I might carve the words into the back side (ha!) tomorrow.

Not bad for my first decent attempt at a pumpkin, in years.

We started our trip with a drive through Indiana, the long way, until we reached the river that separates Kentucky and Indiana. There was nothing around except a cute little town every few miles… and this big-ass casino that we had booked a night at, in the hopes of a classy room and a little fun wasting some money playing slots. The slots were, indeed, fun, and we all managed to blow a few dollars and stay entertained for a couple of hours. I thought about trying my hand at roulette again, but the stakes were too high for me… $5 minimum… a far cry from the $1 (CAD) minimum in Montreal, where I did so well, all those years ago. We had a decent dinner at a cafe where fish swam behind our heads, but awoke to find the room even more dirty and stained than we originally observed… we put up a little fuss, in the morning, and they comped the room. They also promised us a letter worth a free weekend and $100 hotel credit… which turned out to be a letter worth one free night and $50. We’ll probably use it someday. The breakfast buffet was great… we understood how the crazy old casino addicts could play all day and then gorge themselves on the buffet food and make it worth the price.

Then we headed down to Nashville. I think that, even though I had prepared the google maps of our trip, it hadn’t really dawned on me that we were driving through Kentucky, until we started this leg of the trip. I remembered trying to figure out how close we were going to be to where EJ lived, when we chose the Smokies as our overall destination, but somehow, the fact that we were driving across the state had gone totally unnoticed. We stopped in one, clear tourist-trap-of-a-town and almost went on a tour through a cave, but decided that the time commitment involved wasn’t worth it. Then we stopped at a giant “rock & gift shop” that reminded me of that scene in Zombieland where they bust up a cheesy gift shop. We also took some pictures of the entranceway to Dinosaur World, but decided not to waste $13 per person to go inside. We made it to Nashville before dark and hooked up with our friend Jesse for dinner. He took us to a couple of cool places: a really nice cafe, that seemed off the beaten path a bit, and a bar on Broadway, where you’re supposed to go when you visit Nashville, I guess. We heard the “Honky Tonk-Heroes” play and I got my dose of country music.

Then we headed across Tennessee to our cabin in Pigeon Forge. Google took us on a long stretch of NOT-interstate which resulted in one police officer pulling us over and “cutting us a break” by writing us a ticket that had the words “*Pre-Trial” written on it…  and assuring us that we would pay less than the actual fine, though that amount isn’t actually written on there anywhere, so we’ll see what happens when I call to take care of it. We were a little stressed about our cabin rental office being closed by the time we got there… but the directions to our cabin were in a coded lock-box outside the office… the unpaved and extremely steep road up to the cabin probably would’ve been described better by a person than that sheet of paper could’ve ever done. It took us a couple tries to get up the last stretch of road. We ventured back down to stock the cabin with some food from Food City and picked up a movie at a Blockbuster Express kiosk.

The next day, we cruised around Gatlinburg, skipped right through the cheesy touristy section, and toured around the crafters’ section of town. There was one scary shop full of wood-carved stuff (including belts!), and the walls were covered with signed portraits of every past republican president and letters thanking them for their contributions… There was a slightly friendlier pedestrian mall full of shops at a cute little covered bridge; We had some good ice cream there. On our way out of town we stopped at Hillbilly Golf, which was a mini-golf course installed on the side of a hill where we took a chairlift up to the top and played our way down. We actually went to dinner  at a BBQ place, based on the Hillbilly attendant’s recommendation, and then came back to golf.

Our friend in Nashville recommended that we go to Ruby Falls. He talked about it like it was in the same town as our cabin, but it was really 2+ hours away. We were up for a little road trip, though, so we decided to trust his advice. The cave was pretty awesome and the history or the cave and the original cave beneath it was pretty cool. The falls themselves were impressive, but the “7 minutes” that you get there is not sufficient for a photographer. The castle that they built out of the rock they pulled out while digging the shaft for the elevator provides a nice view of Chattanooga and the winding river. We decided we were hungry, so I busted out the Yelp app on my phone and started reading off the nearby restaurants. “Pizza sounds good.” was the decision, so I found the closest pizza place with the most ratings and it happened to be the best freakin’ pizza that any of us have ever had, I think.

We tried to save the Smokies for the day that had the best weather predicted, so that our pictures would be pretty and any small hikes would be bearable. We drove into the national park and started up the mountains… we pulled off anytime we saw something picturesque and wandered a bit, took lots of pictures. We went all the way up to the North Carolina line and saw where the appalachian trail meets the scenic road we were on… then we headed up to Clingman’s Dome, which included a half-mile walk up a fairly steep grade. We were all pretty exhausted, but we made it and the views were awesome. We decided that we deserved a good meal, so we headed to this Apple-themed place… it had a long wait, but a good reputation. Unfortunately, our waitress left and handed our table off to someone who was far too busy and sort of left us with no food for a half an hour… again, we put up a bit of a fuss and they gave us lots of free stuff. On our way back to the cabin, we experienced the world’s largest As Seen On TV store… it was entertaining, and maybe a little sad, but definitely an experience.

Then we drove home… as if we hadn’t spent enough time in a car, the family agreed to indulge my 50-minute detour to the nearest Tim Horton’s. A few of the roads were “closed” on our 50-minute detour, but we drove on them anyway. I must have missed Tim’s coffee a lot, because it tasted amazing. It was also a nice break in the drive… somewhere a little past the half-way point.

A little ways into our first day of driving, we started choosing the music we would play alphabetically, by band. You can see some of our soundtrack on my last.fm page. We were missing a few letters, went back to a couple, a bit out of order, and some of them came from Sarah’s iPod, but if you’re curious, I could try and figure out what all letters were. The iPods all got a little time on the stereo… we replaced my noisy, clicking tape adapter on the ride home. The Mazda got new struts (covered under that extended warranty we bought with the cars… phew) right before the trip, so the car performed great. My phone was a champ, it managed to get us internet access in the cabin, guided us by GPS, everywhere that we went, and let me check in on Yelp all over the place and finding us good places to eat. Yelp and a couple other travel/review sites definitely had better recommendations that the silly guestbook in our cabin – for example, when it comes to pancake houses in the area: Flapjacks, no; Log Cabin, yes. The cameras all performed admirably. A few pics from mine are up at Flickr. We brought a handful of film cameras and haven’t developed anything from them, yet.

I also took a trip down memory lane, earlier in the week, when an old ex-girlfriend apologized to me on facebook, in case she was ever heartless or selfish. She wasn’t and I told her so. It got me thinking about past relationships… there are a few people I should probably apologize to; I guess I have a few regrets, but I think I only really hold one grudge, maybe two. Facebook is certainly good for bringing up these random memories and feelings.

In other news, camp is almost over, though I got roped into an extra week. It’s going to be a low-enrollment/more chilled-out version of camp, but it’s still another week of getting up early and going to the city. My hope is that my seniority and 15+ years of camp experience will mean that I’m running the show as the fill-in director. My history in these matters is that I’m promised a director’s position and/or I fill in for one until a decision is made and then it isn’t given to me… no such promise was made this time, so maybe this will be the time it happens.

The commute to camp has been made much nicer, this summer, by the set of Ultimate Ears SuperFi 5vi that I picked up when they went on super-sale at Amazon. Unfortunately, the cord busted on the first set, so I had to get myself another set, but Logitech customer service got back to me about my complaint and replaced the first set for free… in the meantime, the cord started to separate, right at the jack, on the second set. I put some electrical tape on there to hold it together until the replacement set came. I’m hoping they replace them as well. The foam tips are the most comfortable, but it makes me sad that they fall apart after a week and half or so. I think my ear canals are too small or something because all of the various sized silicone tips irritate my ears a bit and seem to wiggle their way out. The cord is obviously cheap on this model, both have broken and it makes lots of contact-noise when I’m walking around, but if I ever upgrade to something better, I might look into those custom ear-molded ones.

I’m also still playing the music on my commutes from my iPod. I was hoping to be just be carrying the Droid. I am carrying an extra battery for the phone, so I don’t have that excuse anymore, and it’s not that it’s not capable, but the lack of gapless playback (for those few albums that really need it) or built-in volume normalization (for regular shuffle) or a shuffle-by-album option (for when I feel like reconnecting with my albums, which is most of the time) makes me continue to carry my iPod. There are alternative music apps that attempt to solve these issues (at least the gapless and shuffle by album), but none puts it all together. I’m sure that future versions of Android will get these features in, especially if the rumors are true and they start using android as an OS for a media-player type device. Will these features make it in before I upgrade to a new phone?

I’ve found the phone very difficult to use this summer. I’m not sure if it’s just too humid at my mostly-outside job, or if I sweat too much (likely) but the touchscreen gets all freaked out and thinks it’s being touched all over the place and renders the phone useless until I clean it off… and even then, I can only get good response from it for a few seconds until it starts freaking out again. If I go somewhere cool and dry (air conditioned) and give it some time to recover… and give myself some time to recover and not be so sweaty … it works just fine. This wasn’t an issue at all in the Winter and Spring; It will probably affect when I decide to upgrade to a new phone. I’ll be eligible for a bit of a discount in early July, and that humidity will just be starting to bother me again. So whatever awesome android phone is available on July 06, 2011, you can pretty much bet that I’ll be buying one. If it continues to happen on the next phone I own, I’ll have to seal my phone in a ziploc bag all summer, or something.

I’m pretty sure I have a legitimate use for the wireless tether feature of the Droid. We’ve booked ourselves a few days at a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN, in late September. The rental policy said something about having “local Knoxville area access numbers…” Dial-up? Awesome. I don’t think I know anyone in the area (unless EJ is still around there, somewhere), so this one is going to be pure vacation, for me, and no attempting to visit friends/family. That stuff will have to wait until sometime around the holidays. It’ll be one of the longer roadtrips we’ve done in the past couple years, and I’m excited about that.

BTW our holiday schedules have changed a bit: here at home, Doug is spending some time in the hospital dealing with an infection. This may delay our Christmas dinner and gift-opening to another day… maybe even next year. Out east, we’ve shifted family days around a little and I think Tuesday afternoon/night and all day Wednesday are still free, if you’re looking to hang out with us, while we’re out there.

I managed to get through the balances on most of the gift cards that were haunting my wallet… in a related note, some of you are getting christmas presents from me for the first time in years… or ever, maybe. I managed to avoid most of my impulses to buy things for ourselves that we really don’t need.

I’m getting very comfortable with my new phone; I’m happy with my choice… no regrets. I have a new number that sort of forwards to my old number, by the way… so, if you’re on Verizon, it’s cheaper just to call my old number, but if you’re not, lemme know and I’ll get you my new number.

I finished Mini-Ninjas, though I might just play it again on Hard. I am looking for a new game to become hopelessly addicted to during my break from work. If you have suggestions or games that you like to play online that we can play together, hit me up.

In other news, we’ll be back on the east coast, doing the family thing and trying to catch up with all the people who I’ve neglected to see on my last couple trips that way from the day after Christmas until about the 30th. Let me know if you have time in there and want to reserve a day or evening, now.

Macbooks down in price! Great timing! Cheap upgrade to Snow Leopard, too! Now, convince me not to switch to AT&T and get an iPhone … or convince me to switch, turn-by-turn GPS was one of the things holding me back from the iPhone and I guess that’s not an issue for much longer. I need a reliable phone ASAP. I’d love to wait for an Android phone on Verizon, but the chances that Verizon will cripple its coolness (app store and free access to all of googleness) is almost guaranteed… or convince me to wait and risk a few weeks of camp with a phone that turns itself off a few times a day. If I go all apple on hardware, will I be tempted by the apple counterparts to the Google stuff I use and love?

Looking forward to a trip out east next week… hope Sarah and I can shake our weird ailments before then.

Right now, sitting at the desk at the Y, all I can really think about is seeing Star Trek. I’ve heard so many good things about it… sure, some classic trek fans have their issues, but it’s trying to reboot the Star Trek world, not continue it. With a bunch of the Fringe team behind the writing and production, it has to be good.
update: Star Trek didn’t happen tonight, but we did a lot of research into how to set up a clothesline for Patti for Mother’s Day. Hopefully we’ll fit Star Trek in, tomorrow.

Good things coming up: more days off, mini-vacations, new Fable II downloadable content, macbook

In the bummer zone: Garmin announced more delays for the Nuvifone. The android phones are looking more and more attractive, even though they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, yet. Unfortunately, the only android phone even rumored for Verizon has a crappy-looking keyboard. If I didn’t think I’d miss the real keyboard, I’d already have broken down and gone with the iPhone. In the meantime, my phone is surviving… only shutting itself off once or twice a day.

My fondest van memories are attached to the van that I owned: the big red van that we moved The Overtones around in. I paid the same price for that van that Doug paid for his, yesterday: $2,000. It had a huge rack welded to the top of it; the owner swore that it would hold anything I could get up there. On the back of the rack, there were some super bright flood-lights that were fun for freaking out tailgaters. It was the perfect size for the band. There were two big bench seats in the back and room for a third, but no hook-ups… this translated into plenty of room for amps, guitars and drums. We usually took one seat out, so we wouldn’t have to stack the equipment too high.

I kept on driving it after that band fizzled. I remember loaning out my services as van and driver to a friends band a couple times. The craziest van memories include the time I was carpooling home from the tech job in Marlborough, when a crazed cop pulled us over and decided to search the entire van for drugs. I think he found some rolling papers in Sands’ bag. We just hung out by the police cruiser with the other officer, whom we lovingly referred to as “back-up,” and stared in wonder as he tore through every inch of the beast. I think he broke the handle on my sliding door, too. A few months after I downgraded to a station wagon, I borrowed the van from my Dad, to help move my friend Becky back to Charlton, from NYC. I knew Dad was a little hard on vehicles, but the van had stayed pretty strong when I owned it, so I trusted it to handle this move. We made it all the way down to the city, got it loaded and then got all the way back up to Massachusetts, off the highway, to within 5 miles of Becky’s house, and the right front universal joint let go. The wheel slammed into the back of the wheel well and we stopped dead. It happened while taking a corner at 4 or 5 miles per hour or less… had it happened on the 150 miles of highway between NYC and Charlton, we’d have likely flipped and/or rolled and died. We had several hours to contemplate our luck as we sat around and watched tow truck drivers scratch their heads. The first tow truck driver showed up with a regular truck, took one look at the situation and realized that it wasn’t going to be simple at all. The next guy showed up with a flatbed, and we still had to use a couple hydraulic jacks in place of the useless wheel. I think we moved all of Becky’s stuff to a couple other vehicles, in between tow truck drivers.

Dad had taught me how to listen and feel for unusual noises and vibrations that might be signs of trouble… and yet, in the few months that he had driven the van around, since inheriting it from me, he had managed to ingore any signs that there was trouble. And he had plenty of experience with vans… we owned no less than 4 or 5 while he was operating his Pressed4Time franchise (corporate dry cleaning pickup and delivery service). I don’t remember getting the first van, but when he grew his route too large to handle himself, he hired a couple of guys and we went van shopping. I remember buying this enormous conversion van. It had a wooden bench in the back with the kind of cushion you’d find on patio furniture and some sort of bed-contraption in the middle, I think. I thought it was so cool. I was fairly sad when it got the standard white paint job and the clothes racks and support beams were installed in place of the bed-thing. If I had a day off (or faked sick to take a day off), I’d ride around in the back of one of the vans, rolling around with the clothes, all day, popping into some of the offices with Dad and helping carry clean clothes in and bags of dirty clothes out. I definitely preferred hanging out in the back of the vans than going into the super-hot dry cleaners at the end of the run.

Yesterday was a long day, but so much of it stirred up fond memories. I guess it’s the nature of vans, being so versatile, that you always have some custom attachments that you may or may not need… and you do a bit of converting and customizing, yourself.

Watchmen. I read the comic book graphic novel on the Monday before it was released and saw the Movie on the following Sunday. I will say, first and foremost, that the movie captured most of the visual style and the mood and tone extremely well. I liked the realist take on what superheroes might actually be. —– SPOILERS —-> The premise of an alien attack, even a really good-looking faked one, bringing the entire world together is a pretty strong concept. I wasn’t entirely happy with the vilifying of Dr Manhattan and the additional irony/nuclear allegory  thrown into the storyline with the whole “trying to recreate his power and then having it used as a weapon” concept. I think the faked alien attack would have been stronger, it was far more psychological weapon, even with it’s lower death-toll. —– END SPOILERS —– I also think the mid 80s setting has much more meaning with people of my age and older. Without some research into the political climate of the times, a lot of references would go over younger peoples’ heads. Still a strong movie, though, just a little watered down.

I Love You, Man. Got a couple free passes to a “sneak preview” last week. This one comes out in a couple weeks and I recommend you see it… especially if you like a slightly raunchy comedy. We may have to see it again, we were laughing so hard at some of the dialogue that we missed two or three more lines, which were probably just as funny.

The Decemberists – Hazards of Love. I got a chance to hear this one early and was impressed. I’m not a huge Decemberists fanboi or anything, but I have a couple of their older albums on my ipod. Their musicianship and arrangements are always interesting; I’ve never given the lyrics a thorough listen… but that’s just the way I’ve listened to music, since about the time I started playing music myself. The single for this album caught my attention, since it was such a different style for them. It had much more bite, and lyrics that even drew me in. This album really is, as the buzz insinuates, a Rock Opera. After a very slow build-up (the first couple of tracks) it’s got a healthy dose of “Arena Rock” style… which was really unexpected, but fits with the classic rock operas. There’s still plenty of that classic Decemberists vocal interval, but instead of seeming redundant, it just strengthens the rock opera feel. There are plenty of other recurring musical themes. The almost cliche-sounding guitar solos, organ solos and sometimes simply the choice of effects are almost a recurring theme to themselves. Whatever you call it, it sounds like it was fun to play, and from what I’ve heard of the lyrics, it sounds like a strange little story, too.

We had a Transporter movie marathon at the house yesterday (I did end up taking the day off)… and I can review all three of those in about one word: redonkulous. …which is not to say that they aren’t fun to watch… but you can only cram so many over-the-top car stunts, gun stunts and striptease-fights into one sitting before your brain turns into twinkie filling.

So… I had a fun birthday. We hit Olive Garden on Thursday and had some friends over on Friday for dinner. I prepped my Puerco Pibil on Wednesday and Sarah and her mom cooked it all. I think everyone liked it. Sarah also made some awesome little banana cupcakes with yummy honey-cinnamon frosting. I also got a couple more Apple gift cards. I want to resist the urge to replace the Dell with a Macbook… at least until the end of June, when I’ll almost definitely be in tax-free New Hampshire. The Dell is still running, but it’s loud again, and blowing out the dust doesn’t seem to help… it also takes forever to boot, and weighs about ten pounds… which is too much to carry to work, four days a week.

I slept in, yesterday, for the first time in who-knows-how-long… and will get to sleep in again tomorrow. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have another day off until March 23rd… unless I request another weekend day off. I was going to do that when I was at work, today, but I forgot. Maybe I’ll call them tomorrow and put in the request.

Last call for hang-out requests while Sarah and I are at Mom’s house the weekend after Christmas!

In other news, Thursday, the Mazda is getting an oil change and the master window switch replaced, again. The first time it was because the Auto button wasn’t working. Then the replacement made the right rear window non-operational. It’s been a long process, and a learning experience, since I’m now on my extended warranty and have to pay money for repairs. I also have to pay a whole bunch of money to have my windshield replaced. I woke up, Sunday morning, to find a starburst and cracks branching off in multiple directions right at the top center of the glass. Illinois doesn’t have that nice separate glass policy that Massachusetts did… so I have to pay my full comprehensive deductible. I’d say that maybe I could get some cook pictures of the work in progress, but we’ve lined up sealcoating for the driveway for the same day, and that smell gives me an almost instant headache that lasts for a whole day.

Tomorrow, I think I get rained on during our first day trip of the season.

In exciting/fun news, one of Sarah’s polaroids from our trip back east is shot of the day on Polanoid … she even gets a gift card! Woot!

I did a lot of wandering around in between my grandfather’s funeral and the day Sarah and her Mom arrived. I didn’t make a checklist this time, I sort of winged it. I missed Putnam and Providence and Western Mass, as well as Sara and Drew, but I’ll try and make it up to them over the holidays or something. The most impressive changes were in Woonsocket. I drove around most of town on one of my first free days, while doing some errands.

Improvements since I lived in Woonsocket:

Starbucks: closed
Tim Hortons: opened a second location, with a drive-thru
Main St: more than half of the storefronts were occupied and open

Also, the Game Stop had a Wii Fit in stock.

I caught up with some people and did a little sightseeing around Worcester & Millbury and Webster & Dudley. I ate at Jimmy’s pizza, played Werewolves of London on the jukebox. I did some shopping for New England treats at a Market Basket (where I found the Coffee Milk on the same shelf as all the other milks). I helped Mom start to remake her living room and move beds around.

The girls arrived on Saturday night, right in the middle of what was left of the storm Hanna. They survived their long drive, though, and I was very proud of them. Sarah’s posted a pretty good recap of the first couple days at her livejournal. We saw some family, toured through Plymouth, hit King Richard’s Faire and then went to NYC and played tourist some more; visited the Statue of Liberty and ground zero and a good deli.

Tuesday, we had a little more rain, so we kept it local and did some indoor-type activities. We started with breakfast at Carl’s Diner in Oxford. The serving size has not gone down. We sat at the counter, for the maximum effect. I don’t believe we ate another real meal for the whole day. We did hit Friendly’s for some ice cream, that evening. I believe that was also the day we took in some Candlepin bowling at Mohegan in Webster. It’s still kind of a dive, but its charm is intact.

Wednesday, we met Mom in Worcester, after dropping my car off at the Mazda dealership for an oil change (and to look into the weirdness it went through on the drive out there). We headed to Lexington to visit the historic Battle Green, visited the cemetery where my Dad and my Grandfather are and then met up with Mom’s friend Joyce at Bruegger’s Bagels for lunch. I hadn’t had a Herbie Turkey in a long time, and it was very tasty. Then we drove downtown and walked around Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, had some cream puffs and then went to my cousin Mark’s place, in Braintree, for dinner. Mark made us pick records to play, and then made us play his XBox 360 and his Playstation 3. He cooked his awesome mac & cheese and some amazing burgers for us.

Thursday, we took in Purgatory Chasm. We walked down the chasm and back up on the East side of it. It was very nice, good weather for it. We also went up to Dresser Hill and got some food and shakes. I don’t think the Dairy stuff is as good as it once was, but it’s still the only place I eat fried clams. That night, we went to the outskirts of Worcester and saw Mark’s group, The Accident that Led Me to the World, play in a barn attached to a huge farmhouse that about 20 people lived in. They call it a Collective (read: commune) and the show was a potluck. Lots of friendly modern hippie-types, nice big wood-burning stove in the kitchen, bunch of pretty good music. It was something I’d never expect from Worcester.

Friday, we decided to hit the Big E on opening day, as a stopping point on our way back home. It was fun to go down the avenue of states and expose Patti to all the local culture and flavors. We wandered through some of the vendors and a good chunk of the crafting section. We ate a little and walked a lot. Looking back, it wasn’t a good choice for a stop on the morning of a big drive. We were still pretty exhausted for the first few hours of the trip home, and we ran into torrential downpours and Tornado warnings, but we survived. I think I slept through most of Saturday.

Now that all of that is behind me, it’s time for you all to come out of the woodwork so we can hang out. Call me or something. Pretty soon, next week will be all filled up with NYC, Boston, Plymouth and other adventures and I won’t have any time left.

Gotta get through all this memorial stuff, and then we can vacation, as planned. That’s my mindset.

So, for those of you who are back east, I will be around for almost two weeks, a little busy until Thursday, and then joined by Sarah and her Mom on the weekend and for the rest of the following week. I will resume taking requests to hang out and/or suggestions for activities, now.

Even though I was half-relieved to be out of this musical situation, I still want to play, so I was a little upset. If nothing else, I have to go through the effort of finding musicians, again, and that’s a lot more effort than I originally imagined it to be. A little sadness and/or stress brought out all my usual urges. My first urge was the “nasty letter” … to go post on craigslist about not wanting to play with “impatient, pushy kids” and having unencumbered “freedom to use space, variety and melody” in my basslines… but I quickly squashed that idea. It was replaced with my go-to urge in times of stress and light depression: spending money. It started innocently enough, looking into the exhaust fan for the mac. But I was doing it on my zombie PC downstairs, which needed software updates… then I started looking into what kind of hardware was in there and whether I could max it out. It’s not like it was running slow at all and I barely ever even use that machine. I had an amazon cart full of hardware, when I came to my senses and realized I was stress-spending (like stress-eating, but more expensive).  I can spend money today on much more necessary things, like a haircut and an eye exam and new sunglasses…. and maybe new strings.

I guess this means I don’t need to pick up my 18″ cabinet when I go back east. I should probably retrieve it from whoever has it and get it to Mom’s, so I can have it shipped out here, when and if it does become necessary. We still haven’t firmed up any definite days for the week I’m out there, but the requests for hang-out time are coming in quickly, so if you haven’t commented or eMailed me, do it soon. T-Minus 6 or 7 Days … or something like that.