Tag: Florida Gators

Love is Like a Butterfly

Tuesday morning and I feel good again. I was very tired when I got home from work yesterday (my supervisor being in Europe is just as stressful as I suspected it would be), and just kind of chilled out last night. I did start outlining what I’ve already written on the Scotty, and I did start looking at stories for this anthology I am going to try to submit something for–I think I can finally change and edit a certain story that’s been in my files for decades. We started watching the new Menendez Brothers documentary on Netflix last night, and will probably finish it tonight. And despite the stress of yesterday morning, I did manage to get all my work done at the office, so I am pretty caught up.

I am going to Alabama this weekend; I heard from Dad and so I am going to drive up there after work on Friday, and come back home on Sunday; a short visit with Dad and then back home. I am going to go up to Kentucky later this month; I need to reschedule some things, but that’s all do-able.

I just looked at the Hurricane Milton updates and am very worried about all my friends who live in Florida. I lived in Tampa for five years in the nineties, when I worked for Continental Airlines; yes, the Tampa airport is the airport where I worked, with the white shirt with epaulets and the navy blue pants and the name tag. (The opening scene of The Orion Mask is set at Tampa Airport; my main character was an airline employee.) We never had anything really major happen there of a tropical nature when I lived there, so it was never anything I worried about before moving to New Orleans. I think about the barrier islands in Tampa Bay, and how narrow the peninsula that St. Petersburg sits on actually is; it’s not impossible that this monster storm could wipe a lot of that area clean. I remain hopeful that somehow this won’t be the coming disaster it appears to be; I can’t even imagine how bad the best case scenario could be. There was significant wind damage to New Orleans with Katrina, which people tend to forget about because of the catastrophic flood that ensued when the levees failed. Roofs will come off, trees will be uprooted and flung about with great force; if it’s as strong as they are saying it could be when it comes ashore, the wind could move cars. I hope everyone gets out that is able. It turns my stomach to think about what could happen there. I hope none of it comes to pass–but I am also realistic. I hope everyone I care about who lives in Florida was able to get out and is okay, and worst case scenarios do not come to pass.

I think I’m going to take Gabino with me to Alabama, and I was looking for a horror novel to listen to in the car, and I am leaning towards listening to Paul Tremblay’s Survivor Song or The Pallbearer’s Club. I do love his writing, though, so it’s fun to read Tremblay; but I do love his work and he’s probably one of my favorite horror writers of this current epoch of horror fiction. I’ll have to pick out some more later for the trip up to Kentucky.1 It seems a bit surreal to be thinking about trips and such things–the minutiae of life–while destruction looms for Florida, doesn’t it? (And what does this mean for the Florida football team? They are on the road at Tennessee this weekend, but supposed to be playing at home the following weekend; I suspect that game will be moved to Lexington.) It’ll be hot without power, but at least October is cooler than August or September. Small favors, indeed.

And on that sad note, I am heading into the spice mines. Keep everyone in the path of the storm in your thoughts, and send some positivity their way–and hope they won’t need it.

  1. It also just occurred to me that I am being counter-intuitive with the trip up there; there’s certainly no reason for me to go from weekend to weekend; I can also go during the week and come back the following week. I hate being so obtuse as to think that ‘trip for a week’ means Sunday to Sunday. ↩︎

You Never Miss a Good Thing (Till He Says Goodbye)

Saturday morning and I slept in. I stayed in bed until eight thirty (perish the thought! What a lazy lagabed!) with the end result that I will not, in fact, be driving over to the West Bank this morning to get my oil changed and fluids checked. It’s not due, but (anxiety) the heat has been so intense, I want to make sure the engine is being looked after properly and of course, the fluids. Now it will have to wait until I get back as the dealership isn’t open on Sundays and I leave Wednesday for San Diego Bouchercon. I am starting to get some anxiety about the trip, but I am trying to ride herd on that. Whereas before it was gnaw away at me and build, now I just dismiss those thoughts as “anxiety” and move on from it. I doubt this methodology will be a long term solution–I probably should see a therapist again–but I already take an anti-anxiety medication to control my mood swings; do I need something else on top of that? Probably not. I am leery of medications to begin with–the opioid disaster always is there in the back of my head, plus the fear of addiction.

But since I didn’t get up, I will be staying in for the rest of the day and working on the apartment and writing and so forth. Tomorrow I am going to get fitted for hearing aids, so anything I might need to get by going out into the world today (I was thinking about doing a minor grocery run to get a few things) I can get tomorrow at the Rouse’s on Carrollton. I am kind of excited about being able to hear properly; I don’t think I’ve ever been able to my entire life, although I always passed hearing tests. My problem is low voices and ambient noise. I can’t hear anything in a crowded bar or restaurant. And I have my appointment about my arm in a few weeks, and of course, I am getting my teeth taken care of once I get home from San Diego. I will be a completely different person by the end of the year than I was when I started the year, won’t I? Maybe not The Six Million Dollar Man, but the surgery isn’t going to be very cheap.

We finished watching Swamp Kings last night, and I was right–it was really a puff piece, focused on making Urban Meyer as good as possible and not focusing on any of the criminal charges or how the University covered it all up because at that time, Florida football was the face of college football and everyone was watching and they were making the University a shit-ton of money. (Not to single out the Gators–although this documentary was about them, so it does raise these questions organically–these kinds of abuses and corruption happen all too often at far too many programs. LSU has had its own history of cover-ups and looking the other way to protect star players in the past, for example, and I’ve always been disappointed at how those situations were handled by my own favorite team. Hiring Joe Alleva as Athletic Director at LSU was a huge mistake, as he repeatedly showed Tiger Nation, over and over again. His replacement has done a fantastic job rebuilding LSU athletics from the ashes left by Alleva’s miserable tenure.) But I love college football, and I remember that time period particularly well. I have always stuck to the SEC mantra of “hate them in the conference, root for them in the post season” (which everyone does except Alabama fans for the most part–which I just now realized is probably a leftover remnant from the Civil War “us against them” mentality and my stomach turned a bit; but that’s also a good focus for the essay I want to write about LSU and football in the south in general, “Saturday Night In Death Valley.”) I am very excited and happy college football season is nigh. Woo-hoo!

I spent some time with Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt, which is actually quite marvelous. I haven’t had the bandwidth lately to read novels–mostly sticking to my Alfred Hitchcock Presents project–but I was enjoying her book when I started reading it a few weeks ago and had been wanting to get back to it. But anxiety and stress and the fucking heat have sapped so much out of me every day that it was hard to focus on reading a novel. Kelly is a marvelous writer, which is terrific–there’s really nothing like a queer writer with a working class background writing about the South they grew up in, is there? Kelly is kind of a lesbian cross between Tom Franklin, Carson McCullers, and Dorothy Allison, with some Faulkner and Ace Atkins thrown in for good measure. Her debut novel Cottonmouths was a revelation (I can’t tell you how thrilling it is for this old man to see so much amazing crime writing coming from new queer writers), and her second, Real Bad Things, is nominated for an Anthony Award next week–so she joins the few queer crime writers of queer crime novels who’ve been nominated for an Anthony Award! We’re a small but growing club, which is also very exciting. GO QUEERS!

So, yes, a lovely day of preparation for going away next weekend. Today I should go ahead and make my packing list–I could even go ahead and pack the rolling briefcase, couldn’t I?–and clean and do things around the house and read and maybe even do some writing. It feels cool today in the house–but of course it’s still morning–and just checked my emails and yes–there it is; today’s heat advisory with temperatures feeling like up to 114 until eight pm tonight. It’s really going to feel like winter to me in San Diego, isn’t it?

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again later or tomorrow.