Reading “Ghost Rider” by Neil Peart. He notes that the Bowen family owns 250,000 acres in Belize, and the Coca-Cola bottling rights for the whole country, and have been around for seven or eight generations. This would be interesting to investigate further some day.

This seems to be taking things a little too literally, but I can play along, I suppose. Alec Saungers is paying folks (blogshares money, that is) to link to his blog and drive his share price up. Well, perhaps it will work both ways.

So, it appears that I am now semi-actively looking for employment. Although running my company is what I really want to to be doing, training seems to be a pretty hard sell in this economy, particularly when we are so specialized. While I am deeply frustrated about this, I need to acquire an actual income, so that I can pay bills and stuff. I think I made less last year than any year since grad school. And my expenses were substantially higher. Leaving me wondering why I don’t have tens of thousands of dollars saved up from previous years.

So, before I descend any further into self-pity, I should mention that I found THREE geocaches this weekend, two of which I had looked for at least three times before with no success. Just goes to show that life really is good after all – you just have to know where to focus your attention.

I got my royalty check today, which is always exciting. I get to see how many copies of my books sold, and rake in the profits.

The check was for $7.09

Hmm. Clearly I should not give up my day job just yet.

Just had a 20 minute power outage, for no apparent reason. And it came back on, with no apparent explanation. Calling the electric company demonstrated that there is now no way to get to speak to a real person, so all I got was that there was a crew on the way out – who never arrived. So I have no idea what that was about. Apparently it was only this building, as all our neighbors had power. This gets very tedious after a while.

So this seems to be my month for misreading headlines, and translating them into other stranger things.

So, when I read that James Garner is the new (temporary) leader of Iraq, I immediately thought that this was a new episode of the Iraqford Files. Can’t you just imagine calling the presidential palace and hearing … “This is Jim Rockford. At the tone leave your name and message. I’ll get back to you.”

“Jimmy? This is Angel? You know that one phone call? Well, this is it. Jimmy? Hello?”

Jacob’s Creek Shiraz, spaghetti, and Yes 90125. All simple, but still a pleasure. I wish everything in life could be this simple.

I have a french press pot, in which I make chai.

Note, it is a FRENCH press pot, not a freedom press pot, however amusing and open to satire that phrase might be. Get over it.

Note 2: Chai is Kenya tea. Actually, Chai is the swahili word for tea. And when I make chai, it means kenya tea with milk and sugar. The fact that Starbucks has hijacked this word to mean something else is not my problem, and I mostly choose to ignore it, but I just wanted to clarify.

Anyways, after a while using a french press pot, the screen tends to get grungy, and, since it is a fine wire mesh, it is very hard to clean it effectively.

Finally, I’ve figured out what to do. Burn it. Seems obvious in retrospect. Hold the mesh in a flame – preferably a hot blue flame, like that from a bunsen burner, a gas stove, or a lighter – and burn all the grunge off. Once the mesh gets red hot, that’s probably all the damage you can do. And, because of the composition of the mesh, you can usually hold the thing in your fingers while you’re doing this, as the mesh, for some reason, does not seem to conduct the head around much. Kinda cool, that.

Last night, I used the final match in a box to light a candle. This may seem insignificant to all but a tiny number of my readers.

Several years ago (I expect it was in 1990, but I’m not sure) a few of us went camping in the Smoky mountains, and then, later, in the forests in north Georgia. I’m actually not even certain if this was the same camping trip, or two trips. I think they were the same trip. Anyways, we bought a package of matchboxes. Rosebud brand. When we came back from that trip, we each had a box of these matches which was largely unused. Being the packrat that I am, I kept that box, and didn’t use any of the matches for many years. I found the box several months ago, and started using it. So this was the last match from that 13-year-old box of matches.

I suppose that this should be profoundly significant in some earth-shaking way. But, somehow, it’s just not. Which is a shame, really. I was almost hoping it would be. It’s sad how some things are just … meaningless. I’m open to deep philosophical interpretations.

Anyone?

I think it may have gotten all the way down to 55° last night., and I had the top down on Rocinante on the way to work this morning.

I began referring to my Jeep as Rocinante a while back. It is, I suppose, symbolic on a number of levels. I was, however, very pleased to learn that John Steinbeck also called his truck Rocinante.

It has been many years since I read Don Quixote, and I don’t think I ever made it through the second book. I’ve added it back to my list of books to read, and I believe I should also add Travels with Charlie to that list as well. I think that I can stick to my current reading list for another year, not buy any new books, and not add anything to the list, and still not quite get done. We’ll see.

It took me a while to find this, but here are some posters of the Picasso Don Quixote painting I like so much.