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I made the mistake of going out this morning to get the boxes I needed for my re-org project, the theory being if I hit the stores as they opened, before it got hot, I would be ahead of the game. The flaw in that theory is in the “before it got hot” clause.

Had an acquaintance almost two decades ago, who theorized in another twenty years it would be impossible to sustain life in Houston during the summer. She may have had something there. When I went out at 9am, the heat index was already 96, and it’s only going to go up from there.

So I’ve already sweat through my clothes, gone through a liter of water, and am looking at my re-org project and groaning. It’ll get done. After I dry off. If I crank the fan up another notch, that may only take an hour or so.

Every time I see this cover, I am struck by the metaphor for what happens whenever I open my front door in the summer:

Yeah, the gun works about as well on humidity, too.

July 5, 2010
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I normally don’t blog on weekends, outside a possible small update from my Crackberry, but I find myself oddly healthy today.

I had really expected to be comatose and near-crippled today, after covering the city’s 4th of July parade, which held last night. But after two days of heavy rain – by my highly scientific trashcan-without-a-lid method, seven inches – the field we would have set up in was soaked, and would have proved hazardous to run power across to the equipment. And there would have been well over a million dollars worth of equipment (and I’m being conservative) put at risk in a still-unstable weather picture.

So it was decided to pitch the six-camera setup and go with a much smaller production, one that could be more easily hustled to cover should the weather demand it. This was the proper decision, as it rained twice more between our 11am crew call and the parade’s eventual go-time of 7pm. I lost out on a fair chunk of overtime, but my body’s happier for it. Also, we would have been breaking down equipment and packing it away after sundown, and I was eyeballing the fresh new fire ant mounds in that field, thinking how nice it would be to blunder into them in the dark.

The only real downside… okay the financial downside is terribly real also, but you know what I mean… is that the parade coverage was the only reason I didn’t accompany my wife and son to West Texas for the weekend, and Monday and Tuesday at San Antonio’s River Walk. So waaah and boo hoo. I’m making some brave attempts at organization, but (as usual) this means having a couple of boxes I do not possess. So I can either drag my ponderous ass out into the humidity to get them, or I can sit here and type at you.

On the subject of patriotism: when I look at this a year from now, this is going to be a quite obvious molehill, but most people are probably aware that DC announced i nthe last week that Wonder Woman was going through a revamp, with a new costume.  There was the usual firestorm of geek boy and girl mouth-running at this, and I think DC must be fairly tummeling at the response, since the mainstream media has picked it up and run with it, probably farther than they would have if DC had, as the practice has become, killed her and then brought her back in a year. (which has become such standard operating procedure that it really isn’t news anymore).

The most remarkable thing about this is – and smarter, better writers than myself have already said this – is:

1. If all these people had just bought Wonder Woman comics these last few years, DC wouldn’t have felt a need to stir things up in hopes of boosting circulation;
2. The astounding quantity of people decrying it as an anti-patriotic move miss the fact that Wonder Woman is not an American. In fact, if she were truly patriotic, she would have come in on the Amazon’s side when they attacked DC a few years ago. (Now that I think on it, that’s a statement that works on many levels)
3. It was apparently a slow news weeks if pundits are reduced to foaming over a comic book. Or you can interpret that as, Look How Far Comics Have Come.
4. …Naaaaaaaaah.

I don’t think it will last. The story arc will play out, we’ll eventually see a return to the status quo, and Diana will once again be kicking evil’s ass in a one-piece bathing suit. Which, when you think about it, has to be about the most demoralizing thing possible for a thug. “You got your butt handed to you by a chick in a swimsuit? Dude. You suck.”

Enough on that. I could go on, but there’s so much digital ink being sprayed over the subject, why add more? I’ll just leave you with a lot more stuff you’re seeing elsewhere:

Nick’s Fireworks Emporium does not allow embedding, so Communism must be afoot.

July 4, 2010
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So my producer got back from vacation and discovered that the schedule she posted before she left was incorrect and my story was actually due last Friday. I think the proper response is “Um, gaaaaaaaaaaah!” I’m going to be humping today, probably tomorrow, too.

Instead of tossing you another pic of T. Rex from my cameraphone, let me show you the Zoo’s own YouTube teaser.  Good shots of the dinos, and it’s only a minute long. I have six minutes to fill, two interviews, and unloading footage.  That will take a little longer to untangle.

June 22, 2010
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Much as I would love to stay and chat, now that I have the footage I need, and with a deadline looming: I have work to do.

Professional T. Rex Wrangler. Another cool job.

Hopefully there’ll be some actual content tomorrow. If not… hey I still got more T. Rex pictures.

June 21, 2010
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No embloggination today; shooting dinos at the Houston Zoo.

There are days this is the greatest job on Earth.

June 17, 2010
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Results of Lisa’s follow-up visit: she’s a mess. There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this. Dosages were increased, new meds given, come back in a month. Her sugars are still high, but within a narrowing range; they’re not roller-coastering all over the place like they were before she went into the hospital.

I’d like to think fondly of the coming restful weekend, but nothing could be further from the truth. I have a meeting later this afternoon with some folks I’ve done script work for in the past, hopefully meaning there is more work in the wings. Rehearsal tonight, and a show tomorrow night. Last week’s show was canceled due to a lack of ticket sales (and a good thing, too, I guess, what with getting Lisa out of the hospital and motoring around to get prescriptions filled and picking up dinner during what would normally be show time). I’m more than a little concerned because Lisa also performs in the show, and I’m not sure if she’s physically up to it. Naturally, pushing herself to the edge and beyond is one of the things – the major thing – that got her into the hospital in the first place.

Anyway: think good thoughts for me, especially on the new work front. We still have no idea what those four days in the hospital cost, but extra money would be nice. Grocery bags full of it would be even better.

June 11, 2010
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…and more tiring, but I didn’t live through those.

As you know if you follow me on Twitter (and if you don’t, why not? I’m not that annoying), on Saturday, the hospital made Lisa a deal: if she could keep her lunch down, she could go home. She was intensely excited to get a choice of soft foods for her lunch, instead of the usual nourishing chicken gruel (“it looks like bad gravy”), and chose beef stew, which she did, indeed, keep down. The fact that they shot her full of something that put her to sleep afterward may have helped.

Eventually, though there had been a spike in her sugars in the morning, she was given the okay to go home. After waiting a couple of hours for paperwork and someone to pilot the wheelchair to get her downstairs.  Okay, waiting for the wheelchair was my fault, but after supporting her in the brief walk to the bathroom, I knew there was no way she was making it to the elevator, much less all the way down to the lobby and front doors.

Which resulted in my pulling up to the pharmacy five minutes after it closed (6pm on Saturdays. Really?). Walk her into the house, get her settled, then head back out to a 24-hour pharmacy to get the new prescriptions filled. While they worked on that, buy some groceries in a scattered, unfocused way.  Then stop at Chili’s to get a cheeseburger, because the invalid demands one, and I cannot say I blame her. It’s not like I’m up for cooking.

I get all that done, and it’s my turn to collapse. The cheeseburger is wolfed down, which is quite heartening (my wife does not wolf – that’s my job).

It’s astounding how behind I had gotten on a lot of stuff. Okay, not astounding, it’s only to be expected – but astounding to me… it somehow still felt like Thursday. I had been reading Gene Wolfe’s An Evil Guest and always went to the hospital with it, but rarely got more than a paragraph or two read. To no one’s surprise, I was up until 2am that night, catching up on reading.

And awakened at 7am by the sounds of cat rugby in the hall. The smaller cat reminds me of the kid in the movie Parenthood who likes to hit things with his head. Except that the cat does not put a bucket on its head. I get up and feed the damned things, then shoo them away from the dog’s food until she comes down to protect her food herself. One of life’s injustices: we moved the cat food bowls up onto a table so the dog couldn’t eat their food, and now they feel entitled to eat hers at will. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, but I’ll leave it up to the pundits to craft it.

After an hour of playing Lone Ranger over the dog food, I climbed back into bed, thankful it was Sunday and such things were possible. Like an idiot, I hadn’t put my phone on silent, and people starting calling to check on Lisa. Like a freaking idiot, I didn’t put it on silent after the first person called.

There was another trip to the grocery store – this time a list was involved – and an eventual nap. (PS. the alarm on a Blackberry is CHRISTALMIGHTY LOUD) Now, on Monday morning, I think I detect a few more gray hairs on the rapidly thinning thatch atop my head, and strange leftovers litter my life. The towels that never got folded, the laundry merely tossed on the floor.  I have daily taken off my wristwatch and my wedding ring and placed them in the same place for years, and today I have no idea where they might be.

There have been rougher weekends, but I didn’t live through them.

My new favorite image, above, is from BoingBoing, and the story is here.

June 7, 2010
Categories: Life's Rich Pageant . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment