The plan was simple—fly into Long Beach on Tuesday, spend Wednesday at meetings, then head right back out Thursday morning. I was calling it a “hit and run” meeting because there wasn’t any extra time built in at either end; just come in, take care of business, leave. And up until Thursday morning, it all (more or less) went to plan.

Fortunately, I head to the airport early if possible. Long Beach Airport is really tiny, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to show up a bit early. So even after taking forever to drop off the rental car and running a tuny bit late, I was still there well over an hour and a half before my flight was due to take off. I went to the USAirways self-check-in kiosk… where I was informed that I no longer had an assigned seat on my flights (heading home via Phoenix). Or, it seemed, a flight at all. Never mind that I’d already chosen my seats when I bought the tickets, somewhere along the way it was deemed that I was getting bumped. Nice.

Fortunately, Miriam G. (whom I’m writing a letter to USAirways about) was my savior here; in under five minutes she’d found out that I had no luggage to check (all carry-on, thankfully) and had me rebooked on a direct flight using Alaska Air. The kicker, though, was that the flight left out of LAX instead of Long Beach. And it was scheduled to take off in one hour.

With boarding pass and taxi voucher in hand, I headed out to the taxi stand and explained that I needed to get to LAX, fast. The next thing I knew, we were trying to get out of the series of turns and red lights that is Long Beach, moving towards the 405 and LAX. Now, according to Google Maps, one should expect the trip between the two to take 27 minutes, barring hideous traffic. (Which let’s face it, often exists on the 405.) With one hour to get there, I thought to myself that getting there in under half an hour was key.

We got there in 18 minutes. The ride itself ($68 worth) was paid for with the voucher I received from the airline, but I gave him a $20 tip because let’s face it, he earned it. (”I just wanted to make sure you didn’t miss your flight,” he said when I marvelled at how fast we’d gotten there.) It turned out that it was a good thing I still had 40 minutes before takeoff, because it took just over half an hour to get through security—including, of course, getting “randomly” selected for additional searching. Gah!

But I finally made it onto the flight, and I do love Alaska Air. Aside from having to kick someone out of my seat (nice try, go back to your middle seat), it was a pretty uneventful flight, Charlie picked me up at my new landing time, and I figured all was good.

Well, until this morning when I got in my car, planning to head over to the dealership so they could replace the faulty CD player. Because within two blocks, I was pulling back off the road to deal with what was clearly a flat tire. *sigh* I’m just glad my dad taught me how to change one way back in the day, although I did have to get the owner’s manual out at one point to figure out how to release the spare tire from within the trunk. (There was one bolt I was missing.) And hey, at least I was already on my way to the dealership, right?

So, knock on wood, that should be the worst of it. But if anyone wants me to blow up a Metro line this weekend, just let me know which color and I’ll ride on it too. I’ve got the knack when it comes to travel as of late.

When I used to work in management at Giant Food, I occasionally got the dreaded “turnaround shift”—closing the store and leaving around midnight, then being scheduled to open the store the next morning which meant arriving around 6am. It was never a pleasant experience, but at least most stores tried to keep it from happening. (The exception was my six week stint in Leesburg, where the assistant manager instantly took a hatred to me and did everything he could to give me turnaround shifts, knowing I lived an hour away from the store. It ended because I got a job offer elsewhere and quite happily turned in my notice. The assistant manager was eventually fired for sexually harassing another employee and being stupid enough to do so in front of the security cameras. A happy ending for everyone, really.)

I mention this because I feel like I’m on a slight turnaround shift right now; after going away on a Saturday-through-Monday vacation with Charlie, tomorrow morning I leave on a Tuesday-through-Thursday business trip. So far all I’ve accomplished upon returning home this afternoon was unpacking my bag and starting up the laundry. Shortly I’ll repack the bag with clothes for the next couple of days.

It was a nice mini-vacation, though. We’d gone back to the Guest House at Lost River, which was as relaxing as always. When we went last time it was a Friday-through-Sunday stay, which most people seem to favor. So we met some nice people and hung out with others, and that sort of thing. But this trip was in part because we needed some one-on-one time, and Saturday-through-Monday fit our schedules better. And I’m glad we did it; it meant that almost everyone else left Sunday morning. So while we went hiking in Lost River State Park, the Guest House just about entirely cleared out. That meant once we got back, it was wonderfully quiet. So we read some books and magazines, took naps, and just enjoyed being around each other with no one else in sight.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some nice people there on Saturday (one couple we met on Saturday night and then talked to some on Sunday morning at breakfast seemed particularly nice and had a great story about how they’d gotten together), and if we hadn’t been looking for some quiet time I think we’d have really enjoyed hanging out with each other. But instead it was great to just relax. I think we both needed it.

(Oh, and after taking 198 photos, I’ve already deleted 108 of them off the hard drive. And I think only eight of those which remain are actual keepers. Argh. Oh well, at least that’s a higher number than zero, right? Still learning, here.)

My original plans for this past weekend were determined a long time ago; Charlie and I would head up to Sag Harbor, New York on Friday so that we could see two dear friends of his get married on Saturday.

Unfortunately, sometimes life throws curveballs at us; in this case, a family member of one of the participants of the wedding becoming ill enough that a postponement of the wedding was necessary. At first it seemed just like the wedding would happen low-key but in Manhattan, but eventually it was scratched entirely. Since we already had our plane tickets, though, we were asked if we could still come up and visit for the weekend.

As it turned out, our role over the weekend really turned into, “Get people out of the hospital visiting room for an hour or two each night” because things had taken a turn for the much worse in the middle of the week. It was an awkward situation to be in—the visitors who are in town at the worst possible time. Part of me knows that they were glad we were there to serve as even a momentary distraction, but at the same time it was hard to not feel horribly out of place.

But on the bright side, it’s not like Charlie and I can’t entertain ourselves. (No, I am not referring to his singing.) We did a little bit of shopping, mostly at Century 21 where I ended up with some new shirts, and at the Strand bookstore. That was fun, but also a tiny bit frustrating at one point because they had a bunch of Ursula K. Le Guin’s re-issued anthologies on the shelves for $4 that came out in 2004, and I could not remember for the life of me which ones I already owned. So Charlie got to watch me dither back and forth on different volumes before finally putting all of them back on the shelf. Ah well. I did go home with a Rick Bayless cookbook that was 70% off, and Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts art book (still in shrink wrap) for 50% off, so it was a nice score.

It also meant that on Saturday I got to pop by MoCCA for a few hours. I honestly hadn’t planned on it until right before I left Friday morning, which meant there was no time to alert anyone or make any real plans. It was a great time, though, talking with people like Jose Villarrubia, Christine Norrie, Mike Dawson, Greg Means, Alex Robinson, Chris Staros, Brett Warnock, and many many more people of whom I am blanking on right now. I ended up with some new mini-comics (including all three issues of Ivy from Sarah Oleksyk, hurrah!) as well as a new sketch in the wine book from Liz Prince. (I need to start posting those again, soon.)

The weekend wasn’t entirely without hiccups, especially on Saturday night when we went to dinner with some others in tow and discovered that the restaurant had no air-conditioning and was, to put it generously, boiling. Ugh. We finally found a place around the corner, but I think everyone was a little grouchy and run down by that point.

Also, we were staying in a brand new hotel from the Thompson group, Gild Hall, which was lovely… even though on Saturday we got a call letting us know that there was “a leak from the room above us” and they were moving our stuff to another room. Eek! Although that actually worked out well for us, as it turned out. While the other room was nice enough, the new one had a living room and a little kitchenette nook. Honestly, if the nook had a stove and oven, I would have cheerfully lived in that hotel room. Seriously. It was that big.

We ended up leaving several hours earlier than planned; our friends were very busy with the familial duties and we felt in the way. We called on Saturday night trying to change our flight home (it’s the Delta Shuttle, it leaves every hour) and were given all sorts of hassle and threats of $100 surcharges. So instead we just went to the airport to check in and were promptly asked, “Would you like to leave three hours earlier?” Why yes, yes we would. See how easy that was? (Our flight home was barely half full.)

Part of me would’ve liked to spend more time in New York, and give a holler to everyone I know in the city to see who could get together. But with the ever-shifting plans and circumstances, that just wasn’t going to happen. Now I’m home to the gentle sound of the dishwasher running. And it’s nice to be back here.

It doesn’t matter how much I enjoy travelling to oher places and seeing new things or old friends, there is a lot to be said for sleeping in my own bed.

Between February 6th and 18th, I was actually at home for a whopping three evenings. What does this mean? Well, first, a mountain of laundry that which I will continue to chip away at (and hopefully finish up tonight). Second, it means that I’ve gone from two and a half weeks of banked reviews for Read About Comics to none at all, although I have one-and-a-half written in a notebook and in need of transcription and completion tonight. (At least the Wine-Book Wednesdays are already queued up through next week.) Third, there were a whopping 1200+ e-mails in my work account, with all but four being spam. (Yikes!)

And fourth and finally, my shoulders and neck are killing me. I’m hoping a soak in the tub tonight will loosen them up. But they’re painful enough that as soon as I finish one last task, I’m going home. Ugh. There’s a lot to be said for a good mattress and pillow that work well with your own body, and that’s something I’ve been truly missing.

Now if there was just a way for me to bring my own bed with me on trips, I think I would be set.

And for no reason whatsoever other than I think it’s really awesome (and let’s face it, Dolly Parton and Star Trek do go hand-in-hand):

You know something? I like the idea of trains. I think mass-transit in general is fantastic.

So when I decided that after the business portion of my trip this week is over I would head down to just outside of Jacksonville to visit my parents and grandfather, I figured I would just take the train there from Savannah. That way I didn’t have to rent a car and pay a ludicrous amount of money for the option of dropping the car off in a different city than I picked it up in. (It’s actually easier to fly in and out of Jacksonville than Savannah, so I’ll go home via Jacksonville.)

In my fevered imagination, I pictured getting a train sometime after breakfast, or even early afternoon. Simple, right? Well, actually there are only two trains that go from Savannah to Jacksonville, even though it’s a main line that connects the two. And the later of the two trains leaves Savannah at 6:50am.

In order to take the train to Jacksonville, this would mean taking the rental car back to the airport the night before, then taking a cab back to my hotel, then another one to the train station at the crack of dawn. And if I missed the train, I would be out of luck because the next train wouldn’t come through until the next day.

And Amtrak wonders why no one wants to use them. I guess I’m spoiled by there being regular trains up the northeast corridor from DC to NYC and beyond. But it seems like a nasty little Catch-22, where Amtrak says, “No one’s riding us! We better cut back!” when the solution seems to be to not cut back and bite the bullet for a while until people catch on that heyyyy, there are more trains running, we don’t have to set our alarms for 4:45am in order to take the train somewhere.

Oh well. Guess I better remember to bring some driving music with me.

(In a tangental annoyance, the charger for my Nintendo DS seems to have vanished, and I found some comments that seems to indicate that the DS Lite charger does not work with the original DS. So, it seems my plans to play some Phoenix Wright on this trip are all for naught since everywhere locally seems to just have extra chargers for the DS Lite in stock. I did order an original DS charger online, though, so hopefully it will arrive here by next Tuesday before I head back out of town again. Yay.)

Giving credit where credit is due, the photographers at TriDuo.com did a fantastic job with photographing the OBX Marathon. I liked my pictures enough that I actually ordered a CD-ROM with high-res images, but in the meantime, here’s some amusement for everyone. (Sadly nothing quite hits the, “Help me I am lost and have amnesia” photo’s level of hilarity from the Firenze Marathon last year, but still, good stuff.)

This is my absolute favorite picture from the marathon; we’re exiting Nags Head Preserve Woods and I just love how you can see the varied terrain of the marathon here as well as the big grin on my face. Don’t get me wrong, the last mile of the woods was true trail-running, straight up and down, and it was hard as hell and I was thrilled to escape it, but at the same time? I really enjoyed it.

The secret to getting your picture taken? When you see the photographer, do something to pay up to the camera. This year my strategy was “pump the fist in the air.” A nice sort of victory stance. And it worked well.

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After a busy couple of weeks, it was time to get out of town for a long weekend; I knew I was going to be busy up through August 5th, so it made perfect sense to me to pick the next weekend as a chance to escape. So, Charlie and I threw our bags in the car and went west. Well, as far as Lost River, West Virginia, at any rate.

It was nice to head back to the Guest House at Lost River again; I’d been there last summer with a good group of friends to hang out and play bridge, so I already knew what I was getting into. In short? Lots of swimming, hiking, eating, napping, and gorgeous scenery.

I remember last year thinking that it had literally been almost half a decade since I’d gone on a vacation that didn’t involve some sort of “event” (family get-together, convention, race, or the like) but was merely to be somewhere else and enjoy the change of scenery. It’s something I’m really enjoying adding back into my life, something I didn’t realize I was missing until I had it once again.

As for the trip itself, it was great. Everything was as beautiful as I remembered, the weather was perfect (about 10 to 15 degrees cooler than DC and no real humidity to speak of), and we met some really nice people at the Guest House who were really great, fun guys to talk to. We ended up swapping contact information at the end with some of the guys, and I hope we can all get together at some point and just grab dinner or hang out or such.

Really, the closest thing I can find to a downside over the entire trip was that I read two of the most disappointing books in quite some time while on the trip. Neither was bad, per se, but ones that did not live up to their potential in the slightest. Fortunately that wasn’t the case with the actual trip; I’d much rather have my disappointment in print form. (And I rediscovered the evilness of Puzzle Quest while on the trip after having finished off the second book. It was just a matter of time until that game pulled me back in. I think I’m getting near the end of it now, though.) And really, who cares about a bad book when you’ve got that sort of view awaiting you at the end of an hour’s hike?

I wish I was still out in West Virginia right now, to be honest, just relaxing and sitting by the pool, or enjoying the gorgeous scenery. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always nice to be back home after a trip, but I’m already looking forward to my next trip to Lost River. There’s something about its peaceful nature that makes me want to keep going back. I guess that says it all, really.

…the happier I am that I am not going to San Diego in a couple of days for the madhouse that is Comic-Con International.

Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of friends that I only really see once a year, and it’s when I take the trip out to San Diego. I mean, we are talking about a lot of friends. So not seeing them? That really stinks. Plus it’s good for networking with publishers and creators, and to just get a good idea of what the proverbial pulse of the industry is beating these days.

But first CCI announced that the 4-day passes sold out. (It wouldn’t have been a worry for me, my pass would’ve been taken care of months ago.) Now, the Convention Center in San Diego is huge, holding something like 130,000 people in it. For it to sell out? That’s madness. And now individual passes for Saturdays are sold out, too. And then I start thinking about how crowded it was just back in 2005, when it wasn’t as bad, and it still looked like this:

(click here for an even larger view of the terror)

Oh dear lord. What was I thinking? Yes, I will enjoy not being in San Diego this upcoming weekend. Even though I will miss all my friends terribly. (Especially Kelly Sue, if only because I figure I could try and rub her belly and then make a run for it before she clocked me by way of response.) But this weekend? Well, I’ll think about two good friends running the San Francisco Marathon and note that it would be less exhausting than being at Comic-Con. And then? Take a nice long nap, I think.

Last weekend, my friend Chip and I drove down to Wilmington, North Carolina to visit our mutual friends John and Andy. It was a nice trip and great to see them (the last time we’d gotten together was Pam and Brent’s wedding in October 2005), and generally a lot of fun. But one funny bit of coincidence is that Wilmington was holding their second annual Gay Pride week while we were there.

Since we were curious and were heading downtown anyway, we decided to swing by Saturday’s Pride Festival, which was running between 10-2pm. This seemed like a slightly strange group of hours, but all right. Now, to be fair, before I continue any further I should point out that Wilmington’s population is approximately 100,000. So while it’s not a tiny little town, it is also not a huge bustling metropolis. Sure, there’s a sizable film and television industry based there (One Tree Hill, Dawson’s Creek, Surface, Blue Velvet, and so on), but this isn’t a multi-million person area.

Anyway, we got to the Pride Festival and there were approximately fifteen people there. I’m including the people running the booths, all six of them. Now, this was actually not the big problem. The problem was that the booths and the general presentation reminded me of a bad church social. Wait, that’s not fair, most church socials these days look better presented. It was sort of like if some ten year olds were setting up lemonade stands and someone passing by had given them tent coverings to protect them from the sun. Everything was ramshackle and generally unimpressive; signs were written in sloppy magic marker lettering on poster board, and a boom box was playing the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Yeah.

Needless to say, we left awfully quickly. Over lunch, we talked about what we’d just seen and more or less came to the same conclusion—the problem wasn’t that it was small, but rather that it was so badly put together. By way of comparison, there was a Juneteenth parade going on just next to the Pride Festival, and it seemed better put-together in general. In the year 2007, the resources are out there for a certain level of professionalism to be available to just about everyone. It’s not that expensive to get a booth sign printed professionally. A table skirt, likewise, doesn’t cost much at all. Sure, it does mean that you have to spend a little bit of money. But is that a bad thing if it means that you don’t scare off people before they even arrive?

It was that night when the phrase, “It is called Pride, after all,” finally jumped into my head. And it’s something that applies across the board, really. Just because you’re small doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. I see it all the time with small press publishers (both comics as well as prose books); bad, unprofessional font choices, shoddy cover design, impractical or illegible formatting, and so on. Sure, we don’t all have award-winning designers like Chip Kidd on our payroll. But if even a novice like myself looks at your back cover and thinks, “I’d have fixed the following five things,” then something is wrong.

I’ve been far, far behind on my reviewing the past couple of months. And the other comic-related blog that I contribute to hasn’t gotten that many postings from me, enough that the editor/publisher occasionally nudges me to make sure that I’m alive. I guess it’s because I’m not willing to just dash off a half-assed review for the sake of doing so. I’d rather people get something strong once a week (or so) than mediocre-at-best on a more regular basis. (Ideally, I’d like to have strong things written more regularly. One step at a time, right?)

So, anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying not only that last weekend’s trip was a real joy, but that people need to take pride in what they do. It’s not too much to ask, is it? Here’s to next year’s Wilmington Pride looking a little more spiffy. I’m sure they can do it. Let’s just hope someone steps up to the plate and pushes them to do so.

On Sunday morning, Charlie and I had tickets to go on an “architecture tour” of Chicago. The idea is pretty simple; a boat ride down the Chicago River while a tour guide gives a lecture on the different buildings that we see. Chicago in general has a lot of amazing skyscrapers, and while the Sears Tower is the most notable it’s not the only one worth seeing.

Sunday was supposed to be a cloudy, overcast, and potentially rainy day like Saturday had turned out. What we got instead was a bright sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. This seemed at the time to be a good thing. So, we boarded the boat and cringed at the occasional bouts of silliness as the tour begun. (The typical “who traveled the farthest to get here?” questions, and even a pirate-related joke.) Before long, though, I was entranced by the views of the buildings, learning about each one. So entranced, in fact, that it didn’t hit me that I didn’t put on any sunscreen that morning and my hat was still in Charlie’s bag. Uh oh.

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