Scenic Route

Interesting meeting tonight. Got to the church and neither of the two people with keys showed up. So we went to someone’s house and had the meeting in his living room. Acutally, it was much nicer than the church. Smaller room, better acoustics and real furniture!

The speaker’s story had more drugs in it that you ordinarily hear at an AA meeting, which is fine with me, since that’s a larger part of my story too. It was a nice change of pace because of it.

When I got home, the following email was waiting for me:

Hi Bruce,

Would I be able to use this article you sent in – in our upcoming issue? It seems to be a final draft and looks good to go to me. Let me know. If you’d also like to email me your photo I will include that with the article. Also email me a 1-2 sentence byline you’d like to include a the end of your column so to let people know who you are.

Thanks.

Regards,
Justin Ziemniak
Publisher & Editor, Computer Link Magazine
Millennium Publishing, Inc.

Whoo hoo!

Computer Link is the local free computer monthly. I sent the article in a couple of months ago, but it got bumped by some bigger news, like Apple switching to Intel chips. (Whoda thunk?) Anyway, the article is from my business site and you can find it here: Linux Without Fear and in the September issue of Computer Link. That article has generated huge traffic to my business site from search engines too, so I know it’s a timely topic. If only I could convert some of that into dollars and cents.

This weekend was the first rainy weekend of the summer. The weather geeks say things have turned and we can expect more reaonable weather for the rest of the summer. Frankly, I’m tired of listening to the fans all day and all night. But mostly, I’m tired of listening to all the bitching.

Last weekend, Vonnie came to R-Town. The weather broke before she arrived, leaving us with absolutely delightful weather for the weekend. Clear, breezy, not humid and a few degrees either side of 80 as the days went by. Perfect weather for visitors.

I was outside on the steps under a red maple tree, reading and people watching when she arrived around four. After a brief pit stop, we were off the Park Ave Summer Arts Festival. It was the 29th annual, BTW.

I’ve never gone quite so late in the day. Ordinarily I go first thing in the morning in order to beat the heat. But with no heat to beat, I found the late afternoon may, in fact, be the better time, given that the sun is low enough that the shade from the trees lining the Ave spreads across the entire street, rather than lying in patches at the curb.

We had time to do only part of the festival so we took the larger portion, maybe two-thirds, from Goodman St to Culver Rd. Von wondered why the vendors were set up in people’s lawns, unlike other street festivals where vendors are set up in the actual street. I explained that in Rochester, the city owns everything up to the house-side of the sidewalk, so the vendors were really on city property. Plus, Park Ave is only two lanes wide plus parking. That would make a tight squeeze.

The festival was entertaining and we stopped at a few booths to examine cool stuff, but we really only used it as a backdrop for conversation. We escaped two hours later having spent less than five dollars each. She on chocolates for us from Stever’s Homemade Candy on Park Ave, and I bought us fresh squeezed lemonade to wash it down.

On the mosey back to my place, since it was just such a lovely evening, we stopped around the corner at Starry Nites Café. We spent the next three hours at a table outside, under a tree listening to the live jazz quartet play, taking our time over coffee, before deciding to stay for dinner and dessert.

The chocolate thing we each ordered for dessert, (chocolate extravaganza, or explosion or something like that) really should be called chocolate orgasm. It causes moans, lots of licking, eyes rolling back in the head, and you need a cigarette after. This, however, you can do at a table under a tree on a public sidewalk. Amazingly, even the smoking part.

In between last weekend and this one, was a week that made me feel… well… durable is the best I can come up with. Problems of every sort and amplitude came up. I dealt with each in turn with little or no drama, and life has gone on. Not too long ago, each one of the intervening days would have sent me into a tizzy, followed by lots of drugs and booze, followed by lots of self-abuse.

If durable is as good as it gets, then I’m happy with it.

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