White Pickups, Episode 39

Contents

The laden trailers slowed them down, which suited Cleve just fine. They stuck to the side of the road, using bike lanes or sidewalks where available. The drivers of the pickups seemed happy to share the road, but nobody wanted to listen to the constant invitations. The late-morning sun was warm, and the four of them worked up a sweat in a hurry. Everyone kept an eye out for other riders, but Tim guessed that between the head start and their load, whoever had passed by Sunlover’s was long gone.

Sara waved them to a stop shortly before Pleasant Hill. “Listen! Is that a dog barking?”

“Sounds like two, maybe more,” Johnny said, hefting his carbine. “Safeties off?”

“Not yet,” Cleve said, peering down the highway, “but let’s move slow enough where we can stop quick. Don’t worry about kickstands, just let the bikes fall over if we have to. Sara, you sure you don’t want a gun?”

“I’d just shoot myself or one of you.” She unhooked the air pump from its mount. “If I have to, I’ll whack ’em on the nose. That might slow ’em down enough for one of you to rescue me.”

They moved slowly, crossing Pleasant Hill behind a few trucks (who treated all major intersections as a four-way stop). The barking grew louder, then they saw movement up ahead. “Safeties off now,” Cleve said, stopping long enough for all of them to comply, and they hurried forward.

Up ahead, a woman faced two large dogs in a church parking lot, backed up against a truck. She had positioned her bike so the two dogs facing her could only come at her from one direction, and she had her air pump in hand. A third dog lay in the road; the occasional thump-thump of a pickup rolling over it suggested the dogs had crossed the highway to attack.

“Back off!” Cleve shouted at the dogs, who turned to face the newcomers; the woman looked up as well. They barked and darted forward, but did not close. Tim waved at the woman to get out of the way; she picked up her bike and slipped around the white pickup, as quiet as possible. One of the dogs turned back to her, but too late — Johnny fired four times as soon as he had a clear shot. Both dogs dropped to the pavement, twitching for a few moments, then lay still. The woman slumped to the pavement behind the truck, and Sara ran to her.

“Are you all right?”

The woman looked up at Sara. She was dark, nearly as dark as Sara herself; she had her long straight black hair pulled back into a tail and tucked into the collar of her shirt. A cap lay on the pavement nearby. “I think so. They didn’t bite me.” Tears ran down the rider’s eyes. “What will you do with me?” There was a lilt to her voice, an accent Sara couldn’t quite place.

“You can come with us, if you like,” Sara said. “We live a ways north of here.”

“This is why we don’t travel alone, and we don’t travel unarmed,” Cleve said, a little winded from running to catch Sara. “I guess you’ve been lucky so far.” Tim and Johnny joined them.

“Lucky? I suppose.”

Sara shook her head at Cleve. “I’m Sara Karsten. This is Johnny Latimer, Tim Petro, and Cleve Isaacs. We live… a little north of here.”

“I’m Rita Diaz. And thank you all for coming when you did.”

Tim asked, “Were you who I saw about an hour ago, riding up the highway?”

Rita nodded. “I was alone. I thought if I couldn’t find other people, I might find a farmhouse somewhere in the country where I could grow my own food. My parents used to tell me about the way they lived in Mexico; I thought if they could do it, perhaps I could too. I stopped at a gas station a ways back to rest and get a few water bottles. If you hadn’t come along… when I saw the dogs, I thought I could get into this church and claim sanctuary, but they came too fast. So perhaps God sent some angels instead?”

Johnny laughed. “We’re no angels, but we’re not bad folks either. We live in a fenced-in subdivision, and some of us are already turning it into a big ol’ lawns-to-gardens project. The trucks are all outside the fence, so I guess that makes it a little slice of Heaven. Shoot… maybe we are angels, then.” He laughed, and Rita joined him.

“May I ask… what are you carrying?”

“Solar panels, control boxes, spools of wire, batteries, all that junk,” Cleve said. “Some of us gotta have our creature comforts, you know.”

“Very resourceful. I should have thought of that myself,” Rita said. “Maybe I didn’t think things through as much as I should have. Being out in the country would make it hard to scavenge while waiting for the harvest.”

“You think we’re resourceful?” Tim laughed. “You haven’t met Cody yet!”

“I’d be glad to learn from him, and the rest of you. If you’ll have me.”

“Sure,” Cleve said. “There ain’t enough of us to worry about crowding, any time soon.”

“Thank you so much,” Rita said. “For saving me, and for taking me in. How far do we have to go?”

“Ten miles, maybe?”

“I’ll try not to slow you down. I’m not used to bicycling everywhere yet. Could we stop by a medical clinic on the way?”

“Why?” Cleve asked. “Are you hurt?” Tim caught Cleve’s suspicious look that said: or are you a druggie?

“No… I want to pick up some supplies. I’m a nurse-practitioner, so I thought it might be useful to have some things around in case they’re needed.”

Nobody said anything for several moments. “Well, you’re an answered prayer, then,” Tim said. “You sure you’re not the angel?”

to be continued…

From the “Holy Crap!” Department…

OK, I know I gripe a lot about stuff in my life. Then something like this comes totally out of right field…

Mrs. Fetched’s older sister came to visit today, bringing much food for me to grill. She handed me this iPad and said, “I thought you might like to play around with this for a while.” Oh, but of course! “This isn’t the 3G kind, just wifi,” she added… no problem, we have wifi here. (I sometimes like to think of FAR Manor as a tiny oasis of civilization in the midst of cultural darkness.) But there was much grilling of food to be done first, naturally. I got to fiddle with it a little, anyway.



She’d loaded several eBook readers and music streamers on it, and more than a few ebooks, videos, music tracks, and so on. Our media preferences don’t intersect all that well, but who cares? It was fun to fiddle with. There was “only” 20GB left (on a 64GB iPad)… I learned a while ago that an 8GB iPhone fills up pretty quick, so I figure to get at least a 16 or 32GB version next time (which may be soon, as my iPhone craps out when it gets warm now).

Then we brought to the food down to the in-laws’ place for lunch. She hugs me and whispers, “Since I didn’t get you anything for Christmas this year, I figured you could have that.” [FARf→floor]

Yeah, I complain a lot about the stupid stuff that goes on around here, but sometimes… something like that happens. Like winning a Kindle at Christmas. Okay then: the Ultimate eReader Smackdown is about to begin!

Wood Spill

I finally got serious about cleaning up the wood spill behind the manor.

After dispersing the spill with power and hand tools, there ’s still a couple major plumes of wood…





Nature is lending a hand at eating the spill, although it would take a long time…



Some of the smaller wood particles have drifted into the woods, where they won’t cause any problems…



Some of the spill has been recovered and stored…



Still lots of work to do, but I’m hoping to have the spill cleaned up in the next week or so. It would go a lot faster if I could get The Boy in on the action.

White Pickups, Episode 38

Contents

Thursday, September 29, 2011

One by one, Cleve, Johnny, Sara, and Tim rolled up in front of Sunlover’s Solar. Cleve and Tim took up positions on either side of the strip building, covering Sara and Johnny as they pulled up. Sara was unarmed, at her insistence, but Johnny had his carbine slung over his shoulder. Morning was bright and warm, a perfect early fall day. As usual, a single white pickup whispered to them in the parking lot; others rolled north and south on Buford Highway. An overhang shaded the storefronts, but the sun reflected off the windows and doors of the trucks.

Sunlover’s had a small window; Sara peeked in and saw a few displays but no movement. She gave the door a try. “It’s locked.”

“Figures,” grumbled Johnny, watching the street. “The most important place we’ve looted so far, and the first one we’ll have to break into.” He stepped out to catch Cleve’s eye. “It’s locked, Cleve! Now what?”

“Johnny, come down here. Cover me while I check out the back door. Sara, go over to Tim’s corner and help him watch.” They split up.

Tim stood watching the driveway to the back; it was wide enough for a transfer truck. The next strip building squatted on the other side, uphill beyond a few shrubs in a four-foot landscaping island. Sara jogged to the corner.

“Watch my back,” Tim said.

“Above or below the belt?” she laughed.

He gave her a wary smile. “Good thing I didn’t tell you to watch behind me.”

“But that’s what you want, right?”

“Yeah.” She shifted to his side to watch the back lot.

After a quiet minute, Tim spoke: “You been doing okay?”

“Sure. I walked to my job at the Saver-Mart most days. Riding a bike’s a little different, but you get used to it.”

“Yeah. But I really meant, with all… all this.” He waved his hand at the street.

“Well, those trucks ain’t been what I wanted to look at the rest of my life, but I’ll get by. I’m keeping Ashley now, so I’m doing something useful. What about you?”

Tim sighed. “Has it really only been a week since I found Rebecca? It seems like a lot longer than that.”

“A crisis does funny things to time. That’s what my kin in New Orleans would say. They should know, they were there for Katrina.”

“Ow. I’m sorry.”

“Me too.” She put a hand on his arm.

“Thanks. You know? Maybe… it’s better this way. Sure, I’d rather she lived long enough for us to find her, but it would have been awkward, being around her all the time.”

“That bad?”

“Oh yeah. We’d have been checking out each others’ new interests, and probably approving them. Or not.”

“Wow. ‘Up in each other’s bidness’ is what my family called that. That wouldn’t have gone well.”

“Tell me about it.”

Johnny poked his head around the corner in the back. “Hey! The back door was unlocked, we’re about to go in. Meet us up front, but Cleve said not to stand where anyone inside can see you from the window.”

“Okay!” Sara answered. “C’mon, Tim… Tim? What is it?”

“I… I could have sworn I just saw someone ride by on a bicycle.”

“Which way?”

“Going north. On the other side of the road.” Tim pointed then walked down the storefronts, watching the street and in front of him.

“Did they see us?”

“I don’t think so. They didn’t look this way.”


“We’ll have to be careful going back, then,” Cleve said. They stood inside Sunlover’s, watching the traffic through the window while Sara looked at the displays.

“Eco-Mergency 2000,” Sara read aloud. “Portable power at home or away from home.”

“I don’t think they saw us down here,” Tim said. “He — I think it was a he — didn’t even look our way. He would have had to look over his shoulder to see me, anyway.”

“GridFree — When you’re ready to cut the cord, or when the cord isn’t long enough. Ha. Cute. Optional RV mount available.”

“So do we do anything different going back?” asked Johnny.

“I don’t guess so,” said Cleve. “We just have to be watching for places where someone could jump us.”

“Ask about our fall special: free delivery and 50% off installation. Hm. Sounds tempting. I bet they didn’t expect all their installers to drive off, though.”

“Looks like we’ll have to deliver them ourselves,” Tim said. “Nice displays. I guess the merchandise is out back?”

“Yeah. And I still can’t get outta the habit of flippin’ the switch,” Cleve grinned. “They must have one of their systems up on the roof, ’cause the lights actually came on. ’Bout gave me a heart attack!”

“You put down the doughnut, maybe you won’t get a heart attack,” Sara laughed.

“Babe, why you gotta go there?” Cleve grinned. “Nah. I think I’ve lost five pounds already, and it’s only been two weeks. The end of the world is gonna gimme back those fifteen years I was gonna lose!”

“Hey Cleve,” Tim said, still watching the window. “I just thought about this. Were any of you guys downtown smokers?”

“Damn… you know what? I don’t think any of us smoked. I used to, had to put ’em down at the end of ’08. I swore if we got a black president, I’d quit… and damn if it didn’t happen. Then the world had to go and end!”

“Stands to reason,” Johnny said, after the laughter died down. “The trucks would’ve ‘picked up’ on that right away. ‘Drive off, we got smokes.’”

“Picked up? Tell me you didn’t just say that!” Cleve fanned the air in front of his nose. “Y’know, we’ll never get this stuff loaded if we sit here shootin’ the breeze. We can do that at home. Johnny, you watch out front. We’ll bring the bikes around back and load up.”

“Beats liftin’ stuff,” Johnny laughed, patting the carbine. “You want me to shoot first and ask questions later?”

continued…

Self-Published Publicity (NSFW?)

… or “Boobs, Books, and Buzz.” Or "Marketing 101 in the Internet Age.”


Have you heard the names “Hayley Williams” and “Paramore”? Until Saturday, I hadn’t, although Daughter Dearest insists that I’ve heard some of their music on the radio. Anyway, this self-snapped shot (look at the angle of her left arm) appeared in her TwitPic stream on Thursday night — OK, I’ve slightly doctored it to keep this post PG-rated:



The pic was pulled down, but not soon enough for it to get copied (obviously, see above) and the old Whoops, I got hacked excuse popped up in her tweetstream. 'Course, some folks checked the pic’s EXIF data and found the shot was snapped about eight minutes before it got posted… making the possibility of a hack, shall we say, extremely remote. A much more believable explanation would have been “it was supposed to be for my boyfriend and I messed up when I emailed it.”

For those of you who have to see the original, I found out about the whole kerfuffle in an [!!!!!NSFW!!!!!] article from TheRegister [!!!!!NSFW!!!!!]; it includes the picture in all its nude-tastic glory as I type (and ElReg tends to give the meaty middle finger to take-down notices).

So… this all happens on Thursday. I read about it on Saturday. And by Monday, I’m off to Amazon’s MP3 store to check out Paramore’s music selection… which turns out to be pleasant to listen to as well. There has been a ton of press about it, and “Hayley Williams” is a trending topic on Twitter at the moment — you just can’t buy publicity that good. Hey, if I thought I’d get a huge traffic bump by posting (and taking down) a nudie of myself, I’d go for it too… but my bits just aren’t as interesting to look at. IMHO.

Clothing choices aside, I like her face better in the above shot than the one in a more “turned-out” publicity pic (in which she looks like a Jennifer Aniston clone, not that I think Jen is unpleasant looking). Hayley, lose the makeup and the hair stylist, you look better and more like yourself without them.


Now that I’ve got your attention…

Last week, I mentioned, among other things, J.A. Konrath being the subject of a Publisher’s Weekly hit-piece and his response. This week, he embarks on a fascinating experiment he calls Steal This eBook: he makes available a zip file containing Jack Daniels Stories (one of his own books) in various ebook formats (and a direct link if the first one doesn’t work). The really audacious part is where he asks people to share the file far and wide via the usual “piracy” channels.

Konrath sums up his experiment thus: “I've said repeatedly that there is no proof piracy hurts sales. So I'm manning up and putting my money where my mouth is.” Indeed. This experiment has just sailed, so it’ll be interesting to see how it pans out. But I can already say, Konrath has put one of his books in my reading pile where there were none before. I’ve never been one to shy away from making predictions, so I’ll throw one out here: I think he’ll see a negligible effect on sales for this particular book, and a noticeable uptick in sales of his other books.

Of course, it can be debated (and is being debated in the comments on Konrath’s blog) whether this is actually “piracy” or not — after all, the author himself is encouraging spreading the file far and wide. Perhaps this should be better considered a “loss leader,” an old sales tactic where a store sells one product at a loss in hopes that people will buy other (more profitably marked-up) stuff while they’re grabbing the Great Deal. But successful buzz generation means you have to get people to notice what you’re saying — and is “A free ebook” or “Hey, pirate my ebook!” going to get more notice? Or, in the case of Hayley Williams, did “hey, music” or “BOOBZIEZ!!!!” turn more heads? (Big hint: of the thousands of bands out there, who’s getting the attention right now?)

Publicity is not for the faint of heart, and DIY publicity doubly so. I think there are some lessons to be learned here, though, to make things a little less scary…

1) You can only do this thing once. Williams’s stunt definitely lands in the category of “tough act to follow.” Konrath took a more modest approach, but even if he offers another freebie later on, a lot of people will go “yeah, yeah.”

2) Know what results you’re looking for. I’m guessing that both Konrath and Williams did, and got them.

3) Seize the opportunity when something goes wrong. Sometimes, you might get free publicity in a way you neither expected nor particularly wanted. Once the genie is out of the bottle, no amount of whining nor DMCA take-down notices will get it back in… and you’ll just end up looking clueless and petty. Make it work for you instead. Get out in front of the story so you’ll have at least some control — and for your own sake, don’t come up with a lame explanation that can be easily debunked (e.g. “I got hacked”). On the other hand, if you can extend the controversy (which is an unpleasant way of saying “extend the free publicity”) with a silly comment, it might be worth it.

Consider the sad case of Stephanie Meyer throwing a hissy-fit when an early draft of Midnight Sun* got leaked onto the net — she decided that she’d “been violated” and walked away from the work. To her credit, she soon acquired a partial clue and posted a copy herself (although with the usual “Any retranscription or reproduction is illegal” stuff), but still has no plans to finish it. She would have been far better off, publicity-wise, had she said something like “I’ve been rewriting this and what hits the shelves will be different and far better, it’ll be out on [some date]. Hang in there.”

*Thanks go to Daughter Dearest, a Stephanie Meyer fan, for supplying both the book title and the author name when my memory couldn’t produce either one.

Cheap electronics and public networks have changed creative media forever. It was once said, “freedom of the press applies only to those who can afford a printing press.” Now the electronic equivalent can be purchased for a few hundred bucks new, or sometimes fished out of a dumpster for free. Of course, the old “talent” issue still applies — Sturgeon’s Law says “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” and many would say Sturgeon was an optimist — and so publishers and the recording/movie industry can claim to be a filter for that ninety percent. Still, people like J.A. Konrath are making a comfortable living without having the mass-market appeal that the gatekeepers/filters demand, simply by using the tools available today and finding a way to get noticed.

White Pickups, Episode 37

Contents

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

How did I get so lucky? Cody asked himself. She has to be the hottest girl in the world. He lay half-awake in a blurry tingly haze, Sondra wrapped in the pink robe and softly snoring, an arm and leg draped over him. How long had they screwed? — an hour? more? — it didn’t matter. Necking had led to groping, then as soon as he put a condom on she’d straddled him and rode him to exhaustion. She came at least twice, maybe three times, or maybe it was just one long orgasm… Cody didn’t know that much about sex, only the stupid stuff from Internet porn and bragging of seniors, but if Sondra was happy it was another thing that didn’t matter. He’d thought he was going to explode when it was his turn to come; he remembered crying out and Sondra’s sweaty grin, her robe flopping open around them both, his arms around her hips, lifting off the bed, her nipples still hard as she gasped again at the end…

He started to respond to the memory, but achieved only half-mast. In the morning then, he thought, if she doesn’t wake me up for more first. He grinned, realized he wouldn’t be sleeping for a little while, and eased out of bed.

“Mmmrrf?”

“Gotta pee,” he whispered, and realized it was true. Sondra made no more sound; she was a heavy sleeper most nights. He threw on a t-shirt, pants, and a fleece they’d picked up on the way out of Sears, and slipped outside to the porta-john they’d rolled from a construction site on the other end of Laurel. It was dark — no moon tonight. The stars, more than Cody was used to seeing, told him there were no clouds. He played his little flashlight over the path and made his way to the blue booth on the other side of the street.

A pair of low green lights greeted him as he mounted the steps on the way back — Shady again. “Hey, cat,” he said. “You couldn’t sleep either?” He sat on the top step, and Shady hopped purring into his lap. Shady stood, front paws on Cody’s chest, and gave a mighty yawn as he stretched under Cody’s massage. “Yeah, me too.” Cody yawned himself. “You passed it to me, now who do I pass it to?”

“Shady?” Kelly’s whisper rasped down the cave-like hallway, just ahead of the splash of flashlight. “Who’s that?”

“Just Cody. Yeah, he’s here with me again.” Cody stood, holding the kitten and turning to face Kelly.

“I guess he’s going to make a habit of this,” Kelly said, taking possession of Shady and yawning. “That’s three nights in a row. I went to use the bathroom, and when I came back, he got out.”

“Yeah. How’s he getting along with Ben’s cat?”

“Oh, they either sniff each other or chase each other all around the place,” Kelly laughed. “Then they sleep together in the laundry pile.”

“Hey guys,” Tim said, walking down from the other side. “Late-night meetup?”

Cody was glad the darkness hid his embarrassment; Kelly glanced down the walk over her shoulder. “No,” she said, “Shady got out again and Cody found him. Thanks, Cody.” She hustled away.

Tim’s cocked eyebrow in the flashlight beam asked Cody the same question. “Uh-uh,” he said, shaking his head. “I just had to pee, and the cat was up here waiting for me to come back.”

“So she didn’t throw you out?” Tim glanced at Cody’s door then gestured for Cody to follow him back to the bottom.

“Uh-uh. We’re getting along… okay, I guess.” They sat on the bottom steps.

“That’s good. You want a beer? I couldn’t sleep either, so I thought I’d sit out here and watch the stars. The trees block the view from the balcony.”

“What’s — what’s up with you?”

“Oh… I guess I’m just keyed up about the run to that solar panel place tomorrow,” Tim said, handing Cody a can. “Sara’s coming, but she’s never handled guns.” He opened his own can. “They’re not cold, but at least they’re not warm either.”

“Yeah. I kinda wish I was going with you guys, but Jason’s got me helping with that composting toilet thing. We’re making a run to Home Despot so we can build a couple johns, and stuff for the brick ovens and more rain barrels. Sondra and Max are coming along in case there’s trouble. I guess you and Cleve are the cops for your own run, huh?”

“Yeah, and Johnny’s bringing a carbine. He found it in his unit, that and a couple boxes of ammo, so Sara’s the only one of us that won’t be armed. Cleve ain’t happy about that, but Sara insisted on coming to help.”

“Yeah. Maybe neither of us will run into anything.”


Kelly slipped back to the top of the steps and listened to them talk until Shady started squirming, then hurried back to #202. She kept a firm grip on her kitten until the door latched, then let him jump to the floor and run to the laundry area. Ben, sleeping on the futon in the living room, stirred then was still. An ember crackled in the fireplace, and the honest smell of a wood fire had conquered the last of the stinky fridge. Except for her flashlight, which illuminated very little beyond a few feet, the unit was pitch-dark. She walked to the hallway then turned off the light and trailed her left hand along the wall, navigating by feel, until she reached her bedroom. Kicking off her shoes, she burrowed under the pile of blankets and quilts on her bed and waited for things to warm up again before shedding her clothes.

Okay, I guess, Cody had said. Tim had probably forgotten how to speak Teenager — Susie Lin, a classmate, once told her that Mandarin was another language where a word could have multiple meanings depending on inflection — so he wouldn’t know that Cody said I’m in heaven, dude. Things had gotten so complicated… she hadn’t thought she was interested in him until Sondra came along… and not only were the two of them free agents, Kelly had both her parents to watch over her! How was she supposed to compete with that?

Tim and Cody weren’t going to be the only ones having a hard time sleeping tonight.

continued…

5 Years of Blogging

Once again, I let the blogiversary slip by! Then again, I seem to have forgotten it completely last year. Last time I did this, I commemorated it with a video, so I’ll do it again…



Someday, we’re gonna rise up on that wind, you know
Someday, we’re gonna dance with those lions
Someday, we’re gonna break free from these chains
And keep on … flyin’

Creamy Chicken/Pasta Salad

A good “hot day” dish, everyone liked it and got extra. I threw this together yesterday for supper from what we had laying around, and it went over pretty well. It takes maybe half an hour to make, plus chill time. The dressing part is modified from a tex-mex recipe I found online; I wanted something creamy and this seemed to fit the bill. The original recipe called for vinegar (and I used it) but everyone suggested to lose the vinegar next time… which means I’ll be making this again.

¼ c. dried tomatoes
12oz package of rotini

Dressing:
1-½ tsp. dried cilantro (or 2 T fresh)
¼ c. lemon (or lime) juice
½ c. sour cream
1 clove garlic, pressed (or 1 tsp. minced garlic)
1 T honey
¼ tsp. white pepper
½ tsp. salt
½ c. olive oil

12oz leftover boneless chicken, cooked and diced (or 1 12oz can)
1/3 c grated parmesan cheese

Bring 4-6 qt water to a boil. Break dried tomatoes into dime-sized (1cm) pieces, boil for 5 min. to reconstitute. Skim the tomatoes into a colander to drain, add rotini to the boiling water and cook as instructed by package directions. Drain and rinse in cold water.

While rotini is boiling, put cilantro, lemon juice, sour cream, garlic, honey, pepper, and salt in a blender or food processor, blend on high until smooth. Continue to blend, slowly adding olive oil.

Fold together tomatoes, pasta, dressing, chicken, and parmesan cheese until evenly coated. Cover and chill. Serves 5-6.

Weird and Wacky Wednesday

Well, not that weird, not much weirder than any other day at FAR Manor. The day started out kind of promising; Snippet woke up pissy from a bad dream and threatened to leave The Boy. His response: “Go right ahead.” (They’ve talked about getting married in July, but stuff like this has to make you wonder.) She seems to have gotten over herself though — her mom coming by may have had something to do with that. She (Snippet’s mom) had to have an MRI today, and she needs to be sedated due to seizures when exposed to certain electrical fields, so Snippet did the driving. They took Mason with them, which made for a pretty quiet day.

Daughter Dearest was a little concerned about it; she heard much of the argument The Boy and Snippet had this morning and thought maybe Snippet would bolt the manor with the baby. “That’s the absolute last thing I’m worried about,” I told her. “Snippet lays in bed all day until I take Mason upstairs and drop him in bed with her, and ten minutes later she’s asking me to take him so she can get a shower or eat breakfast, and then she’ll eff off to watch TV. She takes care of him as little as possible; she’s not going to take him on full-time.” Sure enough, they were back later in the afternoon. Mason has been free-standing for a while now, and trying to take his first steps, but he’s not even 9 months old yet. He’ll be walking soon enough, then we’ll really have to get serious about baby-proofing the manor.

My wallet is $1500 lighter, but I have my Civic back. Most of that was replacing the clutch and timing belt/water pump, but there were a few other minor things that got done. I still don’t have working A/C, but so far everything else seems to be okay.

While my net worth took a thumpin’ at the mechanic’s, today was somewhat of a net-worth watershed for Apple: today was the day Apple’s market cap overtook Microsoft’s for the first time. I don’t expect it to be a permanent situation — Microsoft will rally, or Apple will stumble, and this might only last a few days or weeks — but it’s going to be a fun datapoint to rub in the faces of all those people who thought Apple was walking-dead just 10 years ago. Too bad I didn’t grab some Apple stock back then…

Lately, I’ve been reading J. A. Konrath’s blog, off and on. Konrath is a mid-list author who writes a series of crime novels, and has lately had a huge sales boost by selling Kindle editions of his books, out of print and otherwise, and pricing them dirt-cheap (like $1.99). As book publishing (the major publishing houses, collectively referred to as “New York”) has found itself circling the same drain as newspaper publishing, this hasn’t exactly been welcome news in some circles. Publisher’s Weekly wrote a nice little hit-piece about Konrath signing with AmazonEncore, including lovely sentiments like “a book that nobody wanted” (where “nobody” = New York), misrepresenting his sales, and implying that AmazonEncore is a bare step above self-publishing. Naturally, Konrath set the record straight. I’ve been the victim of a similar hit-piece in the past, when I posted a series of articles (on a now-defunct Yahoo!360° blog) that was critical of XML — or rather, how consultants were deliberately over-complicating it for their own gain — and a consultant got a bunch of other consultants together and trashed me… of course, without bothering to contact me for a rebuttal. It did have the side effect of sending a tsunami of traffic to that blog though.

Seeing that I’ll have to write a sequel to White Pickups, which is now “Book I of the Truckalypse,” maybe I should look into this whole publish-on-Kindle thing myself.

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Fetched!

And a milestone, no less!

Flowers, cards, dinner out, and now she’s zorched out in bed and it’s not even 11. These milestone birthdays are the ones that get you…

White Pickups, Episode 36

Contents

Little Ben led Tim, Kelly, Jennifer, and the other kids to his house: a grey Cape Cod with brick trim. He tried the front door, and found it unlocked. “Come on in, guys,” he said. “Or Miss Kelly, maybe you should come in first, just in case my folks are home.”

Kelly shrugged and followed him in. Ben’s call went unanswered, leaving him a bit more disappointed than even he expected. “I should have known they wouldn’t be here,” he told Kelly. “They would have come for me at the theater.” She gestured to the others; they filed in.

The house smelled musty. “I hope Cheddar was outside,” Ben said.

“Who’s Cheddar?” Kelly asked.

“Our cat. He was yellow, like cheddar cheese. That’s how he got his name.”

“I’ll look for him,” Kelly said. “You take the others to get your stuff.” She checked the kitchen, found an unshredded bag of cat food and a mostly-unused litter box, then checked the bathroom and found it empty.

“Bring some big garbage bags!” Jennifer called. “They’re in the kitchen!”

“Good timing, I just left there!” Kelly called back and went to get the bags.

Most of Ben’s clothes were already piled on his bed by the time Kelly arrived. “I think Cheddar was outside,” she told Ben. “I didn’t seem him anywhere, and the cat food bag wasn’t torn up.”

“Good.” Ben turned back to his clothes. “I guess I better get my winter stuff too,” he said. “It’s in the closet by the laundry room, I think. Mom made me help her put away all that stuff in April.”

“Will it fit you?” Ashley asked him. “A lot of my stuff from last year didn’t fit me in the spring. I got to shop for new summer clothes.”

“Maybe.”

“Ben, does your family have any camping gear?” Tim asked. “Sleeping bags, lanterns, anything like that?”

“It would all be in the camper, and that’s at the self-store place.”

“Hm… do you know how to get there?”

“Not really.” Ben studied a bookshelf and pulled down several books. “It’s off Peachtree Industrial.”

“Ben, do you know where your parents put their mail?” Jennifer asked.

“Mom’s office, probably,” he said. “Why?”

“Maybe there will be a bill and it’ll tell us where the self-storage place is. We’ll need warm gear for the winter.”

“Oh. I thought that’s what you were getting at the mall.”

“We got what they had,” Tim said, “but it wasn’t enough for everyone. We expect we’ll find even more people, so we need to gather everything we can find, even if we don’t end up using it right away.”

“Yeah.” He looked at a knapsack on the floor next to his desk, hesitated. “We don’t have to get my school books, do we?”

Kelly and Jennifer laughed. “Just because the world ended doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an education!” The kids groaned.

“Well, who’s gonna teach us?” Sheldon said, as Ben hefted the pack.

“All of us,” Tim said. “I don’t think it will be school like before, sitting in class all day.”

“So why bring the books?”

“We might be able to use them,” Jennifer said. “That goes for all of you. Well, let’s get your stuff loaded up. You sure you have everything you want? It might be a while before we come back for anything else.”

“Sure,” Ben said, and everyone hoisted bags or boxes.

As they stepped outside, a scrawny yellow cat slipped out of the bushes and meowed, looking wary of all the strange people. “It’s Cheddar!” Ben said. “Oh man, he’s skinny! C’mon, kitty, let’s get you a snack.” He dropped his bags and ducked back in the house, the cat at his heels.

“Let’s put this stuff on the trailer,” Tim said after a moment. “I sure hope they have a pet carrier in the house somewhere.”

“I’ll go ask Ben,” Kelly said, dropping her bag of Ben’s clothes on the trailer.

Ben was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, stroking the cat as he ate. “I hope we can take him with us,” Ben said as the cat purred around a mouthful of cat food. “I never really liked him that much before, but he’s…” He waved his hand around.

“All that’s left,” Kelly said, leaving of your family unsaid. “Do you know if he had a carrier here?”

“Sure, it’s in the closet by the back door. Good idea.”

Kelly walked to the back of the house and looked out the back door window before opening the closet door. “Ben!” she called, pulling out the carrier and a box of Ben’s winter clothes on top of it. “Did your neighbors have a garden?”

“Yeah. I used to sneak over and pick up rotten tomatoes to throw at the tree. Did you find the carrier?”

“Uh-huh. Are there any grocery bags in the kitchen?”

“Sure, Mom always put ’em in the bottom drawer by the sink. Why?”

“Nobody’s had fresh vegetables in over a week! We’re gonna go pick!” Kelly returned with the carrier and the box, and found the drawer with the bags. “Will he give you any problem about going in the carrier?”

“Nah, I’ll put his dish in there. He’ll follow it right in.”

Kelly ran out the front door, waving the grocery bags. “I can’t believe we almost missed it!” she yelled. “There’s a garden next door!”

Ben followed the chatter out the back door, carrier in hand. The older three were happily tramping down the wet rows: “How can you tell if green beans are ready?” “Is this corn any good?” “Yeah, get the green tomatoes too if they’re big enough. They’ll ripen.” “Hey Jennifer, no fair eating the cherry tomatoes!” The other kids followed behind, picking or tying full bags and carrying them to the edge of the garden.

Ashley handed Ben a handful of bags. “I’m allergic to cats,” she said, “but he can stay in the shade. Let’s go help.” Ben sighed and followed her into the garden.

continued…

White Pickups, Episode 35

Contents

“Kelly and I will take them,” Tina said. “One of them, anyway. I doubt Kelly would let me not make the offer.” That drew several chuckles, and several others offered at once to take in one or more of the kids as well.

“We could let the kids decide who they want to stay with,” Sondra said. Cody gave her a horrified look, which made her snicker.

“At this point, the kids would probably choose Jennifer, Kelly, and Tim,” Tina said, trying to hide a smile herself, “simply because they’re the ones taking them around to get bikes. They know those three better by now than the rest of us.”

“Well, four of them would,” Cody muttered. Only Sondra heard, and stifled a laugh.

“A few of us have either had kids, or helped with kids before,” Tina continued. “I suggest that anyone who has had a — what’s the word, tween? — a ten year old child around and was comfortable with that should be at least considered.”

“That would include me, I suppose,” Charles said.

“I’ve helped raise a few kids,” Sally McMinn said. “I could probably teach ’em something useful, too.”

“I bet you could!” Johnny Latimer retorted from a safe distance. She ignored him.

“Jennifer will probably insist on adopting at least one of them,” Charles said. “So you, me, Jennifer, Ms. Sally… and if someone takes two, we’re set.”

“I always wanted children,” Sara said, sitting next to Tim. “Maybe I’ll have my own some day, but I wouldn’t mind a head start.”

I wouldn ’t mind giving you a head start, Cleve thought to himself. Tim glanced at her.

“Well, we have our five surrogate parents,” Charles said. “All that’s left is to figure out which kid gets which adult.”

“Speaking of the devil… or five of them, anyway,” Max said, looking out the window at the parade of kids on bikes.

“You sure you don’t want to take in Caitlin?” Sondra whispered to Cody.

“Where’d she sleep? We only got one bedroom.”

“Yeah, good point. We’ll just have to — get by with letting her visit.”

Cody snickered, hugging Sondra tighter.


Tim came in with the kids in tow, followed by Kelly and Jennifer. “Hey all,” Tim said. “We’ve been talking. Turns out Ben, Ashley, and Sheldon all lived fairly close to here. They’re all feeling a lot better, so we’re going to take a little ride to Ben’s place first and then Ashley’s or Sheldon’s if they’re up to it. Caitlin and Lily live a bit farther away, but they agreed to let us get to their places later. They’re all coming with us so they can pick up some of their belongings and bring them back. And get some exercise. They were cooped up in that mall for a long time.

“All the kids say they’ll be fine with whoever they live with — we’ll see each other every day anyway, so it doesn’t matter who they live with, we’ll all be helping raise them. We can figure out who they’ll stay with when we get back. See ya.”

“Bye!” The kids all waved at the others, then filed out.

Nobody spoke for a few moments. “Well,” Tina said at last, “I guess that lets us put off the decision for a little longer.”

“In that case, let’s talk creature comforts,” Johnny said. “I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but I ain’t exactly lookin’ forward to the day when we run out of gas — or it all goes bad — and we can’t light this place up anymore. We need to use some of it to cut up wood for the winter, and we need to get us some chainsaws too.”

“We’re going to get some solar panels this week,” Tina reminded him. “That won’t run a chainsaw, though. We’ll do alright this winter, but we need to start looking to next winter as well, don’t we?”

“Natural gas, too,” Sara said. “I think the pressure’s starting to go down. We’ll all be grilling outside in a week or two, I’m afraid.”

“Maybe we need to build a brick oven of sorts,” Sally McMinn said. “And an outhouse or two.”

“Speaking of gas,” Jason said, and everyone laughed. “No, seriously. We can capture the methane from our… sewage. It’s pretty low-tech. There was all sorts of stuff about it online, but maybe there will be something at a bookstore or local library. Where is the library around here, anyway?”

Charles drew a vertical line down the middle of the whiteboard. On the right side, he wrote:

Brick oven/outdoor cooking
Outhouses
Methane capture
Chain saws/firewood
Library?

“We need to hit a few auto parts stores, or hardware stores,” Cody said, “maybe both. If we can scrounge up enough gasoline preservative, we might be able to use the gas at the QuickFill until it’s gone.”

Gasoline preservative

“What do we do with it?” asked Ben.

“Just dump it in the storage tank,” Johnny said. “Maybe stir it a bit with the dipstick.”

“If we do that, maybe we could just leave it for later, and use up some other station’s gas until it goes bad,” Ben said. “Would that work?”

“The next closest gas station is another two miles past the QuickFill,” Tina said. “Is it going to be worth the effort to go that far, when we’re going to have to go without gasoline sooner or later?”

“Sure. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to give up my creature comforts either. Not having hot water or working toilets is bad enough. Besides, we’re using ten, maybe fifteen, gallons a day. It’ll be gone in what… three or four months?”

“Maybe a little longer,” Kelly said. “There was about 1800 gallons in the tank when I checked it last week. We’re pumping ten or fifteen gallons a day to run the generators. If we were trying to light up this whole place, it would be gone pretty quick, but if it doesn’t go bad it should last four to six months. Maybe a little less — we won’t be able to siphon out every drop, after all.”

“What about the chainsaws?” Johnny Latimer said. “I don’t wanna try sawing firewood by hand, we’ll be doin’ it every day of the year!”

“We could try making ethanol,” Jason suggested. “I've already heard some talk about setting up a still. Maybe we’ll be able to keep a few chainsaws going on what doesn’t get drank.” Laughter.

Ethanol

“If we get enough juice here,” Cleve said, “maybe we could run a few electric chain saws.”

“They’d be good for cutting little stuff,” Johnny said. “Nothing more than a few inches across.”

“Better than nothing.”

“That’s a lot of electricity,” Cody said. “And you’d have to drag the trees to where the juice is to cut ’em up anyway. I guess we’ll see what we come up with when we go for the solar panels tomorrow or Thursday.”

continued…

Shiny Things! Mini-podcast #2: Maya Ring Sling

Now that I’m getting a feel for how GarageBand does things, it (as expected) doesn’t take too long to do these. I just didn’t get a chance to do it yesterday, so it’s a day late. This week, I talk about the Maya sling:



And the associated AudioBoo page, where you can see a picture, leave a comment, whatever.

Friday Picture-Rama

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, this would be a looooong blog post.

We keep getting cool snaps, and I keep thinking “this one must be Blackberry Winter,” but they just keep coming. It warms up, then we get a line of thunderstorms, and it cools off, lather rinse repeat. Well, rinse anyway.

The blooms look pretty good this year, and I’ve noticed several stands in a nearby pasture. We still have plenty of jelly and jam though, so I’m sure sure I’ll do much picking come Fourth of July or not.


Upsize the vines, the thorns, and especially the flowers… and this is what you get. The vining roses are really kicking this year — much better than last. We have a dogwood that blooms twice, since there’s one of these vines crawling all through it.

But seriously, I need to get the shears a hold of the rose vines — they’re doing a fair imitation of kudzu, but with teeth!


I was going to say something like “moving from flowers to weeds,” but Big V isn’t here to defend herself. Oh well, I’m still gonna talk about her, that’s the price she pays for dragging me out of bed last weekend and driving her to Tractor Supply. She has her “permanent” prosthetic, the one that’s custom-fit for her, and she can get around on it reasonably well now. That day, she was still working on her balance, and was doing fine pushing the cart around. That is, until she had them drop about 350 pounds of horse and dog feed on it.

She gave the laden cart a push, and said, “I can’t get that going. You’ll have to push.” Then she climbed on top of it. I was a little worried about the cart’s rated maximum load, but it didn’t come apart on us. Of course, that meant I had to push her and the feed up to the cash registers and then out to the car. She hopped down and got in the seat before I had a chance to tell the guy to throw her in the trunk with the rest of it. ;-)


Of course, what would one of these photo-posts be without the World’s Cutest Grandkid? This pretty much sums things up for Mason these days. He’s crawling all over the place, pulling himself up on anything that will stand still long enough to support him, trying to free-stand, and chewing on things.

We started giving him teething biscuits this week — they’re a really hard cookie-like thing that is supposed to be hard to bite through. Mason’s beaver-chompers make pretty quick work of them, though; they don’t last more than a few minutes before he’s bit the end off and working on the loose piece. He likes some regular (i.e. not-baby) food, but definitely not fish or guacamole. He made the most hilarious face after Mrs. Fetched gave him a little home-made guacamole last night… then ejected it quick. I think he was expecting peas, which he does like. Next time, I’ll have the camera at hand and on speed-shoot mode.

Stupid gout is running at a low level at the moment. I’ve temporarily stopped drinking… when the foot is good for an entire week, I’ll resume the occasional nip at the rum bottle.

White Pickups, Episode 34

Contents

The kids soon got nervous with everyone hovering over them, watching them eat lunch in the clubhouse, until Jennifer and Kelly shooed the adults away. They returned to their own lunches, talking about what they had seen at the mall and out at the gate. The kids finished their sandwiches, and some multi-vitamins they scrounged from various houses, and they all looked noticeably better after a single decent meal. Kelly, Jennifer, and Tim offered to take them around the complex and find each one a suitable bicycle. After they left, Tina moved to stand between a whiteboard on an easel, taken from the clubhouse office, and a TV set.

“Let’s take a look at the video again,” Tina said, “then we’re going to start asking questions — not only about the trucks, but about everything — and we’re not going to worry about answers just now. Charles, let’s start the generator, so we can put this on the big screen for everyone to see.” He stepped outside, and Ben — Big Ben, now that there was a Little Ben — connected his camcorder to the flat screen and waited.

“What a relief,” Cody whispered to Sondra.

“What?”

“Caitlin’s doing something else. She — I don’t know.”

Sondra stifled a laugh. “I’m sorry, Cody. It’s just so cute. You never had to fend off all the girls, have you?”

He shrugged, and gave her a lopsided grin. “I always figured the world would end first. I was right!” This time, Cody laughed with her, and it felt good. “I don’t want to hurt her, but I don’t know how to deal with her either. She’s like my sister’s age, and she was never like that.”

Charles stepped back inside before Sondra could answer. “Okay, Ben. Let’s see what there is to see.”

Ben pressed Play, then fast-forwarded through the mall footage to Cody lighting the torch. “The trucks show up on the video,” he said. “That’s not surprising, when you think about it — anything that creates or reflects light is going to be picked up by the sensor.”

“But they could still be an illusion, though,” Johnny Latimer said. “Like a mirage. That’s a reflection too, right?”

“Heck of a reflection,” Cody said. “It reflected my foot and a crowbar.”

“Yeah,” Ben said, pausing where Cody put the torch to the truck. “But it didn’t reflect — or deflect — the flame.” The intense white of Cody’s blowtorch nearly filled the screen, until the camcorder adjusted, then they could see it disappearing into the body of the truck. He fast-forwarded to where Cody threw the crowbar, then stepped the video frame by frame. “And… well, you can see it.” They all watched the crowbar disappear through the windshield, and Cody retrieving it and banging it on the side of the truck before dropping it through the bed.

“Seen enough?” Tina asked. Nobody objected. “All right, we’ll start asking questions.” Ben turned off the gadgetry while Charles went to cut off the generator.

“She’ll get over it,” Sondra whispered to Cody. “I had a crush on a high-school kid when I was eleven. By the time I was thirteen, I wondered what the big deal was.”

“Lucky him,” Cody whispered back. “And lucky me he didn’t sweep you away.” He grinned. “We need to come up with something to keep the kids occupied through the day, though. Maybe a school of sorts.”

“What would we teach them now?” Sondra said. “Reading, math… sure.”

“Science and technology. They’ll need to know how to rebuild. Even history, and I hated it. But they need to understand how things were.”

“Are we ready?” Tina said. “Who has a question?”

Cody sat up straight. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the pickups — or maybe it has everything to do with them. There’s five little kids to take care of now — how do we raise them? Are we gonna try to give them some kind of education?”

The others murmered encouragement. “That’s… probably the most important question anyone could have asked,” Charles said, back inside. “Of course, I was in education before the Truckalypse, so naturally I’d think that.” A few chuckles. “You know, it seems to be we also have three kids of high school age here. What are we going to do about completing their education?”

More laughter; Cody grinned. “I did okay with math and science. English, yeah, I just wasn’t that interested. But I don’t guess there’s gonna be much demand for video game designers in my lifetime!” The others laughed again. “I guess I — all of us, really — should be learning what we can about how to grow food and make useful stuff out of all the junk the drive-offs left behind.”

Charles wrote Continuing Education on the whiteboard. “And I guess that goes for all of us,” he said. “Okay, now that the really important question has been asked, what else do we want to know?”

“Where did the trucks come from?”

“Why did they come?”

“Why haven’t they tried to attack us or anything?”

“Can we get rid of them somehow?”

“How many people are left in the world? And how many do we need to keep the gene pool full?”

Charles wrote:

Trucks: origin, purpose, how to fight

Number of survivors

Gene pool concerns

“I know we’re not supposed to be answering questions,” Max said, “but I’ve heard that you need about 150 people to keep a gene pool viable. And that there were about 10,000 humans alive at the end of the last ice age, but I guess they were scattered around. So we need to find at least four or five more groups our size.”

Charles jotted >10,000? next to Number of survivors and need >150 next to Gene pool concerns. “Any more questions?”

“Yeah,” Johnny Latimer said. “How can we go about contacting other groups of survivors, and… intermingling, I guess?”

How to contact other groups

“Sooner or later, there will be new kids,” Sondra said. She rolled her eyes at the few snickers (word was already getting around). “As far as I know, nobody here has medical training beyond first aid. How do we learn what to do in the next year or so? For that matter, what do we do if someone gets injured?”

Medics?

“Who’s going to raise these kids?” Sally McMinn said, standing up in the back. “Yeah, I know we’re all gonna have a hand in taking care of 'em. But who are they gonna live with?”

“That’s maybe the second most important question,” Tina said. “And unlike the others, we can’t leave it unanswered today. Let’s give this some thought.”

continued…

Shiny Things! Mini-podcast #1: Kindle

Audioboo and its five-minute limit is a godsend for me… I can find the time it takes to record and edit a five-minute podcast without too much trouble. One reason I haven’t done the Podcast from FAR Manor for three years(!) is that I just can’t get an entire uninterrupted afternoon needed — “Shiny Things!”, of course, was one of the segments of the original podcast, so I already had the beds for it.

Give it a listen:



And the associated AudioBoo page, where you can see a picture of the Kindle (a familiar pic if you’ve been reading TFM), leave comments, follow me, and so forth.

Now to get the next White Pickups episode tuned up and ready to roll…

The Boy and Snippet at the Cinder Block Hilton

So we add one to the collection:

The Boy got to serve his mini-vacation over the weekend, going in on Friday. Snippet was scheduled to go in on Tuesday, which meant we got to listen to her whine about how much she missed The Boy for several days. Finally, she got her own trip to the pokey. “I wonder if I’ll get to see him in there.”

“Probably not,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they keep the men & women separated.” As it was, I went on to work and Mrs. Fetched took her in Tuesday morning. That left us to take care of Mason, which isn’t much different from the usual situation. DoubleRed is visiting her family all week, and Daughter Dearest is home from college, so we were planning for a fairly quiet couple of days. There was a wrinkle, though: Granny fell that morning and broke her nose (I tell her to stop picking fights in biker bars, but nobody listens to me) and The Boy wasn’t released. So when the phone rang at 1a.m., Mrs. Fetched was ready to hear her mom inform us that Granny had died.

“They let me out,” The Boy said. “Someone needs to come pick me up.” Since I’d gotten up with Mason shortly after midnight, a highly-relieved Mrs. Fetched volunteered to go get him. As it turned out, he spent most of his four days in the medical block: the doc wants him checking his glucose at each meal and the jail’s SOP is to do it once a week. He said that went well enough, he had his own shower and bed. But our quiet couple of days ended up being about 16 hours.


Snippet was supposed to spend two days in the clink, but they let her out Wednesday night at 10 p.m. and I went to get her. She was already highly giddy at the prospect of seeing The Boy, but once again there was a wrinkle: not expecting her to be home, he went down to Kobold’s to play Guitar Hero or something. Mrs. Fetched didn’t want them down there all night, so we agreed to pick him up and bring him home. Snippet, if anything, got even more giddy as we rolled down to Kobold’s: “I’m going to jump on him and kiss him all over!” or something like that. yeeeeesh And that’s pretty much what she did. Mrs. Fetched agreed to let them stay at Kobold’s until 11:30, at which time Kobold would bring them home, and that was good because it gave Snippet a chance to get it out of her system.

You know what? I don’t think I ever wrote about what earned them their mini-vacations. Back when they were at the apartment, a drunk underage chick from next door came over crying and saying she’d been “inappropriately touched” (and both The Boy and Snippet said she’d been their “mattress” for quite a while). She called 911, thought better of it, hung up, and hid in The Boy’s closet. What she didn’t realize is that when you call 911, the emergency services operator can keep the line open even if you hang up on your end… and since she had a cell phone, they could trace both number and location, which brought the heat to The Boy’s door. Now it should be pointed out that this drunk chick wasn’t the only underage person in the apartment who had been drinking… and even though The Boy had not been there, he got hung with contributing. Oh, and Drunk Chick tossed a baggie of pot over the balcony rail, and the cops decided to try pinning that on The Boy as well. The problem was, Drunk Chick was telling one story (as the so-called victim) while everyone else was telling an entirely different one, so The Boy got off with a fairly light charge and Snippet got an underage drinking rap.

So they’re back. DoubleRed’s still gone, but she doesn’t make much noise through the evenings anyway.

White Pickups, Episode 33

Contents

The trip back to Laurel took longer, with the kids and merchandise weighing things down. Cody volunteered to pull a Kidd Hauler, and Caitlin insisted on being his passenger (to Sondra’s continued amusement, and Cody’s continued embarrassment). The kids acted almost relieved to have adults — any adults — around again, and peppered their drivers with conversation.

“I don’t live far from here,” Ben Crawford told Palmer as they turned into the entrance to Laurel. “Keep going and take the third right. Or fourth.”

“What’s your address?” Palmer said.

“4573 Mary Street. Do you think we can go and see if my parents are there?”

“In a little while. But if they’re at home…” Palmer thought better of finishing the question and let it trail off.

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I guess they’re not. But we should check anyway. When we can.”


The white pickup was still sitting near the gate. Cody glared at the thing as he held the gate for everyone else, then stomped over to the truck and flung the driver-side door open. “Look, you —” He stopped a moment, braced against the pull, then slammed the door (it made a hollow chuff sound) and stomped back. Everyone else had stopped to watch.

“What was it?” someone asked.

“Nothing,” Cody said. “The damn thing’s empty.”

“It’s waiting for a driver,” Charles said.

“Well, it can wait until I get back,” Cody growled. “I’m getting a cutting torch, I can see what makes it go and it can wait here in pieces until hell freezes over for all I care.” He rode off, leading the pack to the clubhouse.

“I wanna come with you,” Caitlin said as he disconnected the Kidd Hauler in front of the clubhouse.

“I need to use a regular trailer,” Cody said. “I’m getting a cutting torch, and it has a couple tanks for the fuel, so there won’t be room for a passenger. I’ll be back in twenty minutes or so.”

“Well… can I watch you cut it up?”

“Sure, if you stay inside the fence. I guess everyone else is gonna come watch.”


Indeed, everyone was at the gate before Cody returned, carrying the torch, tanks, and a crowbar on the trailer, a welding mask dangling off the handlebars. Ben had his camera rolling once again, standing off to one side. Sondra and Charles volunteered to help, and convinced everyone else to stay inside the gate. Cody left the crowbar sitting on the trailer as the three of them carried the torch and tanks over to the truck. He opened the valves on the tanks and scraped a sparker in front of the torch until it caught. He put on the welding mask, adjusted the flame to a thin, intense blue pencil and walked over to the truck.

“Awright, you SOB,” he said, his voice muffled by the mask, “let’s make you a hood and then we’ll see what’s under it.” He brought the flame down to the truck. “Whoa. That’s whack.”

“What?” Charles asked.

“The flame. Look at it.” Charles and Sondra walked over; Sondra rubbed her arm without seeming to notice.

“Why isn’t it cutting?” she asked.

“Damn if I know. But the flame isn’t even splashing… it looks like it’s going right through the sheet metal. Watch.” He lifted the nozzle up, then down. “But it ain’t cutting.” He pulled the flame away, touched the metal, then laid his hand on it. “Not even warm.”

“Wow. Is there anything you can do about that?”

“Quit?” Cody cut off the torch and pulled the mask off his head. “It’s not life or death. ” He coiled up the hose and they rolled the tanks back onto the trailer. “Waste of time anyway —” Suddenly, Cody snatched up the crowbar and threw it at the truck. “Bite me!” he yelled, as the crowbar went through the window —

Without breaking. And clattered to the pavement behind the truck.

Everyone stood gaping, then started talking at once. “What the hell?” Johnny Latimer said, for all of them.

“It’s like… like it wasn’t even there,” Charles said.

Cody reached under the back of the pickup and retrieved the crowbar. “It’s there,” he said, “I guess.” He kicked the rear fender. “Ow. It feels like it’s there.” He reached out with the crowbar; it thumped against the rim of the bed. “It’s there if we hit it with something.” He tossed the crowbar into the bed, and it clanged to the pavement again. “But if you’re not touching that something… it goes right through.”

Everyone stood quiet for a moment. “Are they real, then?” Ashley Harbin (one of the kids) asked.

“It’s one h— heck of a hallucination if it’s not,” Tim said.

“I guess that’s how they stay so clean,” Tina suggested. “The dirt doesn’t stick to them. It’s not there for the dirt.”

Cody ducked as a yellow jacket flew by his head and landed on the truck. “I think it’s only there for living things. Or whatever they’re holding.”

“We need to discuss this,” Charles said.

“We need to experiment,” Cody replied, tapping the bed with his crowbar. He shifted to a two-handed grip and took a hard sideways swing at the side of the truck. The crowbar bounced back and Cody let it go; it tumbled up the pavement, away from the others.

Cody shook his hands. “That stung. Good thing I was expecting it.” He squatted down. “Not even a mark, let alone a dent.” He stood. “Hey Ben, bring that camera over here. I’m gonna do it again, but I want you to tape it.” He retrieved the crowbar while Ben slipped around the truck. “Yeah, stand over here, next to me. I’m gonna whack the taillight this time.” Ben zoomed in and Cody took his stance. “Ready, Fire, Aim!” He swung again, and once again let the crowbar bounce away. “Okay, come see what I did. Or didn’t do… that’s where I hit it, but you can’t tell. If that was really plastic, it would be all over the place right now, huh?”

Charles joined them, and tapped the sheet metal next to the taillight with a knuckle, then tapped the taillight itself. “Doesn’t feel any different,” he said. “They sound the same, too, don’t they?”

Cody rapped the door — thunk — then the side window, then the roof. “Yeah. Same sound each time. Same feel, too. What are these things made of, anyway?”

“Voodoo,” Tim said, not smiling. Several people nodded.

continued…

Unplanned Dim-itude

I’d planned to have at least two posts up this week, but life (as usual) got in the way. Here’s one of the things that kept me busy this week:



Oh well… while I’m getting tomorrow’s White Pickups episode queued up — and this is one you won’t want to miss — you can watch Mason getting on his feet (click for full-size and then some):



His balance is improving rapidly. Last weekend, when he first started pulling up solo, he had to have both hands firmly on some kind of support. This morning, after working at it all week, he succeeded in reaching down and grabbing something off the floor of his playpen while holding on with the other hand. Panda said one morning he turned loose and free-stood for all of two seconds before lunging for the rail.

Maybe I’ll get some more blog-related stuff done next week.

White Pickups, Episode 32

Contents

Cleve reluctantly agreed to let the group split up. Tim took some riders to his shop to get the Kidd Haulers, while Jason and Ben rode to the nearby Borders to grab any gardening books and field guides in stock. Cody and Sondra went to Breakbeat Music, across from the food court — and Caitlin Cooper, the girl who had sat with Cody, insisted on coming with them. The chubby redhead — she could have been Tim’s daughter — clung to Cody’s hand along the way.

“Is she your girlfriend?” Caitlin asked him.

“Yeah,” Cody said. Caitlin looked at her feet as she walked for a moment, then looked at him again.

“Can a boy have two girlfriends?”

Cody goggled at Sondra, who stifled a laugh and turned away.

“Can I live with you guys?”

“Um… uh —” Cody stammered. “We only have one bedroom.”

“That’s okay. I can sleep in the living room.”

“We’re like a big family where we live,” Sondra said. “You might not live with us, but you’ll see us every day if you want to. Everyone spends the evenings in the clubhouse, we have supper together, then we’ve got games, a couple computers, and a DVD player. And there’s no trucks.”

“You have electricity? It went out here a long time ago.”

“We have two generators, and we siphon gas from the station around the corner. Cody was a lot of help getting it together.”

“Here we are,” Cody said. Breakbeat Music was dark, like everything else, but the last clerk hadn’t bothered to close the security gates before driving off. He turned on his flashlight. “Welcome to Breakbeat Music, how may I help you?”

Sondra and Caitlin both laughed. “Do you work here or something?” Caitlin asked.

“I did, before everyone drove off,” Cody said. “Wednesday was the last day I worked. They wanted me to come in on Thursday, but Mom’s car turned into you-know-what and I said I couldn’t get here. So what’s your favorite video game?”

“Super Mario Kart.”

“That’s a Wii game, we don’t… hey, no reason we can’t get a Wii too.” Cody pried his hand loose, ducked behind the counter, and came up with a key. “Lucky there’s so many TV sets around the complex, we don’t have to lug one of those all the way back home. Pick out some games you like, and some your friends will like, and we’ll bring a console and extra controllers along. Batteries, too.” He unlocked the glass and slid it aside.

“Cody?” Sondra said. “This is gonna add a bunch of weight to the load. Is this really worth it?”

“Sure — the kids can play the Wii, and the rest of us get the Playstation.”

“Maybe we ought to get another Playstation, then. I don’t think that thing got a minute of rest last night.”

“That can be arranged!” Cody unlocked another slider, thinking neither did we and grinning. “You ever play Barnstormer? It’s a racing game, but with old airplanes.”

“They have it? Get it for me! Pleeeease?” Sondra mock-whined, hands clasped, making Caitlin laugh. “I wanted to try that one, but I never got a chance.”

“They had a couple here on Wednesday. I doubt they sold out by Friday.” Cody opened a third door and played his flashlight along the shelves. “Yup, here it is!” Sondra cheered as he tossed the game on the counter; he reached down and picked up a Playstation. “And here’s our other console. Hey, I think we had a couple lefty controllers in stock, get one on me. And get a few of the other kind.” He shined his flashlight at a rack behind them. While Sondra looked at the accessories, Cody brought out several large bags.

“Can I get an iPod?” Caitlin asked. “I want a pink one, like that.” She pointed at the display.

“Sure,” Sondra said.

“Yeah,” Cody said, unlocking the display case. “You’d better go find some CDs you like, though. I think the Internet’s gone for good.”

Sondra helped Caitlin pick out some CDs while Cody got an iPod for each of the kids and loaded their haul into three bags. “Hm,” Cody said as they returned with a handful of jewel cases. “Probably around fifteen hundred bucks, including tax. They can take it out of my last paycheck. I’ll pay ’em back the other thirteen hundred later.” Caitlin took one of Cody’s hands before he could pick up the bags; he rolled his eyes and took one bag while Sondra took the other two.

“Hey,” Sondra said. “We need to get a jacket for Caitlin, don’t we?”

“Yeah. But we’ll be going through Sears, we’ll pick one up on the way out. Sweaters, too.” He paused a moment. “You know, I feel stupid for thinking about this just now: why didn’t we just pick jackets and sweaters out of the houses we’ve been cleaning out?”

“I guess it’s because everybody wants their own clothes. I know I didn’t really want to spend the rest of my life wearing clothes someone else left behind when they drove off. It’ll happen sooner or later, but there will be plenty of time for used stuff.”

“Yeah.”

“By the way: it was nice of you, offering Max your dad’s jacket like you did.”

Cody shrugged. “Well… it’s not like Dad’s going to be needing it.”

“Not just that. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah.” Cody looked down and let his hair cover his eyes. “But he’s accepted us. He apologized for being rude, and you set him straight about Philip. I don’t hold grudges… not anymore, anyway.” He flipped his hair back. “Let’s go.”


“Where did all the people go?” Caitlin asked, walking down the mall and clinging to Cody’s hand. “Did they die?”

“We don’t think so,” Sondra said. “We think they’re all driving around in those pickups.”

“Why don’t they stop?”

“Maybe they can’t,” Cody said. “But nobody knows for sure.”

Tina looked amused as the three emerged from Sears with their bundles. “You know… you guys could pass for a family.”

“It would be a… a very strange arrangement,” Cody said, looking embarrassed.

Sondra stepped over to Tina. “Caitlin wants to be his girlfriend too,” she whispered, making Tina laugh.

“Hey, he’s already got an older girlfriend,” Tina whispered back. “Why not a younger one too?”

Cody stepped forward, Caitlin in tow, as Tina and Sondra laughed together. “Hey… where’s the other kids?”

“They’re over there, with Kelly and Jennifer. Why?”

“I got an iPod pico for each of them. I guess we can pass them out after we get home and charge ’em and get some music on ’em. We also got a bunch of other stuff — a Wii for the kids, another Playstation for everyone else, some games and controllers, that kind of stuff.”

“Quite a load,” Tina said. “We probably could have found all that in Laurel.”

“Maybe. But at least we know we’ve got the stuff now. Like Sondra said, there’ll be plenty of time for used stuff.”

continued…

Boom-Squawk-Boo

Wow, the week’s already gone by?

I'm running on battery power, writing through a thunderstorm. Funny how I was thinking earlier this week that we hadn’t had much nasty weather this month, when April weather on Planet Georgia often has a violent temper. Ta-daaaah! We’ve got a tornado watch now and maybe more to come tomorrow. Looking at the local radar loop on weather.gov, it looks like once this goes by we’ll be in a quiet spot… maybe the rest of the night.

Mason has unlocked a new ability: he pulled himself up to a standing position in his playpen today! Next thing you know, I’ll be posting video of him walking around. He was squalling for all he was worth a few minutes ago, being tired and mad about being tired. I fixed him a bottle and Mrs. Fetched is feeding him… the way he was acting, he’ll be sound asleep before I finish this.

I used to do an irregular podcast, but it’s such a chore to block out enough time to produce one — pretty much half a day to edit up a 20- to 30-minute episode. A new site, AudioBoo, looks like it could do for podcasting what Twitter did for blogging. You can post up to five minutes of jibber-jabber, using a file upload or directly through an AudioBoo app for iPhone (or Android). My first boo, Banned from the Band, is about a minute long and explains what I did this afternoon and why. At least I won’t have to flag a TB25 for a while. But I think I’ll use this to knock off a few “Shiny Things” segments. I can probably do a five-minute segment in less than half an hour, which means I’ll be doing them more regularly.

Watch this space: I’ll have a Mason pic up tomorrow (weather permitting). Next episode of White Pickups will be up Monday morning as usual.

White Pickups, Episode 31

Did I mention that this is going to be a long day, story-wise?

---

Contents

After a brief pause, everyone slipped behind clothes racks or shelves. “What was that?” Cody hissed.

“We’re gonna find out,” Cleve said. “Petro. Lucado. Let’s go.”

“What?” Cody yelped, grabbing Sondra’s arm as she stepped forward. “Sondra…”

“I’ll be fine, Cody,” Sondra said, kicking her shoes off. “I’ve been in a gunfight before. You trust me?”

He let go, reluctantly. “Yeah. But be careful, okay? I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t. Careful is how I survive.” She joined Tim and Cleve at the edge of the mall entrance, still walking a little funny. Cody picked up her shoes, tied the laces together, and draped them around his neck.

“Tim!” Sara whispered across a couple clothes racks. “Keep your head down, okay?” He grinned and nodded.

Cleve whispered to the others, and pointed down the mall at pillars and open store entrances where they could take cover. When Cleve was sure they understood, he turned to the others. “If you hear shots, everyone come a-runnin’,” he said. “Make lots of noise, yell, stomp, so it sounds like the Army’s rollin’ in, okay?” They all nodded. “Let’s go.”

The three of them darted down the mall, one by one. The other two covered as the third dashed to the next cover. The others watched them go; another clatter from farther down got the bravest squinting and peering for any sign.

“What’s down that way?” someone whispered.

“Just the rest of the mall,” Cody said. “Food court’s almost all the way on the other side. I’ll bet that’s where they’re going.”


Cleve, Sondra, and Tim disappeared into the gloom well before reaching the halfway mark. Skylights gave a little light here and there, but the mall looked dim and sinister. They continued down the mall, the last in line hustling (Sondra on tiptoe) past the others to the next available cover. Cleve pointed the way. Tim was about to dart out when the clattering noise came again; he froze and waited for Cleve to nod and point. It took them nearly ten minutes to reach the food court.

A crunching sound echoed from the food court. Cleve waved the others to him, then peered around the corner. He saw movement, and jumped out, gun in front of him. “Freeze! Police!”


Cleve’s yell and an answering shriek echoed down to Sears.

“Shit! Sondra!” Cody yelled, and jumped forward; Charles caught him just in time. “Let me go!” he snarled, trying to pull free.

“You’re not armed, idiot!” Max hissed, grabbing Cody’s free arm. “Besides, that wasn’t Sondra!”

Cody yanked once more, then stopped struggling and stared at Max. “You sure?”

Max nodded. “I’ve known her since March. I know what she sounds like.” He paused. “Someone’s coming. Probably Tim. Let’s see what happened.”

They stayed under cover until they could see Tim jogging their way. “Everything’s okay,” he said. “We need some help, though. Everybody come on. But Cleve said you don’t have to be noisy.” Tim wasn’t winded in the least; he turned around and jogged off before anyone could ask him what happened.

“Stay in groups of at least two or three,” Charles told the others. “Cody, why don’t you stay with Max and me?”

“Yeah, whatever. As long as you don’t slow me down.” Cody looked at the floor, hair covering his eyes.

“Fine. Let’s move.” They hustled down the mall, spreading out as the faster left the slower behind. Charles, Max, and Cody were one of the first to arrive at the food court, and stood confused for a moment. There were too many people…

“It’s safe,” Cleve said. “They say there’s nobody else in the mall.” The “they” were five children, all maybe age ten. Sondra sat with them, comforting them as best as she could while Cleve and Tim looked on. Cleve held Sondra’s pistol; the kids all looked scared, hungry, and a little sickly.

The others started murmuring: “Look at that.” “Why haven’t we seen any other kids?” “What did they eat?” “How did they not drive off with their parents?” “Have they been here all this time?” Cody edged toward Sondra and the kids; she whispered to the kids then nodded to him. He and Kelly walked over and sat down with them; a chubby red-haired girl wrapped herself around Cody and cried as he gave her an awkward hug. Sondra smirked and rolled her eyes.

“They need food and water,” Sondra told the others, putting her shoes on. “A little at a time, though. I guess they’ve been scavenging. Like us.”

“Quite a feat, if they lived for… what, close to two weeks?” Max said. “Then again, we did it. Why couldn’t they?”

Jennifer Lane collected an armload of water bottles and energy bars from the others and brought them over. She sank to her knees and handed water bottles to each child. “Drink it slow,” she told them, “or you might throw up. Just a little sip at a time, okay?” The kids nodded and opened their drinks as best as they could; Kelly and Cody had to help two of them. “Good. Now why don’t you tell us what happened.” Jennifer opened energy bars and passed them around.

The kids all talked over each other, and argued about some points, but they managed to tell the story between sips of water and nibbles at energy bars: School was closed Friday, so our moms took us to the theater to see Fish Story. It was the 1 o’clock show. They were supposed to come for us at 3 when the movie was over, but they never did. And the theater people were gone when we came out too. Some of the other kids went outside to see if they could find anybody, but the white trucks… they were everywhere. A couple of the moms who were at the movie took their kids and some of the others. They told us to come too, but we ran back inside when they got in the trucks. We ate popcorn and candy, and we slept in the theater. Nobody was there the next day, so we took the quarters out of the cash registers and played video games upstairs until the power went out. When there was no more candy, we came here. It was Ben’s idea. We don’t guess our parents are coming for us, are they?

“I guess we have to take them with us,” Kelly said. “We sure can’t leave ’em here. But how?”

“My bike store’s just up the street,” Tim said. “I have some seats and Kidd Haulers there — that’s like a cargo trailer, but set up to carry a child. These guys are probably a bit larger than the rated capacity, but they’ll hold up from here to home. They made tandems — to carry two kids — but I didn’t have any in stock.”

“Do you guys want to come home with us?” Sondra asked the kids.

continued…

The Week in Pictures

Just a few of the things, normal and not-so-normal, going on around the manor this week…

The dogwoods shook off their yellow early in the week, and are now their usual blazing white. The blooms aren’t as plentiful this year as they have been at least some years past.

This particular shot is the dogwood at the corner of the driveway, with a gigantic cypress in the background. I’ve joked about renting a bucket truck to string Christmas lights on that sucker.


Mason loves being outside, and loves getting a bath. He got too big for the bathroom sink, so now he gets his dunk time in the kitchen sink.

I didn’t have any pix from the various baby food showers he administered to his grandparents this week, unfortunately. On the other hand, I don’t have to worry about cleaning off the camera lens if one of those sneezes got directed that way either.

The Boy takes Mason outside in the stroller; sometimes he sits and plays guitar for him. Mason is fascinated by the guitar and the sound it makes… but most of all he enjoys his “dad time” (what little he gets). He also met Buster T. Butthead, who is officially the first dog he’s petted (stroke, stroke, grab handful of hair). When he’s running around in a few months, I expect Buster will be his best buddy. We’ll probably need to give the dog a bath, now that I think about it…


I spent much of yesterday cutting up a poplar tree with Mr. Sunshine. This was not my plan for the day — I was going to do the Bakin’ Fool thing and hot up the kitchen all day. But they’d dropped it in the area in front of the chicken house, where feed trucks will soon need to go, so it needed to be taken care of. It took us most of the day, cutting off the smaller branches to clear the work area then feeding them to my chipper-shredder… once the work area was clear, the rest of it went fairly quickly. Everything is stacked or piled up here at the manor except for the trunk pieces. We moved them out of the way and Mrs. Fetched said she’ll get the splitter down there and finish that up this week.

Now that’s not even beginning to address what’s waiting for me behind the manor — the above picture tells that particular tale (left side morning, right side evening). Mrs. Fetched has complained for a while about several oak trees close to the house out back; one does make a bad habit of dropping limbs on the roof above our bedroom. Since the renters requested removal of a similarly-positioned tree at the old place, she decided to deal with both jobs at once. So now I have quite a bit of raw firewood to process, and I won’t have to go far to get to it. I’ll have to see if The Boy is interested in getting started on it. I think we’ll miss that extra shade in the evenings, but what do I know?

But even though my day got spent cutting trees instead of kneading, what I wanted to get done yesterday actually happened. Instead of making bread, we bought a loaf. DoubleRed made cookies. And after supper and a brief rest, I made some cinnamon rolls. I took a few to Daughter Dearest, since her Spring Concert was today. Still plenty left, come by the manor and grab one!