…there’s nowhere left to go.

Sure wish I could read some minds right now to see where people think I’m going with this title.  Probably not in the direction some of you are expecting.  A lot of you know that I write G or PG-13 rated books and blogs and, unless an alter-ego takes over, that’s not likely to change.

So what do I mean?

It’s no secret that I’m not a summer-lover.  Well…I could be if daytime highs weren’t over 75 degrees (with zero humidity) and nights were right around 50.  But you know what?  That would be a Shangri-la kind of thing and it just doesn’t happen in Michigan.

You know what does happen in Michigan?  Or did?  Eighty-four degrees.  Yup. Right smack in the middle of March.  We’re still supposed to be having snow and wind chills, not sweltering August-like heat indexes.

Stubborn person that I am, I wouldn’t turn on the air conditioning.  Just the fans, and I didn’t even want to do that.  Not in the winter.   At least not anywhere but my bedroom (I usually sleep with a fan on year-round).

This makes me worry over how hot July and August are going to be.  Because, frankly, you can only take off so many clothes outside.  Of course if you’ve always harbored some insane desire to be arrested, you can take off as many as you wish.  That’s never made my personal wish list.  And now there’s the whole YouTube thing to consider.  Pretty sure I don’t want to see my naked self starring in a video that could be viewed around the world.  Trust me, no one else does either.

Fortunately I don’t have to consider any of that right now.  Spring weather is here, a few weeks early, but at least it’s more normal than seventies and eighties.  People are worried about asparagus, trees and flowers.  I think they’ll all be fine though.  It’s not like we never get frost-and snow-in April and May.

One of my favorite songs about summer (from Grease).

Daniel Pullman, one of the ‘stars’ of Enza, makes a reappearance in today’s mail.

Dear Arthur,

I just received your letter.  While I’ve delivered many letters with post marks from France, I’ve never had one of my own so I’m a little in awe of it.  It’s hard to imagine that I’m holding in my hands an envelope that has traveled clear across an ocean to get to me.

How exciting it must be to be in a country so far away from home, though I do understand that you’re homesick already.  Perhaps you can draw some comfort from the fact that your family and friends miss you as much as you miss them.  I know I miss you.  It seems that everyone left behind is older and married, so it’s not the same as having someone your own age to pal around with and talk to.

I try to imagine what it will be like when I get there, and wonder whether I’ll be as homesick as you are.   It’s hard, and even a little sad to know that I’ll have no one here to write to.  No one who really cares whether I live or die.

I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to go all maudlin on you.  I thought I was doing fine until Christmas.  Having no one to share it with drove home the fact that Mother is really gone.  And with you and the other guys over there, I realized how truly alone I am.

But I expect you know how I feel as you were on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean when Christmas morning arrived.  It couldn’t have been a very festive occasion for you either.

I wish there were some news to tell you about but you know what it’s like in Charlotte.   The last exciting thing that happened was when Billy Parker set off the firecrackers under Herman Croswell’s buggy, and that was last summer when you were still home.

Take care of yourself, Arthur.  Keep your head low in the trenches and keep your gas mask handy.

Yours truly,

Daniel

Making sure everything is in place, and as perfect as can be, for Enza’s release one month from today is…exhausting!  I have never encountered as many problems getting a book ready for publication as I have this time.

Add to that taking on the project of making a video collection of my mom, aunts and uncles reminiscing about growing up, my grandparents and other fun stuff, the beginnings of  yet another flood on the north side of the property (that lasted through most of July last year), life in general, and starting a new blog about my struggle with hypothyroidism and…what little energy I had is just a memory this week.

I need a vacation!  And some beach, somewhere sounds practically perfect.

Looks like this is just one of those days so I’m going to share a video from my favorite YouTube guys, Syncsta.  Granted they’re not really doing anything these days, but I’ve enjoyed watching them for about four years now.  Jake and Chris…make up, get it together and start making more videos!

While I couldn’t use much from this movie, I did watch On Moonlight Bay a couple of times while researching for Enza.  Families didn’t break into song at the drop of a hat, or start dancing around the house (at least I’m reasonably sure they didn’t), but I though I could get an idea of what homes and clothes looked like back then.  And maybe soak up a little of the atmosphere from an era far more innocent than the one we live in today.

This movie probably has the best lines of any movie ever made, and I’d really hoped I could find a video on YouTube that included it but, alas, I could not. So I’ll just share it with you, along with the two clips I did find.

“You look like your father, Wesley.  He was anything but a handsome boy.”

Tomboy, Marjorie (Doris Day), learns to dance.

Marjorie and Bill (Gordon MacRae) say goodbye just before he ships out to serve in WW1.

In case anyone has noticed that I haven’t been around much lately, well…I haven’t been around much lately.  Nope, a month ago (okay, so it was mid-January) I started having trouble with a wisdom tooth – my last one, thank God!  I’d had to have a filling put in it a few years ago but just knew the sucker was going to have to come out this time.

Having a lifelong fear of dentists, I waited until things got pretty uncomfortable.  When it became hard to sleep, and I was going through Ambesol Maximum Strength like I was addicted to its wonderful taste (being very sarcastic here), I decided it was time to just ‘man up,’ get an appointment and get it over with.

The only thing is, I hadn’t counted on my dentist being out on maternity leave…meaning I would have to wait a little over two weeks to get in and see her.  Yippee skippy.

So anyway, I finally had the tooth pulled Wednesday morning, after approximately eight shots of Novocaine – and something she said was the strongest she had, fast acting but short – lived.

And there you have the reason I procrastinate every time I need to see a dentist.  For whatever reason, numbing agents don’t work on me like they do on most everyone else.  Something about my metabolism (and I’m not even sure I have a metabolism most of the time).

At least it’s out and I’ve been able to catch up on some sleep.  Since arriving home, I figure I’ve slept about eighteen out of the past thirty-eight hours.  And I may be heading in for another ‘nap’ shortly.  As soon as this Advil kicks in.

Why did I decline a prescription for pain meds?

I don’t know about anyone else, but it was quite common when I was growing up to hear someone say that something only happened ‘once in a blue moon.’  Basically it meant it never happened.

But it wasn’t just a popular saying in my neck of the woods, not if the music industry is anything to judge by.  Like to slow dance with your sweetheart? Earl Thomas Conley’s Once In a Blue Moon, or Blue Moon (sung by various artists) are great choices for some romantic bonding time.

And at least one author managed to work phrase into the title of her book…

Earlier this week I was chatting with someone about studies done to prove – or disprove – effects that a full moon may -or may not – have on people.  Police officers and hospital personnel think there’s something to it.  Many experts disagree.

So I did what I usually do when I have a question about something… Yeah, you already know, don’t you?  I Googled it.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that something I thought was just an old saying is actually based on something real.

Yes, it’s true…blue moons are real.  No, I didn’t pay a heck of a lot of attention in science class.  Probably because I’d never seen a blue moon.  And likely never will – unless I break my ‘no drugs’ lifestyle.

Blue moons aren’t actually blue, that’s just what it’s called when two full moons occur in one month.  Because they are separated by 29 days, every two and a half years or so there will be two full moons in the same month.

Changes in the atmosphere can make it appear as though the moon changes color though.  I think we’ve all seen it just above the horizon, huge and orange.  If you want to find out why that happens, watch one of my favorite movies.  The answer is at the end.  Even if you don’t want to know the answer, or know it already, it’s well worth your time.  Aside from staring the love of my life, Bruce Willis, it’s just a really heartwarming story.

At least now we know that the phrase, ‘once in a blue moon’ really does mean that something only happens once in awhile.

Daylight Savings Time has sometimes been credited to Ben Franklin due to a joking reference he made in 1784.  Others believe it started with London builder, William Willett (1857-1915), and his pamphlet ‘Waste of Daylight’ in 1907.

Mr. Willett’s thought was to set clocks ahead twenty minutes on each of the four Sundays in April, and then setting the back twenty minutes per Sunday during the month of September.  Had Mr. Willett had his way, many of us would be living with eighty extra minutes of daylight hours each summer instead of sixty.

George Vernon Hudson (1867-1946) was another supporter of longer days, but his plan was to set the clocks ahead two hours every summer.  Why?  Because he was a specialist in insect biology…and early sunsets interfered with his evening bug-collecting efforts.

Though suggested many years earlier, DST seems to be a direct result of World War 1, with Germany leading the pack on May 1, 1916.  Europe eventually followed suit, with the United States finally jumping on it in 1918.  Longer daylight hours was said to have saved fuel by reducing the need for artificial lighting each evening.

I don’t know about anyone else, but after giving the matter far more thought than it deserves, I still don’t get the logic there.  Unless there were bans on ‘artificial lighting’ during early morning hours how, exactly, was any fuel saved?

An unpopular law, Congress voted DST out after WW1, allowing states to decide whether to keep it or not.  Consequently we have parts of the USA who observe it, and other places that do not – sometimes within the same state.  When you factor in time zones, too, it can get just a little confusing!

Studies on the advantages – and disadvantages of DST abound.  There are fewer accidents and fatalities during the brighter evening hours…but there is an increase in morning accidents.  There is a huge increase in the number of pedestrians hit by cars the Monday after DST begins.  It saves fuel, it doesn’t save fuel.  One group of people loves it, farmers hate it.

I tend to side with those who oppose Daylight Savings Time.  For one thing, I just find it arrogant that governments feel like they can manipulate time.  For another, I’ve always had trouble adjusting to the spring change.  It’s one thing to ‘gain’ an hour in the fall, but ‘losing’ one…uh…doesn’t work so well for me.

But another question that plagues me is this…  Since summer hours are longer anyway, wouldn’t it make more sense to change the time in the fall and winter?  I mean really…the sun is long gone before six in the winter.  Many people spend the few hours of daylight stuck in offices or factories, arriving and leaving in the dark.

So what is your opinion of DST?  Do you think they save money on bills?  Would you like to see the government stop trying to manipulate time?

It seems like from the second human beings are created, and I do mean from that whole embryonic state, life starts introducing us to changes.  When we think of that tiny speck of a person, and then look at all the ways they’ve changed when they step into that kindergarten classroom for the first time, it’s awe-inspiring.

Life goes on, boys becoming men, girls realizing that being a woman includes things we never imagined, like monthly visits from Aunt Flo.  We learn and we grow, and and everything keeps changing.  From living with our parents, to being on our own, to getting married and having families of our own.

At some point over the past decade or so, most of us have experienced what it’s like to live in the ‘future.’  A place filled with things that fell into the whole sci-fi category not so long ago.

I mean, back when our grandparents were kids, who could ever have imagined the internet, or what it would do to expand our world?  Talk about some major changes!  And speaking of the internet, I have just one thing to say…

Enough with the changes for crying out loud!

In the past few months every program I use online has threatened  promised a new and improved version of whatever it is I’m using.  My website, my blog, my Gmail account…Twitter.

Next up on the chopping block is Facebook with its new Timeline.  Most everyone I know hates it and doesn’t want it.  I feel the same way.

Mark Zuckerberg…please don’t ruin our Facebook.  In the famous words of The Beatles….

Let it Be!

Often when I am stressed out, or need to chill out or relax, you’ll hear one version or another of this music playing on my computer.  Well, not literally because my musical ability is limited to listening, not playing. But I have no problem listening to Canon in D over and over, especially when there’s a flute involved.  If I could get it on a playlist thirty times in a row, I’d listen to it thirty times in a row…that’s how much I love it.

That would be when I’m editing though.  I hate editing and this music in particular helps keep me calm and stress-free.  It also saves having to replace my monitor when formatting issues make me want to send my mouse sailing through it.

This version, one I discovered while wasting far too much time on YouTube Monday night, is a new favorite and I thought I’d share it with you…