see her appear in a couple of short, fun, and silly productions put on by the Kid’s club. She even played a tiger in the circus show!

And we ATE

Things certainly have changed since the last time I was on a cruise. They call it “Freestyle dining” and though you can certainly eat at the Buffet (we did, a lot) or in one of the two dining rooms (we did, but only a little) but there was also a selection of supplemental restaurants to choose from They charged a bit of a cover fee- from between fifteen and forty dollars I think – and they were GREAT. I’m astounded that I only put on as much weight as I did during the cruise and that I didn’t blow up to twice my size from all the great grub. We did a combined party for Riki and Heather on the last night of the cruise. It was all-in-all a lovely multi-birthday most-of-the-Tortugas celebration and we look forward to doing it again in 2015 when I turn 50 and 2017 when Jef hits the mark.  Interestingly enough – and quite by accident – our ship returned to port and we flew back to Phoenix on Scarlett’s birthday. We had a quiet celebration in our cabin, and some of the cool folks on the boat got my darling some gifts – but the prize goes to Wendi’s husband and children, who met us at the airport with a bag full of goodies for Scarlett Sun’s special day!

 

We return to Arizona for final-week chaos and more parties!

There was a BUNCH of Chaos – mostly for Heather - as the cruise ended less than a week before the festival was scheduled to open and she had a bunch of scrambling to do to get her shops open. We had another party for Scarlett – a birthday, ice cream social. We celebrated Valentine’s Day – by buying each other guns – because… why wouldn’t we? Scarlett was apparently really missing her time on the high seas and as soon as the festival opened convinced her babysitter to bee-line over to the face painter so she could be a tiger again.  After we got a couple of weekends under our belt – we invited a slew of folks over to Scarlett - and Malcolm’s – combined party. For almost a year Scarlett has been asking for a “Fiesta Tea Party” and after adding some dinosaurs and some Dragons for Malcom; that’s what we had. Even the dogs got involved. The turn-out was amazing. There was a gift-opening orgy. There were dinosaur masks and cake. Scarlett got presents to celebrate her newfound LOVE of Doctor Who and was gifted with a sonic screwdriver and her very-own TARDIS.  It was a very nice part of the rich social scene here in Arizona.

 

Arizona opened; the festival was great, we had fun and we made a bit of moolah too!

And as Forest said “That’s all I have to say about that”

We had our first Tortuga Business meeting of the year and plotted out what our next bunch of projects through 2017 should be.

 

We also took in a little Asian Culture.

Drum Tao was in town. Their touring show “Phoenix Rising” is really something to see.  Scarlett was in awe – and my little pixie got a lot of attention from the performers. If you get a chance check out this gorgeous, exciting show.

 

Usually Arizona is a time for boating but now it’s a time for things that go “Boom!”

It’s not just me – My friend Byron got himself a CANNON! The Taurus Raging Judge which shoots shotguns shells and bullets designed to kill angry bears.  We shot everything from .22s to Byron’s comically-overblown shooting iron which we all call “Big baby” as a nod towards Hellboy.

THE THING IS SILLY and I don’t know if this video will do it justice. We also chose to go shooting outside our normal environs. Rather than going to a range we went to a nearby mountain side where many shooters had gone before us. Hearing – through our ear protection – the ricochets and resounding booms echoing through the mountains added another layer of fun to our shooting adventure but not as much as being able to shoot at something other than just paper targets for the first time. We called it “recycling” where we collected and destroyed various household items that we no longer needed.  Many soda cans, hair care products, ceramic planters, bottles, boards and even a broken microwave were recycled to great thrills.

 

I think I’m going to wrap up this month, take a shower and then take on March’s journal.

I suppose I should tell you that I dropped over FOUR GRAND to get my truck motor refreshed… I’ll let you know after this trip if it helped or not.  Our Blue Team is going through some turmoil… we’re going to be hiring again but despite that had a VERY successful run in Tampa. Also in Tampa we opened two new businesses; Jef’s made a bunch more money than my own.  We had a great time. I also took Scarlett and several of her girlfriends to a series of movies… what a lovely time we had.

 

One more thing

Finally – Scarlett has until recently not really bonded with or felt the need to sleep with any of her legion of stuffed animals. Until recently. She refuses to sleep now without clinging tightly to a stuffed sea otter she’s named “Pearl”. Pearl had her own Norwegian Jewel Cruise Adventure that I was smart enough to document. Check it out!