¼ Candle, and Other Stuff

Mason is three months old today, happy_birthday div 4 little dude!

He’s been working lately on grasping things. Of course, he can grab anything that touches his hand, but he’s starting to try grabbing by sight. He hasn’t quite got it down yet, but he’ll figure it out. He’s also trying to turn himself over, especially after waking up. He’s still not quite sleeping all night, but he catnaps through the day and crashes around 10pm, sleeping until about 4am or so; after a bottle and diaper change, he’s good until morning. He’s vocalizing a lot now, too.

He lurves his Auntie Daughter Dearest… of course, she’ll give him her absolute undivided attention and play with him for a good long while. We met her for a late lunch today, with one of her roomies, and they (Mason and the girls) had a fine time.


As I mentioned last weekend, the chicken houses are unoccupied at the moment. Mrs. Fetched and her band of hired guns have made much progress, but not enough just yet… it was kind of strange today when she didn’t go over there. If they drag this out a little while longer, maybe they can avoid having to buy gas at all this winter.

Screwdriver bits tend to not last when used heavily, it seems. I could tell this one was starting to lose some grip, then I heard a SNAP and it became like this. That might explain why Home Despot sells ’em in bulk.


What with all the stuff going on, we haven’t even had time to do our Christmas decorations. Yesterday was completely absorbed with the choir first caroling (and delivering fruit baskets) at various shut-ins around the county, then going to Amicalola Falls to perform. Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest usually tackle the decorations, but neither one has been available so far. DD would have been home this weekend if it wasn’t for the minor detail of four Christmas concert performances: Thursday, Friday, and two on Saturday. We went to the Thursday performance; it went well for the first one. [Aside: the brass section of the orchestra (I noticed this in earlier concerts) has been a bit sub-par this year.] I’d do it, but I’d hear a lot of whining about it not being elaborate/large enough and it would get torn down and re-done anyway. Then again, if I went ahead and did it, then Mrs. Fetched would do it just to mark her territory. It would help if I could get into the Christmas frame of mind without being bombarded by all-day Christmas music on the radio and non-stop ads on TV… one reason I don’t spend much time with either one. Whatever happened to just adding Christmas music to the rotation and easing people into it? Shoot, even one of the local TV stations noticed… the “news” ran a segment on Grumpy Shoppers where most people said they were tired of stores rolling out the Christmas stuff before the BBQ has a chance to cool off after Labor Day.

Another thing we haven’t had time to do is cut and split wood. We’ve done some, but it was all green and even that is starting to get used up. My chainsaw is scrod; if I could easily get hold of one (and not yanked onto some other spurious project) I could take down and/or cut up a few dead trees and fallen limbs around the manor. Lots of things I could do, actually, if I was unemployed and still had money. Oh well.


The next White Pickups episode rolls in tomorrow morning. I’ll post a conversation with Sara later in the week.

White Pickups, Conversations: Tim Petro

Contents

Hi, I’m Tim Petro, proprietor of Town and Trail Bikes. Or was. Age 29 as of February. I’m told the family name was originally “Petrolakis,” when my grandfather came with his parents from Greece. His dad shortened it to make it less foreign-sounding. He married an Irish woman, that’s where I got all the red hair from. Is this the kind of stuff you want?

Sure. What possessed you to run a bike shop?

Well, it was really a dream of mine since I was like 12. We lived outside of Chicago back then, and my parents bought me a mountain bike from a yard sale. It needed a lot of adjustment, so I grabbed some of my dad’s tools and started fiddling until I had it mostly right. Then I rode to the library and found a book about bicycle repair, and went back and got it really right. Soon after that, one of the neighbor kids had a problem with his brakes and I got them adjusted. It sort of snowballed after that. Most of the neighbor kids wound up owing me favors, but I got cash for jobs that required parts. I bought another cheap bike at a yard sale so I could practice adjusting spokes, and that paid off pretty well.

By next summer, I was going around buying old bikes, fixing them up, and selling them for a profit. It was pretty good money for a young teen. My mom was an accountant, so she showed me how to keep a set of books and helped me open a bank account. I paid myself a salary, bought my own tools, and Dad cleared some storage space so I had a place to work. At the end of the year, I gave three or four good bikes to a local charity so poor kids could have a good Christmas present — they were surprised that “PetroVelo” was a kid!

After a couple of years, I got hired on by a local shop as a mechanic — Dad said they did it to eliminate some of their competition, and looking back he might not have been joking. But I learned a lot, and even steady minimum wage was better money than I was making on my own. I got them to donate some used bikes to the charity, and offered to work on them on my own time, but they paid me anyway.

You grew up around Chicago? How did you end up in Georgia?

Dad’s job transferred down here. I was 17. It wasn’t as bad as I expected — out here in Gwinnett, it was just another suburban school. Everybody was a lot more car-crazy here, but there were a few cyclists too. I ended up at UGA, joined the cycling team, got a business degree, got a job, worked hard and saved most of my money for a few years. I opened Town and Trail in 2007, and hung on until 2008 when things really picked up in June and July. You remember how gas prices went through the roof? The Christmas season was bad, but that summer more than made up for it. That’s when I learned about peak oil. I figured if I could just hang on until the fuel shortages got seriously bad, I’d be set. An ill wind and all that, right?

I lived my dream for four years, and even a few days beyond The End of the World As We Know It. Lots of people never take that kind of chance. Whatever happens next, at least I’ll have had that.

You shot that looter, but you don’t seem like the gun type…

I met somebody. You know how that goes: I ended up moving downtown to be closer to her, which was fine since I worked downtown anyway. Not that I moved in with her — Rebecca wasn’t the “live-in” type. But there was a home invasion in my apartment not long after I moved in, so I bought the gun and took some lessons. Things didn’t work out between us in the end, but she was there for me when I opened Town & Trail and painted that mural… I put some polyurethane clear-coat over the plywood, so it might be there in the shop window for a long time.

So what do you think happened?

I know what happened: she wanted me to convert to Catholicism. I wouldn’t do it. Sure, I could have gone through the motions, but that wouldn’t have been right… we’d have been living a lie if we ended up getting married.

I meant with the drive-offs.

Oh. I don’t know if this is really what happened, but it seems right to me. Oil supplies were getting tight — you’ve noticed how gas prices have been inching up this year, past $3.50 and kept going? I think it was really starting to get through to people that we were really running out of oil, and so many people wished so hard to keep the motoring fantasy going forever that they got what they wanted. Be careful what you ask for, right?

Back to Episode 11…

White Pickups, Episode 11

Contents

“Not bad,” said Tim, standing in the foyer of one of the walk-off houses. “Smells a little musty, but I guess that’s to be expected.”

“It smells a lot better than the Kumar place did,” Kelly said. Their neighbors had driven off, leaving the house unlocked, but the smell from the powerless refrigerator was enough to drive anyone out. Cody rode home and came back with a hand truck; he and Tim rolled the refrigerator out back while the women opened windows in hopes it would air out before Charles and his companions arrived tomorrow. With evening coming on, getting Tim and Sara settled into each of the walk-off houses was now the priority.

Fortunately, the walk-offs had left their furniture behind, and the HOA had tidied everything up in hopes of a quick sale. Tim and Sara both had possessions they wanted to bring, including large quantities of canned goods, but everything fit on a bike trailer and was quickly moved inside each house.

“We should probably go house-to-house tomorrow,” Tim suggested. “Rescue any pets that are trapped inside, get perishable — perished — food out of the houses, maybe help ourselves to whatever people have left behind.”

“What if they come back for it?” Kelly asked.

“Honestly, Kelly — I don’t think anyone who drove off is ever going to come back.”

“How can you know that?” Kelly crossed her arms and glared at the redhead.

“Call it a hunch. But I’ll tell you what: maybe we can just take inventory for now. We won’t take anything that we don’t need right away, but we’ll keep a record so we can get it later if we need it. If people do come back, all we’ve done — for now — is rescue their pets and decontaminate their refrigerators. Fair enough?”

“Whatever.”

“Good, we’ll start tomorrow. We ’ll go in pairs: you and Sara, Cody and your mom — me and my .38.” He tugged the shoulder holster where he kept his revolver.

“Unless Cody wants to go with Sara,” Tina said. “Why pairs, though? There’s nobody else around.”

“Somebody might be holed up in their house,” Cody said. “My dad was talking about building a survival shelter in the basement, but he never got around to it. But if there’s nobody home, some of the bigger dogs might not be happy about visitors.”

“It’s been several days,” Sara said. “They might not starve to death, but what about water?”

“You know dogs,” Tim said. “They’ll drink out of the toilet. We’ll take bags of dog food with us; we can rip them open before we break in and strew it around if a dog comes at us — that should give us time to get the door shut.”

“They’ll make all kinds of racket anyway,” Kelly said. “I guess we can get started in the morning, but we’ll have to get some dog food first. The QuickFill has some, it’ll save us some time. Cat food, too — I’m sure there will be some cats looking for breakfast.”

“Right,” Tim said. “Okay, I guess we should head to our respective homes and get some sleep.”

“Unless anyone wants to play cards,” Sara said, brandishing a deck. “Five-handed Hearts, maybe?”

“Oooo, cutthroat,” Cody grinned. “Too bad Mom’s not here, she’s a shark at Hearts. Or was…” He looked down.

“I’ve played, but not five-handed,” Tim said. “How does that work?”

“Easy,” Sara told him. “Everyone gets ten cards, the last two go face down in the middle, and the first person to eat points gets them. Adds a little excitement to the game.”

“Maybe we should go back to my house for this?” Tina said. “We’ve got the generator hooked up.”


The generator was running, but the light over the dining room table was on the house wiring. Cody clipped the cord from the hanging fixture over the dining room table, pulled the fixture off the chain, then hung a trouble light in its place. He ran an extension cord from the power strip at the refrigerator and tacked a nail into the ceiling above it to keep the cord out of the way. “The rules are pretty simple,” he said while he worked. “Sara, deal the first hand while I’m doing this, okay? You pick three cards you don’t want and pass them to the person on your right, then pick up the three from the guy on your left. Two of Clubs leads the first trick, always. You have to follow suit that leads the trick, if you have it. If you don’t, you can throw anything you want, except you can’t drop a heart or the Queen of Spades on the first trick. You can’t lead Hearts until hearts are broken — that means someone’s taken a point card — or that’s all you’ve got in your hand. Each heart is one point, the Queen of Spades is thirteen points, and you want to avoid getting points. We’ll talk about running ’em once you guys get the hang of things.” He sat down, picked up his hand, and picked three cards to give to Tina before picking up Sara’s offering. “Ow. You and my mom would have got along pretty good.” He winced and sorted cards.

“And what am I supposed to do with these?” Tina griped. “I thought you were going to go easy on us the first time.”

“As if you gave me nice stuff,” Tim grinned.

“Maybe I can deal with this,” Kelly said. “These first couple of hands are just practice, right?”

“Sure,” Sara said. “Especially looking at what you gave me.”

“Deucy, deucy, who’s got the deucy?” Cody sang. The trouble light swayed gently, throwing strange shadows as they played.

continued…

Conversation with Tim Petro

Thanksgiving, and Thanks a Lot

Another Thanksgiving, one that happened to coincide with my birthday this year (I’ve turned 17 for the 3^rd time if you want to know). I was hoping — but not expecting — a little whimsy, like candles on the turkey, and that didn’t happen. But I got something much better: the in-laws behaved themselves and didn’t launch into one of their squabblefests for a change. Mrs. Fetched’s dad hasn’t had Fox Spew on this weekend, at least when I’ve been there, which makes being there a little more bearable.


This has not been a great year for the in-laws, health-wise: Mrs. Fetched is the only one of her immediate family who hasn’t had a stretch in the hospital this year. Big V has been in twice, and not all of her came home last time. She got out of rehab just in time to join us for the festoovities, complete with an initial prosthetic foot. She made a comment about “I wish my other leg was as thin as my new one!" (Careful what you ask for, sis.)


The good news: no trip to the chicken houses on my birthday. The bad news: my birthday is only one day out of 365. For me, Black Friday was an appropriate name. The poultry company started subsidizing the natural gas for the growers a year or so ago — which, given the price, is one way to keep growers from just shutting down through the winter. However, they’ve started doing some kind of pressure test to make sure the heat stays inside for just a little while longer. The houses were built in the 1980s, before and after I entered the picture here, and they’re nearly as drafty as they are filthy. They did an initial test last weekend, and they scored a 2 with a minimum acceptable score of 5 (not sure what the dimensions/units are just yet, maybe 1/10 PSI). They delayed putting in a new batch of birds, to give Mrs. Fetched another week to improve things, so it’s all hands on dreck [sic]. While a hired gun straightened out exhaust fans and sagging doors, we spent much of the afternoon inside a closed (and unlit) chicken house, seeking out spots of daylight to spray foam filler into. Mrs. Fetched and I walked around and put screws in some of the plywood that was bowing away from the studs and letting light (and cold air) in as well.


Of course, some cracks of daylight just weren’t conducive for spraying foam into — like the large doors in front and back. Mrs. Fetched had a plan, and raw materials to execute it with: when we put wood flooring in Daughter Dearest’s room, we had to rip out the white carpet. It’s been sitting in the detached garage ever since, and Mrs. Fetched appropriated it for the chicken houses. Panda cut 6-inch wide strips of carpeting and tacked them up… so yup, the chicken houses are carpeted (but a bit askew as always).

After we knocked off, mainly for lack of material to continue, I went to the back yard to continue leaf-removal exercises, and pulled up the wild blackberry vines. They weren’t bearing that well, and I figure Mason will be running around outside by next fall, so I wanted to make sure we have a briar-free area for him. I get better blackberries from stands a little farther from home.


Of course, I’m not going to let one of these go by without a picture of Mason. Daughter Dearest has been home all week, while Mason has been in and out of the manor… but he loves his aunt DD. It turns out The Boy is often unable to wake up, even with Mason in the crib next to the bed giving him the full-throated “FEED ME!!!” roar. Anyway, DD got to take care of him all afternoon while the rest of us were suffering in the chicken houses (I’ve had that privilege a couple times myself). He continues to grow, eat ever more prodigious amounts of formula, and develop. He’s starting to laugh, drooling like Amicalola Falls, and in the early stages of cutting teeth (Snippet cut teeth when she was 3 months old). His brain is wiring up at breakneck speed; you can see him taking more interest in his surroundings and he’s starting to reach for things. Anything in his hand immediately goes in his mouth, of course. Unfortunately, we’re getting more normal weather for this time of year now, so dropping him in the stroller is going to be a very occasional event until March or April.

Just think… we get to do this again tomorrow. Oh joy.

White Pickups, Episode 10

Contents

Hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving has a good one! Eat more pie, so you’ll be too heavy to go outside when the pickup comes for you… :-)

---

Introductions, embraces, laughter. “That’s a nice way to carry things around,” Sara said, waving at the bicycle and trailer. “Beats pushing a grocery cart for two miles, I’ll bet.”

“It’s not much like the exercise bikes at the fitness centers, though,” Tina laughed. “I got it right after I left here on Friday, at the shop down the strip. Maybe we can find you something, if it hasn’t been looted.”

“Hey Tina,” Cody said. “Is this where the beer guy left his carts?”

“Down there by the lamppost,” Tina said. Empty carts were strewn all over the lot. Some lay on their sides, all looked battered. A white pickup stood alone on the far end of the lot; that, broken glass, and scattered carts were the only things to see.

The emergency lighting in the Saver-Market was adequate to see by, and they made quick work of their grocery needs. Tina loaded a cooler with meat, not wanting it to go to waste, and Sara showed her the large ice maker in back.

The display window at the bike shop was boarded up now. The plywood sported a mural, showing a couple (one who looked like the proprietor) on touring bikes in the foreground, and mountain bikes following a trail into a distant wood. A signboard in front of the door, borrowed from the nearby Italian restaurant, read:

CUSTOMERS AND
VISITORS WELCOME

LOOTERS WILL BE
SHOT

Cody shrugged and poked his head through the door. “Hey! Customers and visitors here! Don’t shoot!”

The young man that sold Tina her bicycle on Friday stepped in from the back, wearing a shoulder holster. “Hi folks. Sorry about the sign, I had some trouble here Saturday night. Come on in. Oh, hey, hello Ms. — you were in here Friday when everything started going crazy, weren’t you?”

“That’s right. I’m Tina Ball. You sold me the bike and trailer. It’s been a big help. My daughter Kelly, our friend Cody… and this is our friend Sara, I was wondering if you could set her up with something to get around on as well.”

“Sure. Oh, I’m Tim Petro — great name for a guy in a bike shop, huh? Since you’re here, you might as well let me give your ride a once-over.” He looked through the glass door. “I’ll tweak up the other ones too, no charge. Not like money’s good for much anymore.” He laughed.

“You said you had some trouble Saturday,” Cody said. “What happened?”

“About what you’d expect. Some drunk f— fellow went over to the grocery store and helped himself to pretty much all the booze they had left. He started making all sorts of noise in the parking lot, ‘I’m the last man on Earth,’ crap like that. I left a little light on in the shop here, enough to see by — I expected looters, so I was staying for the night. I don’t know why, but he started running around screaming and banging on lampposts, throwing carts around, that kind of idiocy. I stuck my head out the door and told him to go have another drink, and he came a-running. I backed into the store, he busted out the display window with a crowbar, and I shot him. Don’t know if it killed him or not, but he went away. Loudly. I swept up the glass and put up the plywood yesterday morning, then went and got the sign. My ex-girlfriend painted the plywood last year… I was going to put it on one of the walls, but never got around to it. Good thing I had it, though.”

“We were just over at the Target, picking up some supplies,” Tina said. “It was trashed pretty good. Maybe he was the one.”

“Yeah, it only takes one to make a mess. But enough of that. I think we were talking about setting up this young lady with new wheels?”

“I’m no lady,” Sara laughed, “but you can call me Sara Karsten. Nothing too expensive.”

“Ha! They’re all the same price now — for customers and visitors, it’s on the house. But something not too finicky, I presume. I think I have another bike like Ms. Ball’s here that will fit you.”

Cody cleared his throat. “Um… if you’re giving out free samples, do you think you could set me up with a mountain bike? I like my stunt bike OK, I got it here last year. But if I have to go everywhere on a bike, I think I’ll need something different. Something that’ll take a knockin’ and keep on rockin’.”

Tim laughed. “I think we can arrange that. And the other young lady here?”

Kelly shook her head. “I’m okay with what I have,” she said. “But if you want to tune it up, or whatever, I’d appreciate it.”

As Tim was getting Sara’s and Cody’s bikes ready, Tina asked, “Tim, what do you think about joining our little group here? My ex and some of his friends down in Atlanta contacted us, and they think we’d all be better off banding together — either downtown or out here. I don’t know what your situation is, but you’re welcome to come along. There’s a couple of houses in our development that were abandoned by their owners — I know where the keys are, and we’ve kept them maintained. I was thinking we’d put Sara in one. You can have the other.”

Tim looked at the ceiling for a moment. “How far did you say it was? Eight miles?”

“About. It took us 45 minutes to get here.”

“Yeah, because I was slowin’ you guys down,” Cody grumbled. “A stunter ain’t made for traveling.”

“If you hadn’t been showing off, jumping curbs and bouncing around on it,” Kelly grinned, “we might have got here a little sooner.”

“I could probably make it in 20 minutes, if I had to,” Tim said. “I’ve got the gear, and I’m in shape. Sure… it’s probably a good idea. I’ve got some work to do here, so if you guys have any more shopping to do, you can take care of it.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay here and give you a hand, or just watch,” Cody said. “I can spin a wrench or whatever.”

“Cody, I’d feel better if you were with us,” Tina said. “We know there are — or were — looters around, and I don’t think three women should be wandering around by ourselves.”

“Why? Chromosome!” Cody said, standing and joining the women. Tim snorted, Sara and Tina looked confused, Kelly rolled her eyes and turned toward the shoe store. “Yeah, bad pun,” he said. They left Tim to his work.

continued…

Fall is Fell, The Boy is Sprung

Current music: Philosomatika



After the usual delays and bobbles associated with the court system on Planet Georgia, Mrs. Fetched brought The Boy home this afternoon. Of course, there was the obligatory stop needed at the apartment to get him some clothes, and then they stopped at the mechanic’s to pick up my car (Mrs. Fetched had guessed right about the problem being the thermostat). Meanwhile, Snippet was at the house, jittering, jiving, cavorting, and just plain being a giddy female-type while I was trying to work. (It didn’t help my productivity that Mason was having a colic spazz this morning.)

So the upshot of his latest episode: time served, a year probation, “family counseling” (a family-oriented anger management class), a $500 fine offset by the amount of his counseling, and probably a couple things I’m forgetting. He also lost his job. Perhaps the most onerous (to him) part is no booze throughout his probation. Yeah right, like that’s gonna happen. I just hope he doesn’t end up violating his probation.

I may have to do a 2.0 version of TBxx errors.

White Pickups, Episode 9

Contents

Monday, September 19, 2011

The electricity went out early Monday morning. There was still water in the pipes, but the pressure noticeably lessened as the morning went on. Tina and Kelly filled all the containers they could find and started a list of things they needed. About the time they finished their list, Cody rode up their driveway on his bicycle.

“Hey guys,” he said when Kelly opened the door. “Your power out too?”

“Yes, it is,” Tina said. “We’re going to go look for a generator and some gas cans and bottled water. I figure we can siphon gas out of the QuickFill tanks somehow. Kelly worked there, she knows where the keys are.”

“Well, I can save you part of your trip,” Cody said. “Dad had a couple generators, I got one hooked up to the fridge and some lights this morning. And my Playstation. You can have the other one, just bring that trailer bike down to my place and we’ll load it up. He had a handpump too, we can siphon gas with that. So if you’re okay about me coming along, could we get some extra gas cans for me?”

Two white pickups stood waiting at the gate. Kelly stopped short, Tina behind. Cody, bringing up the rear, slipped around them and past the pickups to the gate. He pushed it open, and the trucks rolled through and quickly blended into those on the side streets. “Come on,” he said, waving to Tina and Kelly; after they rode through, he closed the gate behind him. “I think that was all of them,” he grinned. “Maybe they won’t come back in if we keep the gates closed.”

“God, I hope so,” Kelly said, glaring at the departing trucks. “I hate even looking at them.”


The ride to Pleasant Hill was uneventful. As always, the trucks were quiet, unobtrusive, and polite. They moved on to their target, a Target.

“Good God, what a mess,” Cody said, playing his flashlight across the floor. “Looters do this?”

“Probably,” Tina said. “I guess it’s not enough for them to steal things, they have to trash the place too.”

“So there are other people around. We were right.”

“Maybe. Maybe they did this on Friday, then drove off. I saw a guy come out of the Saver-Market on Friday with two shopping carts full of beer. He left it there and climbed into a white pickup.”

Cody shivered. A moment later, Kelly’s phone rang, making them all jump. She fished it out of her pocket, giving her mom a shrug.

“Hello? Daddy? You’re okay? Yeah, we both are… just us and another kid from the community, I think we’re the only ones who didn’t drive off. The power’s out, so we’re getting gas cans and candles and stuff. Yeah, that’s what we’re calling it. Is everyone else okay down there? … Oh, Daddy, I’m sorry. How many? Oh. Um, sure, I’ll check.” She lowered the phone. “He wants to talk to you, Mom.”

Tina hesitated, then took the phone and walked toward the front of the store. “Hello, Charles.”

“Hi Tina. I was worried about you and Kelly, but we were having some trouble down here too.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“Looters. Bashers. Typical weekend in post-apocalypse Atlanta.”

“Right. But it’s over?”

“Yeah. We were a little better armed than they thought we’d be. The looters weren’t interested in anyone who was going to fight back, but the bashers needed a little more persuasion.”

“Is everyone okay then?”

“Well, we lost Trey Muldoon, and a couple guys got wounded, nothing serious. James… he didn’t exactly drive off. But some of those pickups were stopped at a red light last night, before the power went out. He opened the passenger door on one and jumped in just as the light turned green.”

“Jesus.”

“Look, I don’t know how long the cellphone towers will stay live now that the power’s out — maybe one or two days if we’re lucky. I ’d like to come up and see you and Kelly tomorrow. There will be two or three of us — we found out the hard way that traveling alone is a bad idea. I don’t know how you feel about moving down here, or us all moving up there, but we all agree that it would be best if the holdouts stuck together. Think about it, OK?”

“Holdouts, good name. Sure, come on up, it’s not like we can’t find room for you, ha ha.”

“Yeah, same here. If the phones are still working in the morning, I’ll call you before we leave. It shouldn’t take two hours to get there.”

“Okay, Charles. We’ll see you then. I’ll talk to the others about what you said. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Kelly stood alone as Tina returned. “Where’s Cody?”

“He went to check —”

“Jeez, guys,” Cody said, rounding the aisle at the far end. “You ought to see the beer and wine aisle. Picked. Clean. They even took the neon signs. Looks like whoever did it couldn’t wait to get outside, there’s empties all over the place. It’s a wonder they found the door.”

“That doesn’t surprise me in the least,” Tina said. “Well, let’s get what we came for.” They fanned out, carts in hand, to get gas cans, canned goods, candles, lanterns, propane canisters, camp toilets, and a pair of cookstoves.

Tina’s phone sounded its default ringtone as they left the building. The Caller ID showed an unfamiliar number. “Does Charles have this number?” she asked, thumbing the answer button. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miz Tina… I don’t know if you remember me. Sara, from the Saver-Market? You bought that cartload of groceries on Friday?”

“Yes! Sara! Are you all right?”

“Well, the power is out at my house now. I was wondering if perhaps I could join you. There don’t seem to be many of us left, and my car… or what it’s become… keeps annoying me and won’t let me sleep well.”

“We’re just down the street —”

“Looting a big-box!” Cody called. Tina gave him the look, and he turned away.

“Do you think you could meet us in front of the grocery store? We’ll pick up some more canned goods.”

“Certainly,” Sara said. “The emergency power should still be running at the store, I was told it would last for a day if need be. I’ll see you there. And thank you so much.”

continued…

Never a Dull Moment

Mason is cruising right along, development-wise… and slobbering like he’s cutting teeth already. He’s also started fighting sleep through the day — if he can manage, he’ll get by on 20-minute catnaps through the day and he can get pretty cranky when he can’t keep going. He stayed awake when I took him out in the stroller with Snippet this afternoon… and we got about half the walk done. I had to carry him for the last stretch; he didn’t conk out and snooze this time. Sometimes I can prop him up on a couple pillows and get a little keyboarding done, but that only lasts 10 minutes tops. [EDIT: That's my robe he's sleeping on. Snippet had his laundry in the crib.]

So… remember The Boy’s little incident back in February? They’d continued to put off his court date, and he managed to miss the one he was supposed to attend on Monday. The court doesn’t have much of a sense of humor concerning those things, and they came by the manor looking for him Tuesday afternoon then yanked him off the factory floor that evening. The real killer was, if he had bothered to remember and show up, there’s a pretty good chance they would have dropped the charges and he would have been shut of the whole sordid mess. Now, he’s sitting in the clink in Historic Forsyth County until his (rather expensive) lawyer that Mrs. Fetched found for him can get him out. I just hope he’ll have a job to return to, so he can pay the lawyer.

Working at home yesterday (and today), Mrs. Fetched and I had to run to the chiro-cracker late in the morning. I jumped in the car; she said “When did you spill gasoline on yourself?”

“I didn’t,” I said, smelling my shirt. “I haven’t handled gas since Friday.”

Coming out of the chiro-cracker, we smelled gas again and I opened the trunk. It did smell quite a bit. “You must have spilled some gas when you were helping that woman get her car started Friday night.” (She ran out of gas in the turn lane, ahead of me… better to carry her a few hundred yards than let her risk her life trying to cross GA400 in the dark.) I guess that was possible, so we zipped over to Zaxby’s. The lawyer called her just as we were getting out, and I walked over to the building to get out of the parking lot… and saw gas dripping underneath the car. Fortunately, I had the mechanic’s number in my phone, so I called and made sure we could bring the car in after lunch. As it turns out, we didn’t make it… ran out of gas less than two miles short of the turn into his shop. Mrs. Fetched called the tow service and we got it over there. Turned out a rat chewed the fuel line — just more proof that reality is stranger than fiction at FAR Manor. I hope that little so&so poisoned itself! This was familiar territory… the shower fix that turned into a water leak last month was the product of a rat chewing the water line. The plumber left us the affected piece as a souvenir (which Mrs. Fetched tossed before I had a chance to get a picture) and a note saying we did a really nice job on the shower.

So Snippet has been here since Tuesday. She and DoubleRed have been getting on each others’ nerves, until finally DoubleRed started growling at Snippet this afternoon while I was trying to work. Snippet said, “I’m leaving now,” and walked out of the room; DoubleRed slammed her door open and stormed into the kitchen. I yelled at them both to cool it, and they kept it down until they were finally able to work out their differences. At least I assume they did; they’ve been fairly cordial and even slightly chummy since then. At least DoubleRed has gone somewhere for the evening… maybe if they don’t see each other much they can keep up the happy babble.

Work also picked a fine week to go ka-boom, and taught me that not all schedule slips are a positive “development” for me. A major project that was supposed to be done by the end of the month is now sliding out to the end of December… but with a major re-think about the feature set. So out with half the stuff I’ve done with it to date, in with whatever is going to go in (I’m supposed to get a high-level list Real Soon Now). This is turning into one of those things that suck all the oxygen out of the other projects — both hardware and software — going on; my boss is telling his boss that pretty much everything else I’m doing has to be pushed out. Vacations are being canceled, and I was planning to burn the 7 days I’m not officially allowed to carry over at Thanksgiving and Christmas. That too has been worked out… with any luck, I’ll take two weeks at the end of January and spend it in Florida. Sitting on the beach, 500+ miles from FAR Manor and the office, sounds like just the thing.

White Pickups, Conversations: Kelly Ball

Contents

Hi. I’m Tina Kelly Ball…

So you go by your middle name?

Yeah. I got my mom’s first name and my dad’s middle name. It’s just easier to tell us apart if I go by Kelly.

Right. School…

I’m a junior this year, or was. I don’t guess I’ll be going back to school any time soon.

Were you in any extracurricular activities?

I was on the JV basketball team as a starter. I got called up to varsity for a few weeks last year, when Keri Graham got the flu. I mostly sat on the bench, but I played 6 minutes and 12 seconds in the first game (yes, I looked it up!), and got one assist. The coach put me in because he said Jenna Shafer was slacking. They all played a lot harder after that, I guess they didn’t want to get benched for the girl up from JV, but I got to play the last 3:07 in the last game when Andreya Nicoles fouled out. After that, Keri was OK to play and I went back to JV. It was a big difference, going back and seeing how sloppy the other kids were. I tried to get them to step it up a notch, and they did for a little while.

So you’re a natural leader. :-)

Not really. I’ll speak up if nobody else does, if something needs to be done, but that’s about it.

Tell us about your parents.

Well, Dad’s gay, but he wouldn’t even admit it to himself until about five years ago. Mom took it really hard when he told her, I guess it had to do with how she was brought up. My grandparents on her side are really cold people, not the kind you’d think about doing anything fun with. Mom got a long way away from them, but she can’t get away from her programming, right? I usually go see Dad once a month or so, spend the weekend with him. It’s a lot different from suburbia, kind of exciting. It feels dangerous. Then there’s all these cute guys around, but they’re all interested in each other, that’s kind of a letdown.

It doesn’t bother you about your dad, then.

Not really. He’s always been my dad, that’s what’s important. I don’t exactly go around broadcasting it at school, you know how some kids are.

Do you have a boyfriend?

Just a few dates, nothing serious. I haven’t heard from any of my friends since Friday… I guess they’re all gone too. Now there’s Cody… I don’t know how I feel about him. I really didn’t want to date him, but if I had to marry him that wouldn’t be so bad. Weird, huh?

We’re just so different. He reminds me in a way of some of the guys downtown when I go to visit Dad, except Cody’s obviously straight. But he’s really useful to have around. He has his own way of looking at stuff, and I guess that’s really good now because everything’s different.

So what do you think happened?

I wish I knew. I wish I could put it back the way it was. There were a lot of decent people that drove off, I was almost one of them.

Back to Episode 8…

White Pickups, Episode 8

Contents

“They all look alike,” Cody said, glaring at the white pickup in Tina’s garage. “Well, gimme the key. I’ll reach in, throw it in neutral, and we can push it down the driveway.”

“We don’t have the key,” Tina said. “I flushed it down the toilet last night so it would stop bothering Kelly.” Kelly stood outside the garage, hugging herself and looking worried. “But it still bothers her.”

“Well shit, how are we gonna get it out of gear then?” Cody shook his head; his hair again fell across one eye. He swept it back. “Why don’t we just push on it? It might be out of gear already.”

“You think so?” Kelly asked.

“Might be worth a try.” He walked around to the front of the truck, leaned into the truck and pushed. “Oh, shut your pie hole, I don’t wanna be like you or anyone else,” Cody said to the truck. “Hey, I think it moved! C’mon guys, let’s shove this sucker out!” Tina joined him at the front of the truck. The two of them strained, and the truck started to roll. “Keep it going!” Cody spun around and put his back to the truck, pushing hard with his legs. The truck rolled out of the garage, onto the driveway, then gravity took over and it rolled faster, dropping Cody to the pavement. It rolled into the street, across, then hit the curb and rolled part way into the yard across the street.

“That oughtta do it,” Cody said, standing up and looking pleased with the minor mayhem. “I figure it’ll be gone in the morning.”

“Good,” Kelly said, glaring at the truck.

Cody jumped on his skateboard. “Where are you going?” Tina asked.

“Home, to get some tools. I want to have a look at what makes those things go.”

Tina and Kelly looked at each other as Cody rolled away. “He’s weird,” Kelly said. “But at least he’s not creepy. I’m not sure I’d date him though, even if he is the last boy on Earth.”

“We found one person,” Tina said, “and if we found one there’s bound to be more.”



Cody returned in about ten minutes, riding his “stunter” — a small bike with a tall seat post and handlebars — and carrying a tool bag slung over his shoulder. He rolled up the driveway then walked back down to the truck, now half in the street and half in the Gupta’s yard. Tina came out to watch, and thought about the Guptas for a moment — Indian immigrants, friendly enough in those brief encounters they had. They worked long hours and dreamed of taking their citizenship tests in a few more years. They must have driven away too — and what about their two children?

Cody reached a hand through the grille, felt around for a moment, then bent down and looked. “Where’s the hood latch on this stupid thing?” He stood and looked at the truck again. “Ah, crap!” he yelled, banging a ratchet on the pickup. “It’s all one piece! They didn’t even weld the hood shut, they just made it part of the body!”

“What?”

“Yeah, you can’t get inside.” He turned away, looking disgusted, and walked up the driveway to his bicycle. “I guess I could get a blowtorch and try cutting it open, but I don’t care enough right now.

“Well, it’s been surreal. Guess I’ll go on back home. I’m on Crepe Myrtle if you need me — go back to Laurel Drive, turn right, follow it down to Crepe Myrtle, and turn right again. My place is on the left, the only one with lights. I might have the garage door open if I’ve been outside.”

“Do you want to stay for supper? You’ve been a really big help.”

“Nah. I appreciate the burgers, though. I get the idea that Kelly doesn’t want me around that much anyway. But that’s okay, I’ve never expected much of anything from people and I’m not gonna start now. Thanks again for the burgers.”

“Well, if you need us for any reason, you know where we are too. Let’s stay in touch, especially since there might not be more of us.”

“You really think that? I don’t. There’s gotta be more people out there. We just gotta find ’em.” Cody mounted his bike. “See you guys. Tomorrow sometime, I guess.” He rode away.

continued…

Conversations: Kelly Ball

The Week of Stuff

Mason, contemplating the import of a story his great-grandmother is telling about the “good” old days. I’m not sure he’s buying it. He’s two months old today… wow, has it been that long/short?

The grandkid is definitely starting to develop a personality, complete with a few quirks and routines. For example, if he finishes his bottle and isn’t going to sleep right away, he likes to play a bit. I’ll stand him up in my lap, and he will invariably: jump twice, stamp his left foot twice, his right foot twice, then march. He’s getting stronger all the time; his legs support most of his 11 pounds and change, and he’s always had a good grip.

The “high”light of the week with him was yesterday evening. He was hitting the bottle with his normal enthusiasm, when he stretched out, grunted a couple times, then I heard — and felt — and smelled — pbpbpbbbbttttt from the nether regions. He continued his bottle-draining (and farting) for a couple more minutes, until I figured he was done. Turned out the storm wasn’t over, it was just the “eye” of the hurricane… I opened up the diaper, saw the nuclear waste dump, and began decontaminating the waste outlet. When I hoisted him up by the feet to change the shielding, phpbpbpbbbbtttt went the alarm and I clapped the diaper back over him. Lather, rinse, repeat.

“I didn’t think he was done!” Mrs. Fetched said, ever so helpfully after the fact. "You weren’t finished, were you?” she asked him. He grinned, quite pleased with the minor mayhem he caused.

Shortly after the atomic waste issue, Mrs. Fetched and I headed over to Reinhardt for Daughter Dearest’s fall concert. We had planned to go, then she texted us earlier in the day and said it was sold out (at $2/seat, why not?) — then two seats came open and we were on again! Our seats were almost exactly in the middle of the hall, so I didn’t have the clear view of the stage I had for the Phylicia Rashad concert back in the spring. I took a few shots of DD and some of her friends, and the daughter of the lady sitting next to us, then a few artsy-fart shots like this one. I wound up putting the telephoto zoom on and getting closeups.

Mrs. Fetched was concerned about the clacking of the camera — mechanical shutters do tend to make a fair amount of noise in a venue, as we learned last weekend, shooting the community chorale — but I did my best to not pull the trigger during rests. In fact, a couple ladies behind us wanted to know what kind of camera I had; the EOS 40D has a large-ish (3-inch) display that provides a pretty good image of what you just got and they were looking at the preview (post-views?) after each shot.

The weekend is upon us… but every day is Monday when you have a chicken house. I’m hoping that since Daughter Dearest decided to come home for the weekend, that she’ll give me a reprieve, but I’m not holding my breath. I leave you with a shot from the chorale last weekend…



And I’ve had enough to drink that going to bed early sounds like a really good idea.

White Pickups, Conversations: Cody Sifko

Contents

Cody Sifko, sophomore, 674-00-8831.

What?

Name, rank, and serial number.

That’s your Social Security number.

Whatever. Skateboarder extraordinaire, too. I like to play video games, I have a guitar but I’m not that good with it. I turned 16 last month, got my driver’s license right after, but I don’t have my own car. I drove to school and Mom rode shotgun and drove home, that’s about all the driving I did. I don’t guess it matters now.

So Kelly…

Yeah. We lived in the same subdivision, went to the same school, and didn’t know each other. It is kinda whack, when you think about it. We both kept mostly to ourselves, that’s about all we had in common. She was doing the study hard-get good grades-college bound thing. Me, I was just trying to avoid the jocks and preps who seemed to think I was their personal chew toy.

School sucks like that. I remember.

Yeah. Home was a little better, but pretty much the same thing. School and home, they all wanted me to be someone else. Like them.

Pressure or force.

You got it. My dad, he wanted me to be a man, or his idea of one. So I had to learn how to work on cars, fix wiring, work the grill. And drink the occasional beer, I didn’t have a problem with that! But he poured it in a soda can in case Mom came out to see what we were doing. I just went along with it because I had to, until he said something about being “self-sufficient.” That was the word I’d been looking for since I was like ten — self-sufficient. I didn’t want to have to depend on anyone for anything, because I learned a long time ago: when you depend on someone they want to change you. So then I started really paying attention to stuff that Dad was showing me. It made him happy, but I don’t think he realized that I was learning to be free — free of him and his ideas of what a man is.

So that’s why you’re so resourceful?

Yeah. I got a job at Breakbeat Music, that’s the CD and movie store in the mall, so I didn’t have to depend on my parents to get me a new skateboard or a video game when I wanted one. Or CDs, sure, they let me borrow stuff from the store. I ripped it into my computer and brought it back.

How did you get to work and back, then?

Bicycle, mostly, through the week. Once in a while, I could bum a ride from school if I was working afternoons. Mom took me on weekends, I guess it gave her an excuse to hit the Macy’s or wherever. I like being outside, at least during the day, and between that and skateboarding I’m in decent shape.

You seem like you’re in pretty good shape. Did you try any sports? I know you don’t like the jocks either, but…

I’m not big enough for football, and I don’t care for basketball too much. Dad pushed me into going out for track, and I did okay with the 880 and mile runs. Not a star, but not at the back either. I did it last year, skipped the tryouts this year.

You look emo… but you’re not, are you?.

Yeah, I heard it from the preps all the time — “emo kid.” It was the look I had before I even heard about emos. But you know? It cuts both ways. I’m not trying to look like anyone else, but I’m not trying to not look like anyone else, either.

How about your grades?

I kept my grades up pretty good. Mostly As and Bs. I was hoping to get some kind of scholarship so I wouldn’t have to depend on my parents for college.

Did you have a major picked out, then?

Yeah, I wanted to do videogame development. There’s a lot of work that goes into videogames — programming, music, graphics, design, backgrounds — it’s like working on a major movie. I’m not a huge gamer myself, I like to play, yeah, but it looked like a better career than my parents would think. But if they paid for me to go to college, they would have wanted me to do a two-year degree, and be an electrician or welder or something. Dad showed me how to splice wires and weld stuff — I fixed a busted skate truck once — but I don’t think it would have been much fun to do all day long.

Right. So what do you think happened?

I dunno. Actually, I think it was just a matter of too many people using up too much stuff, and the earth just rose up and swallowed us up. Maybe it took all the conformist-types because it thought the rest of us could make a better world with the others out of the way? I dunno. My parents drove off first thing Thursday morning, and my little sister went with them. I miss her, mom kinda, too. My dad, not so much. I know that’s bad, but I can’t help feeling that way. I mostly stayed out of trouble, did the chores they gave me, kept my grades up… but somehow it wasn’t enough. Yeah, I guess I miss them all. I don’t miss them wanting me to be someone else, though.

Back to Episode 7…

White Pickups, Episode 7

Contents

Part II
Gathering

They called it the Truckalypse, the Devil’s Rapture, the Forever Road Trip. Those who refused the call began to gather together…

Saturday, September 17, 2011

“Tell me why we’re doing this again, Mom?”

“Well, for one,” Tina said, standing to pedal up the incline to the pool parking lot, “it’s a beautiful day, and we’ve got the place to ourselves. Two, if there’s anyone else around, they’ll be here or maybe in the clubhouse. And three, if they’re not here but they smell us grilling burgers, maybe they’ll come get some. We’ll never eat this much meat ourselves.”

They heard a rolling noise, then a splash, from behind the fence as they stopped in front of the pool gate. No other vehicles to be seen. They chained the bikes to the lightpost then peeked into the pool area, just in time to see a kid in bright orange swim trunks and a black t-shirt ride his skateboard into the pool. As he went over the edge, he and the skateboard jumped; the skateboard rolled under his feet and came back upright just in time for the kid’s feet to land on the board and then in the water.

Tina and Kelly picked up the coolers and grill and opened the gate. The kid was just climbing out of the pool; he saw Tina and Kelly and gaped for a moment before grabbing his board and standing.

“Sorry,” he said, shaking the water out of his long black hair, “I didn’t think anyone else was around. You’re still real, right?”

“Real?” Kelly asked. “You mean, not tooling around in a white pickup?”

“Yeah. I’m Cody Sifko. I live down on Crepe Myrtle.”

“I’m Tina Ball, and this is my daughter Kelly. Would you like to join us for lunch?”

“Sure! You grillin’ burgers? Anything beats peanut butter, I’ve been livin’ off peanut butter and cereal since Thursday.”

“So why didn’t you just drive away?” Kelly asked, fishing a Diet Coke out of the larger cooler.

“I heard it talking to me,” Cody said, “I just ignored it. The rest of my family, though…” he looked down, which made his hair fall over one eye.

“Ignored it. Just like that.” Kelly crossed her arms and glared.

“Sure.” Then seeing Kelly’s look, “But I had lots of practice. I mean, all my dam’ life, it’s been ‘why can’t you be like XYZ’ or ‘you need to be this or that’ — don’t even get me started about high school. Everyone’s wanted me to be anyone but me, and that’s what the truck said: be one of us. F— forget that, why can’t I just be who I am?”

“We had some trouble yesterday, Cody,” Tina said, trying to smooth things over. “It shook us both up pretty bad. But we decided we’re here, and even if we didn’t sleep too well last night, we’re going to try to find out what happened and see how many people are… left. Are you any good with a grill? I haven’t done it much.”

“Yeah, my dad made me help him a few times,” Cody said. “You stack the charcoal in a pyramid — here, let me — then hit it with some lighter fluid.” He piled up the charcoal then squirted on a generous helping of lighter fluid. “You really don’t need that much, but I like a big poof when you light it. That’s how I always did it when my dad wasn’t watching.” He grinned. “Match? Okay, stand back…” he struck a match and tossed it into the grill from a few feet away; it barked and shot a small ball of flame into the air. “Yeah, good one! Now you open a beer and let it sit for 20 minutes or so until the charcoal turns white. You got a beer?”

Tina shook her had. “Sorry. Just soft drinks.”

“I figured. No problem.” He walked around the pool and took a Bud from a small soft-sided cooler before rejoining them. “Either of you guys want one? Dad always had a few cases around.”

“No thanks,” Tina said for them both. “Cody? Do you still hear it calling you?”

“No… they called me to come work Thursday night — I worked at Breakbeat Music, in the mall — and when I came out, Mom’s car was gone and the truck was sitting out there at the curb. It started talking to me, I flipped it off and went back inside. I called Breakbeat and told them my car wouldn’t start, and fooled around the rest of the evening. It was gone the next morning.”

“That’s why I didn’t sleep last night,” Kelly admitted. “Ours is still in the garage. You think if we got it out of there somehow, it would go away too?”

“It might. I guess we could try it.” Cody put his beer can next to the grill, then jumped back into the pool. “It’s a little cold, but it feels good when you get used to it! You guys might as well jump in while we’re waiting for the grill to warm up.”

“Oh, why not?” Kelly said, removing her shorts and t-shirt to reveal the one-piece suit beneath. “It’ll be too cold to swim pretty soon anyway.” She dived in from the side.

“Hey, you ever ride a skateboard? Landing it in the pool’s a trip!” Cody grinned.

continued…

Conversations: Cody Sifko

Mid-week Mason-ry

Mason has been at the manor more than not the last couple of weeks. DoubleRed thinks they’re taking advantage of us… on the other hand, we know we’ll do a good job of taking care of the kid, so I’m not all that bummed about it. Besides, Snippet has been taking on a bigger share of the night-time load… he starts crying, and she’s mostly down the stairs by the time I’m starting to shuck my robe on (or Mrs. Fetched, for that matter).

It’s finally gotten a little warm this week, and we got the stroller out. We learned yesterday that Mason likes being outside: if he’s crying, take him outside and he stops. So he was pretty cranky at first in the stroller, but as soon as I got him outside he got quiet. Three seconds later, he was asleep. I really want to get one of those slings to put him in, so I can walk around with him and have both hands free.


One of the things I’ve been wanting to do since he was born was to get a picture of the five generations extant on Mrs. Fetched’s side of the family… and yesterday, I finally got it. Here you see Mason, The Boy, Mrs. Fetched, her mom, and her granny. We’ll probably send this picture (or one I took inside the night before) to the paper.

It’s really too bad he was born in the fall… while he loves being outside so much, it’s going to be difficult finding nice days for him to enjoy until spring. The days (and years) are going to go by fairly quickly, methinks.

The New Publishing

My blog-buddy Beth has gotten the idea of putting more of her writing on her blog. I think that’s a great idea, but of course I would! She’s posted excerpts from some of her writing in the past, and I for one thought it was pretty good. In last night’s post, she brings some good insights to the difficulties writers (as performance artists) face:

…it isn't as though we can sit on a street corner and read our work. Kind of loses something if a person walks by and just hears a couple of sentences. Can't sell unpublished books at art shows or craft fairs. I guess we could convince a coffee shop to let us read our work, but unless you're a poet, that's a hard sell.

A lot of local or regional art shows include a writing segment or competition, but it can be difficult to put the entries on display. I think the Grand Rapids (MI) art festival has the closest thing to the right idea, putting the best entries in the Press. But unless it’s flash fiction (less than 1000 words), it’s not likely that you’ll see many people reading a story at a kiosk the way they’ll view paintings or photos in a gallery — or sit in a dark room to watch a short or long video. I suppose the closest thing to a display case for writing is a literary magazine… many of which have a readership in the low hundreds (my high-end estimate for this blog, so I’m not sneering except to say I don’t need a budget to do this).

But, as Beth points out, blogs can provide a place for writers to perform. Sure, it’s not a place where you can get immediate feedback like a musician gets in a venue (as Beth says: no one's going to stand up and cheer and clap after they read this, and chant, "Five more posts!"), but I’ve had plenty of feedback and encouragement on both FAR Future and the new White Pickups story in comments and email. Indeed, I got an email yesterday to correct a typo in FAR Future #45 (hi Alan!). You can also find a few short/flash stories down-blog, although I daresay they’ve been buried under the weight of 104 FAR Future episodes — I should probably re-tag them.

I’m certainly not the only person putting works of various lengths on a blog, and I’ve even plugged a couple of them in the past. Some of ones I keep up with include:

Carnacki — among the general news of the horror genre, and his own life, you’ll find vampire novellas and novels featuring the vampire Lucy Westenra and a band of humans fighting both Nazis and more supernatural forms of evil.

Apocalypse Blog — an alternative world, in which World War Three has come and gone and left a remnant struggling to survive in the ruins. The narrator tells the story as it happens in her world.

Dorlana Vann — a published novelist and short-story writer who still thinks the blogosphere is good enough to see some of her work.

Star’s Reach — by John Michael Greer, aka the Archdruid. This is a less-optimistic peak-oil novel than FAR Future, set several hundred years in the future.

Several authors have released their novels as audiobooks — or podcasted them, if you prefer. Scott Sigler is one of the best-known, but there are plenty of others. Thanks to sites like ourmedia.org, it’s not difficult to store an audiobook then release it through iTunes.

The web is a great leveler for the arts — it presents text, audio, graphics, and video with (almost) equal aplomb. I’m sure there were people posting fiction to Usenet back when the 'net was pretty much all text, but I don't remember seeing any. Each format has its strengths and limitations when brought to the web, and each requires modifications to work with the limitations of online publishing:

• You can read serialized novels on a dialup, but anything much over 1000 words gets pretty long on a computer screen. Novels work best when written in 800–1500 word segments.


• Photos have to be downscaled to load reasonably quickly and be viewed on a typical monitor.


• Audio and video can take a long time to download unless they're compressed heavily enough to impact quality. Thanks to MP3 and more modern encodings like AAC, music might require the least amount of modification compared to more traditional publishing. Video, of course, is a tradeoff between length, quality, and download time.

You can even have a tip jar; I've thought of two kinds. One is the straight PayPal thing (which The Homeless Guy does); another is to turn on ads and encourage people to click the ads if they like the story or fragment. I suspect the latter would provide a more steady trickle of coinage… people are often happier to spend other people's money than their own. :-)

Those of us who write (or create other forms of art) for the love of it have the ability to reach a much wider audience than ever before. It’s up to us to make the most of it.

White Pickups, Episode 6

Contents

Tina panted as she turned the last corner, a little wider than planned because of the trailer — fortunately, there was no oncoming traffic — and stood to power up the driveway to the house.

She hadn’t seen Kelly along the way… oh shit, she thought, slamming the bike up her driveway and skidding to a stop in front of the garage door, nearly hitting it, gasping for breath.

“Kelly!”

Through the garage door: “Mom! Help!”

“Get away from it, Kelly! I’m coming!” The garage door opener was in her car, if it even existed anymore, but there was an entry at the side of the garage — locked and deadbolted, of course. “Kelly! Can you get the side door open?”

“Noooooooooo! I won’t!” Tina wasn’t sure if her daughter was speaking to her or the truck. She could hear it whispering even out here.

She ran to the side door. “The key! Drop the key! Get rid of it!” Tina got the deadbolt unlatched; more precious moments wasted to switch keys and unlock the doorknob.

Kelly shrieked, and something banged the garage door. Tina yanked the door open, and Kelly nearly bowled her over.

“Mom!” she sobbed, clutching Tina harder than she had in years.

“It’s okay, honey,” Tina said, hugging her daughter and catching her breath. “You’re fine now. Come on outside. Where’s the key?”

“I — I threw — it at the door,” Kelly gasped. “Oh God, Mom, I thought it was going to get me.”

“It can’t, now,” Tina said, hoping it was true. “Let’s get the groceries inside. Do something else, you’ll calm down.”


“Whoa, Mom,” Kelly said, still shaky, looking at the bike. “You’re set for a cross-country trip with that thing.”

Tina laughed. “We should get one for you, too. Maybe we could find a place where nobody drives those… things.”

Kelly shook her head and unhooked the cargo net. “I think it’s everywhere, Mom.”

“Me too. Is the power still on?”

“Yeah. Do you think it will go off?”

“Well, it takes people to run the power plants and maintain the lines,” Tina said. “It might run by itself for a long time, but when the power plants run out of fuel or a storm knocks down the lines, there won’t be anyone to fix it.”

Kelly hefted a pair of bags. “Jeez, Mom, what is this stuff? Lead?”

“All bottled water and canned stuff, hon. We’ll use up what we have in the freezer first, but then it’s all cans and jars. I also got charcoal and a new grill, so we can cook if the power’s out.”

“It’s a gas stove, Mom.” Kelly opened the front door and held it for Tina to bring her own load through.

“But the gas comes from somewhere, too. Right?”

“Oh. You thought about this, didn’t you?”

“Not really. Just a hunch.”

“Well, if we don’t have electricity, and we don’t have gas, how are we gonna keep the house warm? It’ll start getting cold in a month.”

“I hadn’t thought of everything yet. Here, let’s get the rest of this stuff inside.” Tina stepped across the kitchen and closed the door going to the garage.


“What are you going to do about… about the garage?” Kelly asked over a late lunch.

“I think if you get rid of the key, it can’t talk to you as well,” Tina said. “I meant to tell you, I saw a guy at the grocery store get in one.”

Kelly goggled. “Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I tried. He said something about being done fighting it and got in.”

“Mom? What do you think happens to people who get in a truck?”

“I don’t know, honey. But I don’t think I want to find out. All I want to do is get rid of that key.”

“How?”


Tina looked into the garage from the kitchen. The white pickup — formerly Kelly’s green Civic — stood waiting across from her.

“I hear it again, Mom!”

Be one with us. No struggle. No trouble.

“I hear it too. Is it bad?”

“No.”

“Okay.” Tina hit the garage door opener, then closed the kitchen door. “I’ll just pick it up from outside.”

“But if the key is what does it, how are you going to keep it from getting you?”

Tina reached into a grocery bag and brought out a pair of BBQ tongs. “Maybe if I’m not touching it myself, it won’t be as strong. And I’ll put it in one of these,” she said, pulling an empty grocery bag out of another bag.

“Be careful, Mom.”

“I will. But you need to come with me, just in case.”

Kelly sighed and followed her mother out the front door.

The whispering got stronger when she picked up the key with the tongs, but not so strong as at the grocery store. She dropped it in the bag without incident, then went inside.

“Where are you going?”

“Same place I always go when I come through the front door in the evening,” Tina said, and went down the hall to the guest bathroom. She upended the grocery bag over the toilet; the key plopped into the water and made a soft clink as it hit the porcelain. “And now… it’s Gwinnett Water and Sewer’s problem,” she said, flushing it away.

continued…

Mason, Moonshine, Motor Vehicles

Mason has been in and out of the manor a couple of times this week. As I type, he’s here as expected — The Boy has his band buddies over on Saturdays, rain, sun… or Moonshine Festival.

I was hoping to avoid the whole zoo this year, and at first it looked like I’d be able to… I took care of a surveillance camera at the chicken houses and helped get a more solid hanger put up for one of the feed bins where the rafter cracked, and that was going to get me off the hook except to take Mrs. Fetched. We loaded up a couple of chairs, and I brought my camera Just In Case, and I dropped her off and headed back to grab a peanut butter sandwich.

I hadn’t gone a couple miles when the phone rang… “Can you turn around and bring the chairs?”

“I said something about that when you were getting your other stuff!” I said, “I figured you didn’t want them.”

“I didn’t hear you.” Didn’t listen, is more like it. Anything I say is optional for listening to.

“Whatever,” I said. “Send someone to meet me at the corner so I you can grab them.” There was nowhere to park, even for a few seconds, and the detours were packed with cars. Naturally, nobody was up at the corner and where I had to go was the wrong way on a one-way. I couldn’t even turn around; I had to follow the detour and every turn was the wrong way. I was getting hungry, and cranky, and I finally got to a place where I could text Mrs. Fetched and Daughter Dearest: If nobody is at the corner to get the chairs, I’m not coming back. It took a good half hour to get back to what should have been a five-second trip.

As I was about to turn to go past the booth, Daughter Dearest called. “Come to El Rio, we’re eating lunch there.” Naturally, that meant another lap through the maze, but I was beyond caring. I coughed up $5 for parking and ate, then walked the chairs over to Mrs. Fetched (with a few words of advice to pay attention to what I’m saying next time). But I figured since I was in the middle of the zoo, and had a camera, I’d go take a few pix:



I took about 40 shots, not including a couple botches I threw away… I’ll post a few of them over the next couple weeks as my own version of fall color.

Pink Laptops and Other Oddities

Work, as always, is work. I’ve been stumping to get a change into a new set of products that will make life easier on the people who have to set the things up, and it looks like it’s going to happen, yay! We have some outside people developing a part of the product that’s not really our core competence, and they came from Taiwan this week to sit down with various folks and get a better idea of what we expect. The young woman was carrying around this hot pink gator skin laptop which, like the proverbial train wreck, you just can’t take your eyes away from.

She was kind enough to let me get pictures:

Turns out it’s an ASUS S6 “pink leather” model. I figured something looking like that would sell only in Taiwan or Japan, but target.com carries it and it’s out of stock… I guess there’s a lot of middle school girls who have their dream computer. The pictures just don’t do justice to the massive pinkitude of this tiny computer. They call it leather, but it looks more like faux alligator skin, or at least the skin of some kind of reptile. To me, “leather” comes off something that looks more like this:



Cow → milk → baby…
Mason returned to the manor yesterday, along with Snippet. The latter is gone, supposedly doing laundry at her place, but Mason is still here. He’s fighting sleep right now, but last night he’d get a bellyful of formula then go to sleep… but “sleeping” doesn’t really describe it. It was like he’d gone completely boneless. He’s pulled that on us a couple of times this evening, but wakes up 10 minutes later. He was rockin’ and rollin’ for a little while, having a good time… but I think Mrs. Fetched has finally gotten him to give up and snooze.

I promised oddities… here’s a good one. Barnes & Noble have released their own e-book reader, called the Nook. And, of course, it has instantly earned the moniker Nook e-book reader (say it fast). While I’ve said before that e-book readers won’t take off until they can be purchased for $19.95 from the drugstore checkout display (you need $259 for a Nook e-reader), I might be interested in a Nook e-book…

But is that as odd as a toad that throws itself down a mountainside and rolls away from predators?

Reality, as always, is stranger than fiction.

White Pickups, Episode 5

Contents

To Tina’s surprise, the bike shop was open and occupied. “Coffee shop’s in the supermarket, lady,” the red-haired guy behind the desk said as she pushed her cart in.

“What? Oh, no, I’m here to buy a bicycle and one of those trailers like the one in the window. My car isn’t… safe to drive, I guess, and I need to get home. You have anything that will carry this load eight miles?”

“Oh, sorry. Sure. What happened to your car?” He came around the desk to meet her. Without the desk in the way, she could see the guy more clearly. Obviously young, thin as a whippet, and dressed in one of those riding getups. His short beard matched his unruly red hair in both color and disarray.

“It… you see all those white pickups out there? It turned into one of them. Welcome to the apocalypse.”

“Ooo. There’s some really bad voodoo goin’ on out there with those things,” he said. I don’t blame ya for ditching the four wheels. You got a price range or anything you’re looking at?”

“No… I don’t think money’s going to be an issue. But I want something comfortable to ride. Those skinny bike seats are hard on my backside.”

“Yeah, they take some getting used to. But we got padded seats, I can slap one on for you. You do much riding, or you just starting out?”

“Only the ones at the gym, for a long time,” she said. “I have a bike at home, but there’s nowhere to ride with all the idiots on the road these days. I guess my daughter will take it.”

“Tell me about it — our group goes out to the country to ride. But I think you’ll probably want a mountain bike for the comfort. They have suspension and an easier riding position. I can put road tires on it to keep it quiet, you think you’d want that?”

“Sure. But it has to be able to pull a trailer like that one you have in the window. I need to get these groceries home.”

“No problem,” the redhead said, looking at the ceiling for a moment. “Yeah. We got a trailer that will carry up to 100 pounds of stuff, that should get you home with your groceries. Anything else you can think about? You probably want a spare tube, maybe even a spare tire if you’re gonna take a long tour.”

“Tube, sure. An air pump?”

“No problem, they mount to the frame. You want a carrier for water bottles? Yeah. I’ll bolt on a couple. Let’s get you fitted and we’ll see what we got.”

An hour later, with her credit card $1100 lighter (not that she expected to worry about it), and flat pedals (she didn’t trust the clip-on pedals with the special shoes), she and the redhead piled the last of the bags on the flatbed trailer in front of the store. He threw a cargo net over the groceries and secured the corners. “You’re good to go,” he said. “Come back if you need any adjustments. If you ride a lot, stuff will loosen up in a few weeks. Watch those idiots.”

She strapped on her new helmet and called Kelly before moving. “Hey hon, I got a bicycle and a trailer to pull all these groceries. I should be home in an hour. Are you okay?”

“So far. I locked the doors, I keep thinking I hear people talking.”

“I don’t think it’s people talking. If you don’t see anyone outside, maybe you should go to the clubhouse.”

“I’ll be okay, Mom. You be careful, though.”

“Seriously, Kelly.”

“I’m fine, Mom.”

In low gear, the bike was ridiculously easy to pedal, even with the heavy trailer behind her. Tina stopped a moment, looked at her directions, then shifted to the middle gears and got moving. The handlebar-mounted “computer,” as the guy insisted on calling it, told her she was going 8 miles an hour, pedaling at 56 RPM, and the time was 11:13. She slipped into the road, now populated only by white pickups. None of them gave her any trouble, even slowing down and waiting patiently for a chance to get around her — no horns, no thrown objects, no close passes, no curses from an open window. She stuck to side streets as much as possible though, according to her directions, and avoided most of the traffic. Still: riding a real bike, especially one pulling a heavy load, was a lot different from the exercise bikes at the fitness center.

The gate at Laurel was closed, but swung open when she used her card as usual. By habit, she checked the mailbox before thinking about it, but then was not surprised to find it empty. Inside the gate, it was pretty quiet. All the vehicles were white pickups now, only a few of them parked. The computer’s clock showed 12:09, so she must have made some good time on the downhills.

She called again. “Kelly?”

“Mom! Are you home yet?”

“Just came through the gate, hon. What’s wrong?”

“Hurry! It — I think it’s got me!”

“Kelly! Get out of the house — now! Come toward the clubhouse, as far as you have to!”

“Hurry, Mom!” Kelly hung up.

Cursing, Tina stood on the pedals and got her load going.

continued…

Some Mason pix

Six weeks old today. Time flies, kids grow like weeds… and sometimes fall asleep.



I took these Thursday. The plan was to post them last night, but I didn’t want to put them with a “things went w0rNg” story. Snippet was a pretty good sport about the pic, and even asked for a copy to put on her MySpace page.

He was in a pretty good mood on Thursday:



Actually, he’s a happy kid overall. He has his moments, like when he’s hungry or is trying to load his diaper, but don’t we all?

When it Showers, it Pours

Mrs. Fetched had pretty much lined me up to do some maintenance down at the rental place yesterday… seems the shower faucet was loose again, after I’d tightened it up just a couple months ago. She sent the plumber to have a look, he said the splash board was rotten and that wasn’t his line of work. Well, it had been up there for a long time, I think since we replaced the tub back before FAR Manor swallowed my paycheck. Having little choice, I ran to Home Despot and got a new splash board and a tube of adhesive.

Using hammers, chisels, and fingers, the old splash board came off, revealing a piece of plywood underneath that I wasn't aware was there… and it was rotten around the faucet too. We took measurements, I wrote them on my palm (as opposed to a Palm Pilot) and went back to Home Despot to get a piece of replacement board while Big G disposed of the original piece, and changed the water filter while I was gone. We cut off the water, removed the faucet, and then drilled new holes to fit. At the last minute, I remembered that we needed to glue up the splash board — and cut it to size before putting it up.

The new splash board is some kind of plastic, which is good since it won’t rot… but it was rather difficult to cut. Big G tried a utility knife and a hack saw blade; I tried heating a utility knife (which worked better than one at room temperature), but then Big G got the jigsaw and finished the job. I stuck the glue in the caulk gun and slathered it onto the plywood, we slapped up the splash board and I caulked the edges, then Big G held the board in place while I drilled out the holes from the back. Plumber tape on the threads, slap the mounting nuts and water lines back in, looks pretty good. We went out to turn on the water again. The filter did its usual “leak a little, then seal up” routine, and I heard water splashing. I checked the lines where they connected to the shower and everything was reassuringly dry… but we still heard the water.

Suddenly Big G squawked, “the linen closet is flooded!” and threw a bunch of towels on the floor… by then it was leaking into the bathroom. This is usually a sign of hot water heater FAIL, and I told them so. So it looks like the plumber (who installed the water heater in the first place) will be back to fix it under warranty.

The only reason I can think of for it failing now is that turning the water off and back on created a stress of sorts. Mrs. Fetched is convinced that someone ran the hot water after we cut the water off… but with no pressure, I asked her, where would the water come from? “Doesn’t matter, it would run back,” she said. But run back to where? The water is cut off under the house. Sometimes, I can’t come anywhere close to figuring out her logic.

Today was supposed to involve cutting wood, especially since we’re already using the insert what with the cool weather. I think Panda and Daughter Dearest did some, or should I say Panda did it while DD slept in the truck, maybe enough for a couple nights. Oh well, there will be wood cutting tomorrow.

White Pickups, Conversations: Tina Ball

Contents

An an aside: this is the 1000th post on TFM. Dat’s a lotta bloggin’.

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Hi, I’m Tina. Um… what am I supposed to say?

Whatever you like. Talk about yourself, what you were doing before.

Oh, okay. I am — was — manager of Legacy Product Maintenance at Maxcom. We were one of the bigger IT outsourcing firms. You probably remember our billboards, the ones with pictures of cats. One said, “Better IT service for less scratch,” and another one was “We clean up IT hairballs.” So anyway, legacy product maintenance doesn’t sound too sexy, but it was one of the higher-margin portions of our business. I had eight people working under me, nine if you count Jaya, our contractor. We had maintenance contracts, and they could ding our margins like when Vista then Windows 7 came out, but most of the time it was just a matter of keeping the customers happy with minor fixes.

What were the “sexy” parts of an IT business?

Oh, the big thing was the worldwide data centers. We had the primary one in Atlanta, of course; there was also one in Bahrain, one in Indonesia, and we were almost done with the center in Hilo when everyone drove off. Pretty much everyone wanted to transfer to Hilo, but we had a policy of hiring local labor as much as possible. It helped with the contracts and so forth. Personally, I think the data center in Bahrain was the most interesting — it was all solar powered and used underground water pipes to help with cooling. We were doing something similar in Hilo.

We monitored loads and electric rates at each data center, and shifted applications from one to the next in real time. To the user, it looked seamless — they might notice a slight delay during the state transfer, but that was it.

So what about yourself? Atlanta native, education, that sort of thing…

Haha, who’s an Atlanta native? I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, went to Ohio State, got a degree in Computer Science and an MBA. I met Charles in college, we got married about a month before I graduated — April 7, 1993 — and then we both got job offers in Atlanta. He was teaching biology at Georgia State, and I went to the IT department at Coke. I lasted a year there, got a better offer from Maxcom, and jumped ship. He stayed with State right up to the end. Kelly was our only child, she came along in December '94 — she’ll be 18 this winter. He didn’t want to have more than one kid because he thought there were too many people already, and I guess he was right… at the time, anyway. Me, I couldn’t juggle more than one kid and keep my career. We moved out to the suburbs in 2000 when the dot-bomb dropped and it was easy to find a house for not a lot of money. I wanted to make sure Kelly had good schools and a safe environment, and the house was a good investment. We weren’t getting anything for our rent but a two-bedroom condo close to our work.

We got divorced in 2008, not long after I got this promotion. He… well, there really isn’t any way to get around it, is there? He was gay, but he said he never could even admit it to himself until then. I wondered sometimes if that was an excuse to get away… I was devoting a lot more time and energy to my career than I was to the marriage, although I tried to be there for Kelly whenever I could. So next thing I know, he left me for another man. To be honest with you, I’m still trying to process that after three years.

It almost sounds like you had a bigger problem with the gay thing than the divorce thing.

*sigh* That sounds horrible, but I really can’t deny it. Much. Let’s say they were equally big problems for me. My parents were really conservative Baptists. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell them what really happened with our marriage, they had enough problems with the idea that their “little girl” got a divorce in the first place. They started with the I-told-you-so stuff, because Charles wasn’t much of a believer to begin with. He went to church a few times with me when we were dating, but neither of us bothered to go once we moved to Atlanta. They put on a happy face for us while we were married, but they never really warmed up to him in the first place, and vice versa.

But yeah, it was like a punch in the gut when Charles “came out” to me, as they say. I’d been brought up to think of gays as “them,” and now my own husband was one of “them”? I didn’t handle it well. I told him to get out, and that’s just what he did. We haven’t talked much since then, mostly to schedule visits with Kelly. They get along pretty well, and I guess I need to start trying myself.

So what do you think happened? Why are you still here?

I don’t have the foggiest idea, about what happened, anyway. Some of the others like to throw theories around. Why I’m still here? I guess it was because when I walked out Friday, and heard that… thing… calling to me, I knew I had to decide what was more important to me. I decided I had to be there for Kelly.

Back to Episode 4…