Oh boy, what a weekend.

So my wife and I went to ArmadilloCon.  She went to hawk her wares, and I went to pick the brains of any authors who were brave enough to subject themselves to questions from the masses.  We loaded up the truck, and left after I got off work on Thursday night.
We made it as far as LaGrange, when the truck suddenly stopped getting into any gear other than first.  We pulled over, and steam from the engine convinced us to shut it off.  It was late, and we were in not-quite-but-damn-close to the middle of nowhere.  Triple A proved useless, as we were farther away from a repair place than my wife's contract would make them tow us.  The only friend we had that was going to the con was already there.
We called an old friend who was over in San Antonio on business, and who had web access.  He was able to guide us to a hotel a mile down the road, and we crashed there for the night.  The next day, he drove all the way to LaGrange, picked us up and loaded our stuff (including my wife's entire booth setup) into his truck and drove us to Austin.  He helped get everything into the hotel, before he drove back to San Antonio.
My wife worked the Con, and I helped a bit, but sales were down from the previous year.  My wife, being a bit more socially minded than I am, asked around for anyone who had a truck and who might be willing to tow hers back to Houston.
One of the other writers at the con, a guy who had a table in the dealer's room, volunteered to help us out.  He not only gave my wife a ride over to LaGrange, but took her to buy a towing mount to pull her truck.  Of course, the damn thing didn't fit, and we ended up talking to the manager of the hotel, who was kind enough to let us leave the truck there until we got back to Houston and figured out a new plan.  During that part of the adventure, I was back at the Con, tearing down my wife's booth, loading it into the same truck of the same friend who had come all the way back to Austin, just to help us out.  Have I mentioned that he had his infant son with him?  This guy was carefully stacking our gear in the bed of his truck while also keeping his baby in arm's reach and out of trouble.  On our way back to Houston, we stopped to make sure my wife had gotten her truck going, which of course, she hadn't.
Eventually, we got back to Houston, and I'm now biking to work until we sort this mess out.  My wife is off to another Con this coming weekend, and I'll be stuck in Houston because I couldn't get time off.
Both the guys who helped us are owed major thanks, and if I can get their permissions I'll put up links to them.  They really pulled our fat out of the fire.

Texas heat, current project, and Norway

Newsflash:  It's hot.  It's hot everywhere, but down here in the southern part of the US, we're in a heat dome.  Which means right now we're the last hot dog on the grill, the one that the cook forgot all about, and we're going to be cooking here for a while yet.  Most of my poor wife's garden has died and withered, except for her mutant tomatoes, which are still producing. (I swear those seeds must be from the land around Chernobyl.  Nothing else could explain how the plants are still alive)

I had my daughter down here from Ohio a couple of weeks back, and my writing got put on the back burner.  Now that I've picked it up again, I'm cranking out Mister Donovan's Cadillac, a fun little piece that I started some time ago about a company man with a company car, one that gives him a little too much information about his perfect wife.  I actually might finish the first draft either tonight or tomorrow, depending on how I feel.  My insomnia has gotten a bit worse lately, despite the fact that I'm getting up a little earlier in the mornings and hitting the treadmill.  Then it's back to Roja.  I could wonder if my creative procrastination about finishing my first book is due to dread of exhilaration at finishing it turning to letdown, (something that happens in my head quite frequently.  Graduating from boot camp felt -- odd.) or from knowing that the next step is getting it rewritten, a process which I compare to pulling your own wisdom teeth out with a pair of tweezers.

In the news right now is a twit named Anders Behring Breivik.  This guy apparently saw himself as a crusader, and determined that it was his solemn duty to save Europe from the Muslims.  Shortly after he set off a bomb and shot a whole bunch of people, everyone who he idolized broke all speed records in distancing themselves from him.  Can't say I blame them, but it's a case of too little too late.  Breivik, in my humble opinion, was less motivated by duty than by ego.  He says he was fighting a good fight, but look at what he did, and didn't do.  He didn't run for office, saying "Elect me and I'll get rid of all the Muslims!  They'll never set foot in this country again!"  He didn't run down to his local recruiting office and say, "I want to join the army!  Can I go straight to Afghanistan?  I want to fight Muslims!"  He didn't run down to the nearest fjord, buy a boat, stock it with supplies and guns, and then sail it to Morocco, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia, and launch his own one-man amphibious landing, jumping ashore with guns blazing.  All of those would require work, the threat of humiliation, and the last two would actually be DANGEROUS.  He stayed at home, in a country without the death penalty, where he was warm and comfortable.  He set a bomb, and he shot some kids.  In all the news about this tragedy, I have yet to hear that any of the people killed were even Muslim.  He killed the people who had the misfortune to be in arms reach.
That's not the tactic of a crusader.  That's the showing off of a coward.