smacky and bucky

This is straight out of a Hardy Boys episode, but I promise it's true. I was straightening up the garage this afternoon, sweeping basically, as there isn't much in there, and I noticed that there is a four-foot space above the plywood ceiling above the garage door. I decided to get a ladder and a flashlight and see if there was anything up there (We've been in this house for four years, and I haven't explored every nook and cranny).

Well, look at what I found:



It's an odometer/ speedometer for a Mercedes, and it's in kilometers, so it must be from an old Mercedes someone brought over from Europe.

Also found this:

Okay, maybe not "work" as in "do something and get paid for it" but we did a lot of work this weekend getting ready for our house guest. This weekend I built shelving, moved boxes, put together a bed, mowed the lawn, vacuumed, did four loads of laundry (and put away four loads of laundry), bought a television, gave away some items on Freecycle, disassembled a table so it would fit up the stairs from the basement, reassembled table...

My hands feel like oven mitts this morning.

One bright point was the break we took on Sunday to grab some lunch. We ended up going to Dogfish Head Alehouse, where I had a chicken and shrimp club sandwich and a beer sampler of six different beers:


After this lunch I was pretty agreeable, as you can imagine. The weather was sunny and 75 degrees. We even finished everything and had an hour or two to relax before the guest arrived, so I took a paperback and sauntered into the backyard to chill on our vintage outdoor lounge chair (which you can read about here!).

I finished Hell's Bay by James W. Hall. Like Lee Child's Jack Reacher, if he was a beach bum with a Florida address, Hall's character Thorn is always getting into trouble and trying to survive. His series of books with this character are recommended. Check out the author's site here! Next up I'll be reading The Turnaround by George Pelecanos, another author I highly recommend. He's DC born and bred, and he writes books where the city is not just the setting but a character itself. I have the book in hardback (signed by the author) but as I have done with his last four books, I get the hardback autographed at his reading (at the Borders near me where he always reads) then wait and get the paperback to read. I know, that sounds strange. But by buying both copies, I'm keeping him making money so he'll keep writing these books! After that, I'll read Nothing to Lose by Lee Child, speaking of Jack Reacher (Holy crap, Amazon says it's Jack Reacher, No. 12!) Yes, I like having the next book chosen and on-hand while I'm still reading another. It's how I roll.

Spent the past few days getting ready for a house guest, which meant turning the man cave (a chair and side table facing a TV) into a proper guest room: getting the bed frame out of the garage, emptying a closet, etc. No idea how long the person is staying. She's coming down from NY to start a job here, and has to find a place of her own in her free moments. So our two bedroom bungalow will have three people, two dogs, and two cats for a while.

Still have more to do to get ready.

We were down at the river this past weekend and I let the dogs out at about midnight. Again, I only had my phone, which is hardly the best for night shots. The above pic is the full moon reflecting on the water. As a comparison, the pic below is the same view, taken from the same spot, at dawn, a few weeks ago:

This weekend will be spent playing Guitar Hero with wife's younger cousins who are much better at it than I am, while two nuns watch.

I am NOT kidding.

A blog post I read recently reminded me of John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series. Here's a bit from the wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_McGee):

Travis McGee lives on a custom-made 52-foot barge-type houseboat dubbed The Busted Flush (after the pivotal poker hand that won it for him), docked at Slip F-18 at Bahia Mar Marina, Fort Lauderdale, FL. A self-described beach bum who takes his retirement "in installments", he prefers to take on new cases only when the spare cash (besides a reserve fund) in a hidden safe in the Flush runs low. His business card reads Salvage Consultant, and most business comes by word-of-mouth. His clients are usually people who've been deprived of something important and/or valuable (typically by unscrupulous [and sometimes also legal] means) and have no way to regain it lawfully. McGee's usual fee is half the value of the item (if recovered) plus expenses, and those who object to such a seemingly high fee are reminded that getting back half of something is better than nothing at all. Although the missing items are often tangible (e.g., rare stamps, jewels, etc.), in several books McGee is asked to locate a missing person; in one, the stolen property is a client's reputation. In several instances, he shows a marked propensity to exact revenge, usually for the ill-treatment or death of one of his few real friends....unlike other fictional detectives such as Raymond Chandler's jaded and world-weary Philip Marlowe, McGee clings to what's important to him: his senses of honor, obligation and outrage.

I read the entire series (21 books) when I was in the Peace Corps. The main house in the capital had two huge bookcases that must have contained every paperback volunteers had brought to the country for the last 40 years, including a good array of the classics (half the volunteers bring thick Russian novels, with the understanding you'll finally have time to read them), multiple copies of whatever was in the NY Times Bestseller list in the past five years, and a bunch of pulps on the bottom, which is where I discovered the character of Travis McGee. Coincidentally, the university students went on strike for more than two months and the army posted soldiers with machine guns at the entrances, so I had time to read all the books in order.

What's not to love about this guy? He discusses philosophy with his friend the economist, he takes his retirement "in installments" while he's still young enough to enjoy life, and of course there is the parade of beautiful women, some who need saving, and some who are femme fatales.

In the decades since the books came out (the first was published in 1964; the last in 1984) characters like McGee have appeared from time to time in popular culture, including: Thomas Magnum from MAGNUM, P.I., Michael Westin from Burn Notice, and Jack Reacher from the novels of Lee Child. There are probably dozens of others I can't recall right now. Feel free to add any to comments. I'll do the same.

A good fansite for the series is here. It's a great site.

Final confession: I was originally drawn to the series because the 1960s paperbacks had classic cheesecake models on the covers, such as...

We're heading out with the dogs this weekend to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania for a funeral on Saturday. We're attempting to salvage the weekend by exploring that part of PA a bit. We'll see how it goes.

In the meantime... here's why I still love "soap opera" comic strips:

April Fool's Day. Not a fan. People either make semi-lame jokes (like the Guardian newspaper in UK switching from ink to "all-Twitter" format, which rates an "Onion" headline level chuckle) or just make up lies to get a reaction (though when L said she was pregnant and we all fell for it a few years ago because we didn't know her very well and she had to retract it later... that turned out pretty funny, actually!).

So I'm just posting to say I'll take 99% of what I read on the internet today, regardless of who posts it, with a grain or two of salt.

In the meantime... HOLY SHIT, I LOVE THIS PICTURE!!!