Geaux Away Gustav!

I can't take credit for this. One of the web articles I read said that a shop owner on Magazine street in New Orleans had posted a sign reading "Geaux Away Gustav" before covering up the windows and leaving.

Even though we're just north of Dallas/Fort Worth and a safe distance from the immediate danger of Gustav, it's still scary to think about such a massive storm being on its way. I remember the masses of Katrina evacuees that flooded into Texas. Some people ended up staying, I'm sure, because they didn't have a home to go back to. I remember watching CNN back in 2005, and I couldn't help but wince when I saw that huge patch of swirling red off the Louisiana and Mississippi coastline. Gustav is now a Category 4 storm, and will likely gather strength as it moves over the warm Gulf waters.

I've been to New Orleans and I enjoyed my stay there. My ex and I drove for what seemed like days to New Orleans and stayed at a gay-friendly bed and breakfast that wasn't too far from Bourbon Street. I wanted to see some of the antibellum homes down along the River Road, but we didn't get a chance to do that. Some day, I'd like to go back there. New Orleans has such an interesting ambience to it. It's sensuous -- full of history and legends -- and it's set against a backdrop of jazz music and wonderful food. Our first night there, we had pizza. When I told a friend of ours about this, I heard her gasp in disappointment over the telephone wire. "Pizza?! On your first night in New Orleans?" We didn't know our way around and we were so hungry. Fortunately, it wasn't Pizza Hut. It was a local Italian restaurant and the pizza was homemade. I had beignets at the Cafe du Monde and I enjoyed a real muffaletta at Napoleon House. I sipped a frozen Hurricane drink while we took a paddleboat ride up the Mississippi River. We went to a voodoo shop and hit some of the gay bars on Bourbon Street. At one such bar, we were up on the open balcony overlooking Bourbon Street. We saw several young men and women walking together and one of the guys on the balcony shouted out, "Make the switch! Lose the bitch!" The couple looked up at the balcony stunned, and then laughed.

I know that there will be damage and destruction. There's no way around that when a hurricane of this size hits. But I hope that we're all better prepared now.

School, Work, Weekend, and Nero Wolfe!

Good evening, gentle readers. Welcome to my second personal blog posting. In a roundabout way, this posting has been brought to you by the kind folks who make Luzianne Decaffeinated Iced Tea, since I am sipping a nice tall glass of it as I type these words.

Jeff and I are both making our way through the first week of school. He has much more discipline than I, so he plunged straight ahead into reading and making notes, while it always takes me a few weeks to really get into the swing of things. Actually, I have been doing reading as well, but not much goes on during the first week of classes anyway, especially in most online classes, so I haven't been a total slug.

I believe tomorrow is our last early Friday at work. We've been getting out around 1:00 on Fridays to help cut on energy costs. Of course, we still have to work a 40-hour week, and some of those nights have been late. I'm usually not home until 7:30. Even though it will be an adjustment to go back to working all afternoon on Fridays, it will be nice to get home earlier during the week.

Leah is going out of town this weekend to help her mother. Her father passed away recently and Leah and her sister have been struggling to get their mother situated, both emotionally and financially, since it will be December before the full death benefits start coming in. It's very hard for everyone in the family right now. Leah's mom is in Tennessee, Leah's sister is in Florida, and Leah is here in Texas, so there are geographical as well as financial barriers to overcome. I hope that it goes well (even though this isn't a pleasure trip), because the pressure is really starting to take its toll on Leah's health and well-being.

Jeff and I will probably spend a fairly quiet Labor Day weekend at home. I'm thinking about going to the manse out in White Settlement to visit with Mom and Dad, since I haven't seen them since Dad turned 64 in July. We might even go out to lunch. They've become enamored of a local Mexican restaurant and we often go there. It's family owned and the food is quite good. Not only are my parents thrilled out of their socks to see me, but they love seeing Jeff as well. We have a spare desk chair that we'd like to part with, so we might load it up and see if they want it. It might fit in the back of our car. Besides going out to White Settlement, I doubt that we'll do much else except schoolwork, reading, watching movies, and generally enjoying the time off. (On a side note, one of my favorite Jeff quotes is the one about Balch Springs, which is where he spent a lot of his childhood. He describes Balch Springs as "like White Settlement, but without all the money.")

Speaking of reading, Mom taught me how to read when I was about three years old, and I've been reading pretty much non-stop ever since. I can't help it. I have to have something to read, and I have always enjoyed buying books. I love mysteries and detective fiction. I still have some Agatha Christie books on our shelves in the living room, but I've been devoted more to Nero Wolfe and Kinsey Milhone recently. I'll talk about Kinsey in another posting, since she definitely deserves her own spot.

For those of you who don't know him, Nero Wolfe is a rotund detective/gourmand/orchid expert who never leaves his New York City brownstone (on West 35th street) and solves crimes with the help of his resourceful sidekick, assistant, and man-about-town, Archie Goodwin. Archie is a sharp detective in his own right, and he can handle a gun and his fists as well as his typewriter. He usually bullies and cajoles Wolfe into taking a case. Nero Wolfe is a world-famous detective and he works only when he has to do so. He spends at least four hours per day with his orchids (two hours after breakfast, and two hours before dinner), and he has a live-in gourmet chef who regularly serves the best meals in town. Clients come to him, and when he needs information, he usually sends Archie or one of his loyal free-lance operators out to comb the streets of New York for clues. Invariably, it all ends at the brownstone, when Nero Wolfe summons everyone involved into the office, where he reveals the guilty party.

My dear friend Karen introduced me to these delightful stories, and she gave me many of the Nero Wolfe books that I own. The novels, written by Rex Stout, are often more character-driven than action-driven, and they are brimming with tremendous intelligence and wit. If you have never read any Nero Wolfe and if you like mysteries, I strongly recommend these books. I believe that I have read all of them, and while not all of them are perfect, none of them were horrible. Rex Stout books are often difficult to find in bookstores, since many of them are out of print, but they should be readily available in libraries. These books were published between 1934 and 1975, and it's interesting that the main characters never really age, even though the world around them does change. A television makes its first appearance in the office during the 1950s, while the 1970s novels include references to Richard Nixon.

Here's one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite Nero Wolfe books, Plot It Yourself (1959). This is a particularly trying case involving a group of authors who are being accused of plagiarizing another writer's work, and corpses keep turning up all over the place. Archie Goodwin is conferring with Nero Wolfe and is revealing that he has discovered another corpse. (I eliminated references to the victim's name, in case you want to read this book.)

"I already have," I [Archie] told him. "I found another corpse, this one in an advanced condition."
"I'm in no mood for flummery. Take a walk."
"No flummery." I put the paper down. "I dialed [the victim's] number and got no answer. I walked to the apartment and rang the bell and got no answer. Happening to have keys and rubber gloves with me, and thinking I might find something interesting, I went in and up to the apartment. For three or four days, [the victim] has been lying on the couch with a knife in [the victim's] chest, and is still there. So is the knife. [The victim] was probably fed a dose in a drink before---"
I stopped because he was having a fit. He had closed his right hand to make a fist and was hitting the desk with it, and he was bellowing. He was roaring something in a language that was probably the one he had used as a boy in Montenegro. (...) Fritz, entering with beer, stopped and looked at me reproachfully. Wolfe quit bellowing as abruptly as he had started, glared at Fritz, and said coldly, "Take that back. I don't want it."
"But it will do--"
"Take it back. I shall drink no beer until I get my fingers around the creature's throat. And I shall eat no meat."

And with that, I bid you all a fond adieu. I must retire so I can be reasonably alert tomorrow at work. I'm in the middle of creating a workbook-based training program and I have quizzes to write tomorrow.

I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

My New Blog!

Welcome to my new blog! I have one set up for school, but this will be my personal blog. I'll try to keep up with this one and make postings to it regularly. I titled it The Meanderings of Scott for two reasons: (1) I love the word meander, and (2) I think it's appropriate. To meander means to drift, like a lazy river. In my personal writing, I like to just drift from idea to idea, and that's why I feel the title is appropriate.

Besides, it's my blog, and I'll name it what I like! :-)

I'll see you soon!