A good day’s start
Today started off very well.
Actually got up when I intended to - my sleep pattern, to give it more dignity than it deserves, got all out of whack when I was finishing off my recent Rogue Angel novel. I’ve had a terrible time trying to get either enough sleep or regular sleep. To one degree or another I’ve had trouble with that most of my life; I need, and intend, to get it squared away soon.
Did my mobilization exercises, then some kettlebell. To cool down I did the Long Form of Yang taijiquan. TJQ works great for that.
I drank my morning cocoa. Then I packed up the notebook PC and headed to the Village Inn over on Menaul near University, a regular haunt, for huevos rancheros and coffee. VI does surprisingly good huevos rancheros, at least here in Albuquerque. Never, never order them anywhere outside New Mexico. Trust me on this.
I wrote for a while, most productively. Well-pleased, I headed out into a cool but lovely day. By which I mostly mean, calm. We’ve had some cold, explosively windy days the last couple of days. I was glad to see the wind abate.
First I went to Costco and dropped 160 bucks and some on fripperies like food and necessities such as coffee. You understand the priority, yes? Sadly, I could probably live a Neptunian year off stored body fat, but evolution has cruelly and senselessly neglected to provide our bodies the ability to store caffeine. This constitutes the single best refutation of intelligent design I know of.
(Oh, and by all means, guys, feel free to drop the whole “Flying Spaghetti Monster” gag any time now. It was never that great to start with; it’s long since tipped over into pure boring asshattery. If your goal was to prove that people who claim to favor science can be just as annoying, irrational, and sometimes outright scary as the loopiest Fundie loonball … mission accomplished.)
Fifty bucks of the expenditure went to getting Roundup weed killer concentrate - fortunately, I get a lot of uses out of a bottle. I’m going to decapitate the weeds that have got an early start in the front yard one more time with my Rotary Nylon Scythe of Retribution (+2). (Yes, I have played too many role-playing games. Thank you for noticing.) It gets the +2 from being powered by lightning via the Orange Cord of Utility. Anyway … what, I digressed again? … I’ll toss the amputated weed-tops in the rolling composter and then douse the stubs with Roundup, mainly in hope of killing the roots. When the bastards’re good and dead I’ll chop ‘em off level to the ground with my faithful Scuffle Hoe.
I know “scuffle hoe” sounds like a person who keeps too much company with gangsta rappers. It’s really a most wonderfully useful garden tool. Especially if you have to deal with sprawling evil like our goatheads. Try to get those out with a shovel or a conventional hoe and you’ll wind up whacking yourself in the head with it. Which’ll do about as much good. But the scuffle hoe, also called the circle hoe, will just shave those bad boys right off at the ground. It’s great.
Unless, of course, you totally overdo it, give yourself elbow bursitis that gives you a fever for two weeks and messes up your arm for four months. Don’t do that.
Not content with dropping all that dinero at Costco, I went across the street to Home Despot and plunked down another $56 indulging my childlike love of scary-looking tools. Or perhaps I should say, actually scary: a resin-handled pick-axe and a six-foot digging bar - basically the old Japanese martial arts weapon known as a tetsubo, or Iron Quarterstaff, but with a point on one end and a chisel tip on the other. To deal with our lethal North Valley combo of clay and caliche, or what we might call “concrete,” you need weapons.
It’s not really iron. Rather it’s serious steel, drop-forged, heat treated, and tempered. Which is good, because if it wasn’t properly tempered it might shatter when I hit one of our harder rocks with it and fire a nice six-inch splinter into my shin. I wouldn’t like that. I’ve never done it but I’m just sure. The manufacturer calls the thing a “San Angelo Bar.” Spoilsports. We know it’s really a tetsubo.
So anyway, I just got all this stuff out of the car, and Emma sufficiently greeted - always a production - and got most of it put away, when the phone rings. It’s El Joe. He wanted me to come over. I went. He talked about some personal matters, and then he gave me some hot new ideas for how some of us New Mexico writer types can promote ourselves and our books. Excellent stuff.
But more of that later. Heh, heh.
Tags: gardening, huevos rancheros, kettlebells, martial arts, San Angelo Bar, taijiquan, tetsubo