First Night in the Lodge: The wife and I relaxing on the couch in the over-sized living room, with it's cathedral ceiling of new-looking cedar planks. The room is dominated by a massive stone chimney with an iron wood-stove jutting from the bottom. It's too hot to make a fire, certainly, but it's a fascinating structure. As Squanto is talking to me, I'm following the curves of each river rock that makes up the fireplace when... one of the rocks MOVES.

My eyes widened and I involuntarily jumped backwards, kicking slightly. She sees my reaction and doesn't know what's up.

I say, "Ugahaah!" or something very like it.

"What??" she says, scared now.

"Mouse!" I mutter.

I don't like the meeses. No sir, I do not.

(We don't see it, but next morning we find one of the dog biscuits we brought with us jammed into a spot between the stove and the counter top where one of the dirty little rodents tried to carry it off. Stupid fucker.)

Second Night in the Lodge: We're getting ready for bed, putting on our PJs in the bedroom, and there's a noise outside. The windows are wide open, we're separated only by a screen, and with the lights on any peeping tom or Sasquatch, or a peeping Sasquatch, could look in on us.

There's the noise again, and it sounds like a foot step. The wife, at the moment topless, covers her chest with both hands and squats down on the floor to prevent the peeping Sasquatch from seeing her naughty bits, saying, "What the hell is that?"

I grab the flashlight we brought with us to follow the dogs around in the yard in the dark when they go out to go potty (so we can responsibly pick up the doody) and try scanning out the window. I heard the noise again, point the light up, and find out what it is -- a dragonfly pushing against the screen, strumming his wings against the mesh material, causing just the right vibration to sound like footsteps out in the brush.

I laugh, but she says something about mice, and I jump.

Third Night in the Lodge: The pain seemed very localized in my abdomen, about the mid-way point down on my left side. I, because I am a fucktard who doesn't know left from right without thinking about it, told my wife it was on the right and she said, "oh, god, no, you're not telling me this is your appendix, are you?"

And I realized, no, it's not, it’s the other side, and corrected myself, but the pain was still so specific to that area, that I told her what I was beginning to think it was: another damn kidney stone. It would have been my first in seven and a half years.

Still, it didn't feel quite like that. It wasn't a stabbing pain, the kind of white hot agony that I remembered from my first stone (and so far, thankfully, only) passing. It was worse when I laid down, especially on my back, which is a problem as that's pretty much the only position I can effectively fall asleep in.

I tried to get up and puke. I tried to take a dump. I would have settled for a dump out of my mouth to relieve the pressure. I couldn't get anything out of my body except spit. And not much of that.

I finally fell asleep for a few hours, but the next morning still could feel something not quite right. I broke out in sweats a couple of times, which made me think I had a fever breaking. I sent Bon off to camp telling her I'd be fine, but she should ask, just for giggles, where the nearest hospital is just in case.

I didn't eat much that next day, Wednesday, but we did go out dinner that night at a very nice Italian place and I made the mistake of having two glasses of Sprite, and garlic bread, a Ceasar salad, and Chicken Rosemarie on penne. I then spent all of last night running from the bedroom to the bathroom, expelling my dinner in stages. The damn had broke. It wasn't a stone. I just have some kind of flu bug that picks and chooses for me when I can and can't evacuate my bowels. The Live Free or Die state's version of Montezuma's Revenge.

Our working vacation here in the mountains of New Hampshire is almost over [well, it is over now, since I wrote this yesterday], so I suppose I should document a bit of it for the blog.

We're staying in a lodge -- half log cabin, half hunting shack -- that sleeps about five (six if you count the couch, seven or eight if you count the tables and floor). It's exactly what I expected, and better -- secluded, unwired (they have a phone jack but no phone in here), bordered by the owner's daughter's land where she has several horse paddocks. I'm looking out he front windows of the house, where I've spend the last three days writing, watching a dark brown equine graze away at the over-growth in her corral. Earlier today, she came up to the fence and let me pet her, even as Siren stood at my feet with a stick, waiting expectantly for me to throw it, dad, c'mon, throw it!

The writing has been great. I've cranked out minimum 13,000 words on the novel since Monday, and more than that with additions to previous chapters. I'm well over 30k words in and feel like I actually have the momentum to keep it up. The wife and I discussed over dinner last night that I should be setting aside more time at home to make sure I get writing in. She went so far as to suggest that I take one night a week without watching television. I told her not to talk all crazy like. Instead, I think I'll be setting aside time before bed, since I usually stay up later than her anyway. Still, it would be good to delete some stuff from the TiVo Season Pass list...

The wife -- whom I believe we all know as Squanto -- has been spending her days, including this one last morning (I'm writing this on Thursday July 28 around 10:30am) at White Mountain Agility camp. She's had a remarkably good time, which is a relief, as she sometimes takes the sport so seriously that one off minute can ruin the rest of the experience for her. It helps that she knows a lot of the folks there, and also tends to have two of the better trained doggies. You wouldn't know it from home life -- we got back from dinner last night and found that Caper had eaten an entire bar of soap, stolen out of the bath tub -- but it's really true.

Her leaving all day long has meant I'm just stuck here all day, writing. She feels guilty about it, but it's been fantastic. I've enjoyed every minute of it, with the exception of some of the sick moments (see next post). I'm sorry to have to go. I mean, yeah, I missed Google occasionally, but overall, not so much. And I didn't miss e-mail AT ALL.

But duty calls... we travel back this afternoon, get one night at home, and I'll repack and head out for New England, again, on Friday to spend the weekend with friends and attend a wedding reception on Block Island. Hopefully I'll have posted this when I get home, when I'm again basking in the Wi-Fi rays, still trying hard not to think about work for another few days.

The appearance of the yellowjacket on her sleeping son's head caught Allison completely by surprise. But she did not start or cry out. Coming awake in the rocking chair by the boy's crib was well practiced, and she knew to stay still, quiet, even through the haze of rousing. The first thing she did was visually inspect the sleeping child, making sure he was not tangled in sheets, that he was breathing steadily; looking for life.

The insect was yellow and black and hairless, with a shape so inhuman as to seem like an alien special effect. It had two wings folded backwards over its body and black probing antennae that sweep back and forth over the child's soft skin, like an old man on the beach with a metal detector, seeking unseen treasure.

She was at once repulsed and afraid. Years of careful avoidance of all bug life had left her with few coping skills when it came to such creatures. Her younger sister's allergic reaction to childhood bee stings had convinced Allison years before that she shared the condition; she used it as an excuse whenever questioned about her phobia, when running from picnic tables or avoiding nature hikes. Of course, she had never been tested for such an allergy, nor did she know of any actual sting in her life that might have tested it for her. And didn't you have to be stung by a bee at least once to become allergic? Maybe that was an old wive's tale...

Her fear, however selfish, was at first for her self. Only when it was obvious the yellowjacket was not ready to fly to her and dispense pain, did she let her mind trip over to her son. He was still as he ever gets in his too infrequent naps, but there was a chance he could shift suddenly, or raise a chubby arm to his face, and the panicked bug might impale its poison-tipped stinger into the soft flesh of the baby's forehead.

Surprising herself, she stood quickly but not so fast as to draw attention. She crossed silently to the crib, barefeet on green shag, and stood looking down, the insect's and quivering head stalks giving her stomach a small churn. In her favor, it seemed that the yellowjacket was moving slowly, sluggishly, as if partially frozen or drowsy or drugged. This gave her the resolve to put her hand over the side slats. She pause. The with the speed of a sloth she moved toward the baby's face, fore-finger and thumb poised like tweezers.

And she had it.

She pinched the creature's two short wings together behind its back like a wrestling move and lifted it into the air, away from the baby. It regained strength then, struggled like a straight-jacketed madman protesting his sanity, but with the same ineffectual result. The reusable stinger probed the air trying to find something to punish for its predicament.

Allison held the yellowjacket in the shafts of afternoon light coming from the window, held it (she felt) dangerously close to her face, examining her captive and muttered one word to herself, something she'd not said aloud in the six months since the baby was born: "Fuck."

Two hours later her bags were packed and waiting in her car. She placed a note inside an envelope addressed to her husband, a note that said good-bye and that she did not think she would be back. She set her son back into the insect-free crib. She put the envelope next to him and looked at her watch, knowing her husband would be home from work in just a few minutes... time she could allow her son alone, maybe to remember her.
He gurgled up at her, unsmiling.

Allison's face also reflected nothing. But inside she felt braver and stronger than she had in years. Strong enough, finally, to leave. To start looking for her own life.

This is probably my final post for a week, as I'll be sans Interwebbing for the next week whiel on my vacation. Time to hit the mountains of New Hampshire and hope the heat there is not killing all the vegetation for miles around like it is here. Of course, it's just my lawn, but I don't get out much.

While my wife -- she's Squanto-riffic! -- is at her doggie agility camp for three and a half days, I'll be in a rented chateau with the left over canine. I shall have no phone, no lights, no motor car. Not a single luxury. Well, I'll probably have lights. Maybe a phone. The wife gets the car. And I'll have the laptop. But no wireless Internet connection unless the doddering old guy running this place we're renting happens to have broadband and a big ol' Wi-Fi (pronounced: "wiff-ee") antenna to serve his palatial grounds. Maybe I'll just unplug altogether and use a paper notebook... yeah, like that's gonna happen.

Anyway, I'll update if it's humanly possible, as chances are when I'm not able to blog, I'll find plenty to say. I'll write stuff down just in case. But don't hold your breath.

Not that I had a particularly bad day. I just love this image.

If you don't know what a meme is, you're probably not a blogger. It's pronounced "meeeeem" and it is defined, basically, as a "viral or cultural idea or practice"—in essence, a fad. Like using smileys in e-mail. That's a meme turned fad turned cultural crime. ;P

In the blogosphere (because, that's right, bloggers need their own place to live ) a meme usually takes the form of being asked some silly ass questions and answering them publicly for potentially embarrassment or to find some bold, hidden truths about one's self.

As if that's going to happen here.

This is a long way of saying that my good friend and fellow blogger, Dr. Med-Rush, future neurosurgeon to the stars, has called me out on a meme, asking the following question:

What's On My Night Stand?

Well, one thing not on my night stand is a lamp, because my lamp is mounted to the wall. As is the wife's. They have accordion extension arms on them, like the boxing gloves that used to show up in Looney Tunes, so we can pull them away from the wall. Very cool.

I also don't have any books on there, but that's only because I've got them strewn all over the house.

On top is:

I reserved Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince about a month ago at my local Borders. I know I probably didn't need to. Two years ago when Order of the Phoenix came out, I didn't reserve it but showed up at the local B&N the next morning and stood outside with a small throng, all adults, waiting to see if we could get it. They had about 20 or 30 copies for sale on the shelf. Probably had a pallet of 2,000 more in back.

I hope no one buys this book for its collectability... it's about as likely to make someone money down the road as collecting the old Styrofoam containers that Big Mac's used to come in.

I reserved a copy mainly to get 40% off, though I probably could get that if I'd waited a couple of weeks to buy all the over-stock the stores will undoubtedly have. I can't wait though. Me loves the Rowling.

For those not initiated, Borders (at least) is trying to whip up the frenzy. Yesterday, due to a cable modem outage, I found myself ensconced in a chair at the Border's café, which is home to a T-Mobile Hotspot that I can use to go online wirelessly. I was there for about three hours and heard about once an hour an Englishman's recorded voice over the loudspeaker suggesting that people might want to pre-order the Half-Blood Prince, and be there for the store festivities on Friday starting at 9pm (book becomes available at midnight).

When was the last time a theater made a big deal like this out of a movie? Imagine the parties they could have held (and made money from) for Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or the coming King Kong.

Five minutes ago, I got a phone call from that same Englishman on the recording at Borders, who turns out to be the same guy who reads the Potter text for audiobooks. Borders programmed my number into a computer that is now calling all those with pre-orders with his canned instructions on when we can get the book—anytime between midnight ("as Friday turns to Saturday," as the recorded Brit put it) and close of business Sunday. After that, I imagine my book is put out for the general public, but hopefully at only 25% off or something.

I doubt I'll show up at midnight for the book, though it's tempting, if only to see the kids who will show up in full Hogwarts regalia, wearing sorting hats and carrying Nimbus 2000s. It'll be like a mini comicbook convention held at a library, only these kids will probably grow out of all the hysteria and costuming eventually. Unlike some people.

Since I'm on the subject of what makes great super-heroic flicks, here's a quick list of my favorites of all time, in order of there greatness:

1. Superman: The Movie
2. Spider-Man 2
3. Batman Begins
4. Spider-Man
5. Superman 2
6. X-2:Xmen United
7. Hellboy
8. X-men
9. Batman (tie between the 1960s Adam West and Michael Keaton version)
10. The Rocketeer
11. Blade/Blade II
12. Fantastic Four
13. Captain Marvel (1940's serial)
14. Daredevil

The Incredibles would probably be #3 but I kept the list to comic-book adaptations. Unbreakable, also, would be in the top five, but again, no funny book equivalent. Both so good, I bought the DVDs. And I only own about 15 DVDs.

I'm not listing Hulk, even though there was about an hour of it I really liked...the ending just blew. And sucked. Nor Supergirl or Superman 3 or 4: The Quest for Peace. In fact, Supes 4 might be the worst superhero film ever. Bad enough to make Catwoman look good. It even makes Schumacher's Batman & Robin look good. (Actually, no. It doesn't.) Batman Forever started out great, but like Hulk, was a nightmare by the end. Though picture Jim Carrey as the Joker instead of Riddler... that would have been nice to see.

Other crap super hero flicks from comics: Mystery Men, the early 90's Captain America that I think went straight to video, Blade 3 (Can you believe the same guy wrote that and Batman Begins?)

I have not seen, nor plan to see, Punisher (neither Dolf Lungren or new version) or Elektra or Catwoman. The Mask doesn't count, because he's not a superhero. League of Extraordinary Gentleman suffers in the way that all works adapted from author Allan Moore suffer... they don't stick with the source material. Fools.

High hopes exist for Joss Whedon's treatment of Wonder Woman.

And don't even get me started on the best superhero TV shows...

(I meant to write this yesterday, but found myself sick as a dysenteric leper with Montezuma's Revenge after dinner. Not sure if it was the heat, the spicy food, or eating way to much -- corn, potato salad, sausages and Mike's Hard Lime-o-nade, yum! -- but I thought I was going to hurl. A cold shower brought my core temperature down and made me feel better, but only enough so that I could spend the rest of my evening lying very still in my chair in front of my TV...)

Please note: The following is only going to matter to geeks. The rest of you, please move along.

When you read as much entertainment news as I do -- and I read way to much -- you get to enjoy the wildly opposite opinions people have on things. Like, say, The Fantastic Four movie (now in theaters). I've read that it's terrible and okay (though no one calls it great, nor would I). The acting is both wooden and above par. The special effects are stunning and amateurish. Etc.

Of course, it's never good to go into something like this with too much information, which is almost always the case with today's big blockbuster films because you can't get away from them (films like Superman Returns already have blogs and video commentary from the director online... a year before its out; same for the remake of King Kong). Even worse when it's based on something that's been around since 1961, like the FF (not, as my wife would prefer it, the F4. I mean, that's just silly).

As I told my friend Brett as we entered the theater, "there's not going to be much to surprise us in this flick." But seeing it is required. It's in my DNA.

My knowledge of the FF is extensive and we're talking about a comic book that has not been very hot for a number of years. Decades at a time go by with no one caring what happens in that book. Lee and Kirby did their original ten years in the 60's, then it sucked until the 80's when John Byrne did his run (which for me, since I was a teen at the time, is the definitive FF), and then it sucked again for another decade and a half until the very recent Mark Waid scribed issues, and even those sucked by the end.

The idea is what matters, and the idea Waid ran with that is key is this: the FF is first and foremost, a family. They fight and squabble and tease and build thermonuclear powered chambers for teleportation, but ultimately the group is all about the love. Second, they are what Waid called "imaginauts" -- explorers into things the rest of us can only imagine, far beyond space to other dimensions, new sciences, etc. All the while, as they explore (and beat up mean people), they fight and squabble and tease. And Reed and Sue have sex, at least once they did, cause they have a kid named Franklin. (I think the jury is still out on who the father is of they're younger daughter...)

Okay, so that's like, way to much information, but that's what I had going into the film. Having read how much the critics weren't liking the flick, I also had expectations on the level of earthworm shit.

But lo and behold: I liked it. The Fantastic Four is actually pretty fun. The effects worked just fine for me, the performances are pretty much okay-- though I could have used with some more scenery in the mouth of Doctor Doom -- and the story, well, it's just that. Fun. Look closely at the details (Ben rides a train back to New York from some area with snow covered peaks? Uh... they weren't in the Poconos, for christ sake...) and it will all fall apart. Check the fuel tanks on your suspension of disbelief, you'll need the gauge pinned to full.

I have my complaints of course, beyond the little silly crap: The Baxter Building (FF HQ) doesn't look like it does in the comic, and while I think changing the way the Thing looks works for the performance by Michael Chiklis, it would have been nice to see at least one thing that looked like Jack Kirby designed it. There's no flying Fantasticar. And overall, it was just a little bit too terrestrial -- the space station bit was fine, but the FF aren't about fighting things in the streets, that's for Spider-Man and Daredevil. Unless, of course, that thing in the streat is a 40-foot high "man" who eats worlds. They might fight that.

I suppose that's all fodder for FF2. (See, you couldn't call it F42... that would look silly.)

So, more cosmic would be good. Or at least international. Doc Doom here was basically just Lex Luthor with some electrical powers. How much cooler had he been the genius who wanted to take down Mr. Fantastic for some percieved slight... but that is the genius of the original story of Lee & Kirby, I suppose, one I will always bow before.

All quibbles really, as the film itself works just fine. It's no masterpiece of super-heroism on the big screen, but I'd line it up not far behind the best.

When does the week start? For me, it used to be Saturdays, because I based my internal clock on the day of the week that the new issue of TV Guide started with. Now, though, TV Guide starts on Sundays, just like weeks on the calendar, and that's not right, because no one thinks a week starts on Sunday -- that would breakup the weekend into two separate chunks on either end of a work week, and that wouldn't be half as useful as two days together. And Monday, well... the less said about Mondays the better.

So, whether the weekend began or ended on Sunday, I can safely say either way, it was a helluva a nice weekend.

I did no work. I did very little, in fact, that I didn't want to. It's what the American weekend is all about.

I did go to a movie (see next post). I did force my wife to proofread my short story (IT'S NOT A BOOK!), then I incorporated her edits and cleaned up the manuscript format until 3am Sunday morning... and then she read it again while I slept in on Sunday. My Squanto, she rocks, oh yes.

Sunday afternoon, as a present to each other, we celebrated the anniversary of our first date by taking a picnic in exactly the same spot as the first date picnic. It wasn't really the anniversary of the first date -- that actually happened on October 27, 1989, on the day we first spent a night together (crazy kids) -- but the weather seemed was nice (albeit hot) and the smooches and googly eyes we had for each other seemed to indicate the time was right. We got sandwiches from Hal's Deli downtown (same place we bought from for that date lo those 15.5 years ago), packed a cooler with chips and soder and banana bread and sacked out for an hour on the rocky outcropping over Ludlowville Falls. (You can see the picture here of the falls, taken back in April, when it was raging. Arrow indicates where we were sitting yesterday with no danger of being swept away.)

The weather at the falls was altogether perfect. We lay under a cottonwood staring up at bees in the blossoms, looking through the leaves turned to swiss cheese by beetles, letting the uneven rock surface under our picnic blanket jut into our bones. We cuddled and rolled and sat up to stretch kinks and looked over the edge at the people swimming at the bottom of the falls. One couple, trying to hid behind a large rock so they could switch into swim suits, saw us and realized there was no privacy. They swam with their clothes on, at least the girl did, though she did strip to her panties, the man panties they're called, which showed a the underside of each ass cheek like two firm grapefruit falling from a cloth sack -- which was actually much better than any swim suit change.

When we got back home, I was finally confident enough to release my short story (NOT A BOOK) into the wild for some reading. Only one, my brother the cop, has given me any feedback yet. He liked it, and suggested some important changes for the end because I overlooked something quite logical.

He also suggested a car chase.

Sigh.

He likes him the big explodey.

The weekend ended happily before I heard all that though.

As mixed bags go, this week has been the mixed-baggiest.

The holiday weekend started annoying (hauling about 1200 lbs of rapidly thawing processed meat product for dog ingestion), turned out very nice with a visit from my uncle and his wife (who is, I suppose, my aunt, though it's weird to think I have a new aunt at age 35. Hell, I've got TWO new aunts in the last couple of years...), went back to annoying when I spent a lot of Sunday nuking the hard drive on my dad's computer so I could reinstall Windows to improve performance, and then finally Monday I felt like a third, or fifth, or ninth wheel at my brother's annual July 4 BBQ bash. I was thrilled to be saddled with some work like shuttling my ailing grandmother back and forth, or grabbing extra tables and daiquiri mix from my parents house. The wife bailed and didn't come with me, I didn't have one of my dogs to look after, so I basically kept to myself while my cousins gathered in one spot, my sister-in-law's family gathered in another, and I stayed out of the way.

The work week took off just as annoying, and has stayed that way all week, and annoying as that might have been, it would have been just fine had it stayed this way. But first thing I hear from NPR this morning is the terrorist attacks that rocked London.

And then around noon I find out that my favorite author of my lifetime has died.

I wrote back in December 2001 about some great book sharing that I'd done in my life, number one among them when around age 10 or 11 I was somehow introduced to the novels of the 87th Precinct written since the 1950's by Ed McBain. At the time, I started getting all the books out of the public library and my mom and I would read them at the same time.

His books were police procedurals, following the basic day to day of an investigation of a crime, or more usual, crimes. It was perfectly feasible to know who the bad guy was from page one-- the excitement came in watching the twists of how the cops would get him. And a lot of it came down, as it does in real life, to luck.

Ed McBain said in an article in the NY Times that he humanized cops when he started writing about them in 1956 by giving them head colds.

Unlike most book series that are either finite or age specific (not that the books should be read by 11-year-olds, but I turned out okay), the work of Ed McBain (AKA Evan Hunter) never left my life. There was a new 87th Precinct novel almost every year of my life for the past 25 years. Every single year book was a joy -- he never lost his stride. Not in 49 years of 87th Precinct novels, and certainly not in the many, many other award winning books (The Blackboard Jungle), and short stories, and screenplays (Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds) he did as well.

The last 87th Precinct novel, Fiddlers, will be out next month. The last one. And it breaks my heart.

It will be the last few new hours I'll have to spend with this man's characters, but luckily I have hours and hours of previous work I can check out again.

It's late, I should be in bed. But I've been up the last couple of nights working on the second draft of the story—and FYI to all, this is just a short story, not the novel, nor even really a novella, it just got over long. In fact, the second draft consists mainly of me gutting about 2,000 words. Which was actually easier than it sounds, because, well, I blather on and on and on. (But you're reading this blog, so you already know that.)

I want to mention with no small amount of disgust here that you should all check out my friend Josh's new site, TheAmericanAdventurer.com. While I spend all my money and toys and contemplate ways to make sure I never have to leave the house again, Josh Roberts is undermining my work by embracing the world of adventure travel by actually... traveling....and writing about his exploits for his employer and beyond (even syndicated in USA Today). It's all pretty damn amazing, and makes me sick. He obviously needs Netflix to ground him within his home. Really, the only thing I can say negative about Josh is that he's also a failed novelist like me—though he'll probably get back on track faster than I will —and that, I swear to god, he once said Episode I was the best Star Wars film ever. Crazy. (Oh, and dude, you need an RSS feed.)

Okay, back to the story, which now has a working title: The Front Door Burglaries. Ooooo. Only need to kill another 450 words to get it where I want it. I hope.