Chasing Autumn

Here we are, smack dab in my favorite season.  The red squirrels are storing up seed for winter, but I am storing sunshine in my soul to get me through the hard winter.

During the summer, the Lake Ottawa campground is covered with a canopy of green.  This is wonderful on the hot days of July and August when all we want is shade, but on rainy days it was too much of a good thing. We craved sunshine.

In the past few days we suddenly realized that the days were exceptionally sunny.  The leaves turned to gold, orange and red and fell down.  Now is the time that we hear the crunch, crunch, crunch as we wade through fallen leaves. The branches of the maples are showing themselves. Summer is surely over this far north.

But though the groundskeepers no longer will mow, though Anita, our beloved camp host packed up left today, and the toilets are scheduled  for closing on Monday, I still have autumn ahead of me.

Tomorrow the Lake Ottawa campground officially closes until next May, so we move the trailer south to Wisconsin and Laura Lake where we can expect another week of fall color.  Gary will likely stay there until October 15 when that campground closes.

As for me, I have to return to Seymour on Wednesday to do some garden clearing, writing, and editing a paper edition of our short story collection.  By October 9, autumn will have come and gone in Seymour, but no matter, I will be starting my central Illinois tour where the trees will just begin turning.

I am chasing autumn. The longer it lasts, the better.

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Don't forget that Wade Peterson and I have our short story collection on an e-book at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Coffee-Fiction-ebook/dp/B009GKEYHK/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348624600&sr=1-3&keywords=Black+Coffee+Fiction

Skies over Lake Ottawa

After waiting most of the day for the car repairs, I finally set out for Lake Ottawa.  I didn't want to get there anywhere near twilight because there would be far too many deer on the back roads. Go around a bend too fast and there would go the windshield and maybe your life.  Some 250 Americans a year are killed in deer-car collisions.

As it happened it was twilight when I started up Lake Ottawa Road.  Almost immediately a white tail darted in front of me and missed me by a hair. I slowed down to fifteen miles an hour.  I saw about fifteen deer before I made the campground.

The fall colors are at peak up here.  Gary reports that the winter critters are starting to file into the campground now where they will stay in protected quarters until next April when they will move out to the woods. The coyotes howl at night and what do you know, there still are two loons hanging around. The squirrels are more aggressive now as they fight for seeds.

The blue jays are working on establishing their territories.  Dark eyed juncos have replaced warblers. All sizes of toads are hopping around looking for some nice mud for hibernation purposes. We must watch where we step.

Gary wanted to go to a fish fry in Iron River this evening.  On the way out, we saw a red fox with his bushy tail chasing after him. And more deer.

I'll be up north until Wednesday, glorying in the autumn glory, now at its peak. In two days, this park closes so we will move south to Laura Lake.  Gary will stay there until around the 10th.

The skies are clear, the temperatures crisp.  My favorite time of year.

****
I went over to check out our Black Fiction Coffee display at Amazon.com and found two reviews already, one by friend Susan but the other by Book Geek.  I asked Wade if he knew who that was but he doesn't have a clue either.

While there, I clicked on my name and was immediately shifted to the children's book I wrote in 1992. Amazon.com notes where they can be bought and for how much.  A beat up copy is 99 cents but a brand new copy sells for $89.  Apparently it is now a collectible.  Back in 1992 I made 40 cents for each $9.99  copy sold. It's nice to know somebody is making money on the book.

We are selling copies of our Black Coffee Fiction e-book though which is gratifying.

Today Wade started out our second year with a new short story about an annoying car.  I can related to that, because I once owned a Gremlin. You can see his story at http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  as well as a link to Amazon.com.

It's my turn next week. I think I will write another ghost story or two for Halloween.

One Darn Thing After Another

Being a millionaire will never be in the cards for me.  I am one of Romney's 47 percent.  Today is an example of why we forty-seven percenters can't get ahead.

On August 13 I had a nosebleed that wouldn't stop and finally got an ambulance ride to the emergency room. I'm on Medicare so I had to wait to see how much the bills would be after that entitlement kicked in.  The final bills arrived this morning and after Medicare, I owed only $250.

I paid the final bills this morning and figured the next step would be to arrange for the cauterization of the polyps that remained.

An hour later my mechanic reported that what I thought were minor repairs were not so minor.  The brakes, rotors, and the gas tank had to be replaced for a total cost of $1,200.  The work has to be done since the car is overall in good shape and I couldn't replace it at this point. I said go ahead, but it meant I had to put off my camping trip a day.

The car bills will take a while, but I should be even by the end of January.

OK, so the car should be done by tomorrow.  My plan was to have everything packed and ready and then I would head to the Upper Peninsula to join Gary at Lake Ottawa.

I was finishing the laundry and packing clothes when once again, the nose began to bleed.  This time it was a brief bleed but it still means the cauterization should be done soon and even more bills.   For certain, it has to be done before I head to Illinois on October 9. I will call the doctor in the morning and get the process started and figure on paying everything off by March.

Mitt Romney says there's a safety net and I'd like to know where mine is.

So here I am, wondering whether I should go meet Gary tomorrow? If  I do, I will carry two boxes of Kleenex and three rolls of toilet paper and mark every clinic from here to Iron River on the map just to be on the safe side.

And remember that it's always one darn thing after another and at least it gives me something to write about.

Jamming for Nadine

My best friend asked me to play the piano at her mother's funeral, both during the viewing and during the service.  She told me the mourners should sing Nadine's favorite hymn, "Shadows", a piece that was written in the 1930s.  I found it at the Cyberhymnal website  www.hymntime.com/tch/ which has over 9,000 hymns on file, all old time tunes whose copyrights have expired.  I printed out the music and found that the song it difficult to play and sing.  The refrain was lovely but each line of the verse seems to be one measure too long. I told Norma that there was no way the mourners would be able to sing the song, because not only was it difficult, they would never have heard it before. I suggested a soloist and she agreed.

I finally located my copy of a Reader's Digest collection of favorite inspirational anthems. I marked the pages of appropriate songs with post-it tabs and did my best to practice using an electronic keyboard, since I haven't got a piano. It isn't the same thing though so I went to the funeral home early to practice.  I hadn't played since May so I was a bit rusty but it comes back.

At noon, I began to play but just then the soloist came in and we had to practice "Shadows".  We had some problems with the verse but finally decided that the only person really familiar with the song was in the coffin so we would wing it.  She would sing whatever she wanted to and I would follow.

Then I went back to playing those inspirational anthems when Mary Alice, Norma's cousin came in.  She was carrying a guitar case and a couple of harmonicas.   She listened to me play for a while then asked me, "Is that in the key of G?"  It was and soon she was playing the guitar and harmonica to "Abide with Me".

Through song after song, we jammed along, almost rocking through songs like "Nearer My God to Thee".  I wondered what any of the others in the room would think about it.

We wound up with "Amazing Grace," and then the funeral began.

As expected "Shadows" wasn't exactly as printed on the page, but to anyone listening, it likely sounded good.

Mary Alice sang and played a couple of pieces on her guitar and when I found them in my music, I joined in.

For a benediction, I played Meredith Willson's "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You", and the funeral was over.  Folks came up to tell me they enjoyed what our band of  musicians had done.

Mary Alice and I agreed that funeral was fun.  Was that wrong of us?

***************
Don't forget that Wade Peterson and I have our short story collection on an e-book at Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Coffee-Fiction-ebook/dp/B009GKEYHK/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348624600&sr=1-3&keywords=Black+Coffee+Fiction

It's Finished!

This morning I was at Wade's house at 9:30 and together over the next three hours we finished putting Black Coffee Fiction, our collection of fourteen of our best short stories, into e-book format on Amazon.com.  Now our fans can get the book on their Kindles.

When I say "we", it was mostly Wade who did the work, navigating through all the instructions and forms until we had a book.

I helped with the dedication, our autobiographies, and decisions about how the book should be presented on  Amazon.com.  Mostly, I waited for that magic moment when Wade clicked on "enter" and our book was born.  At that moment, I wanted we shouted "whoopeeeee!" and shook hands.

Then it was waiting time, because it takes up to twelve hours before anyone could buy the book.  At 8:00 this evening, I could wait no more and bought our own book just to see if it was ready and it was. I already had the book but what's $2.99 to an author who will get some of that money back in royalties.

So now it is there, and any of my readers can order it by clicking here.

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Coffee-Fiction-ebook/dp/B009GKEYHK/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1348624600&sr=1-3&keywords=Black+Coffee+Fiction

In another couple of weeks we plan on putting out a paperback edition but we agreed to take a week's vacation so that we can write our next short stories.  We are already thinking of the Volume 2.

Goals

Last winter, my cousin Charles talked Sean and Chris into going on another great adventure.  They've been all over the world, but Charles said the "biggest dragon" would be the Pacific Crest Trail.  They laid their plans well.  They pored over maps, figured out what they would need at each stage from the deserts of southern California to the snows of Washington.  They shipped supplies to stops along the way.

They started at the Mexican border in mid-April and reached Canada on September 21.  Sean posted one word on Facebook:  "Done!"  

Footsore, exhausted and in feeling goofy, it took until today that they finally brought their blog up to date. 

http://3gaycaballeros.blogspot.com

They set a goal and they finished up what they started.  I'm proud of them. 

They have inspired me to pick up the pace on my own long distance trek.  Years ago, I began an imaginary hike around the world.  I started in Seymour, headed west and traveled through the United States until I came to the Bering Strait, crossed an imaginary ice bridge and kept going.  I hope to make Budapest, Hungary by the end of this week.  I've walked 18,541 miles so far, but if I want to finish my walk around the world before I die I have to pick up the pace.   

Goals are the things that keep me on track.  Wade and I want to finish our e-book collection of our stories tomorrow and move on to the paperback.  

I need to write another ghost story by the first Friday in October, use it at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com then write an abbreviated version for Public Radio's three-minute short story contest.  

While I am doing that I am planning more trips, more adventures.  

Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."

So I keep setting goals, keep trying, never looking back. Like my cousin Charles said, there are dragons to slay. 

No Frost, More Soup

There was no frost here last night.  It's almost a disappointment because the tomatoes will keep on ripening and I will have to continue processing them. When will it end? 

Next comes Kansas City steak soup. 

I first had it when I was visiting a friend in Kansas City, Missouri.  I couldn't believe how good it was. Years later, I found the recipe in the Rival Crock-Pot Cookbook.  I don't have that first crockpot, I broke it a long time ago, but I saved that cookbook just for that recipe and use it in the replacement pot I got at a rummage sale. 

I don't make it more than two or three times a year because it is incredibly rich, especially when I finish it off with a dollop of sour cream.  

Here's the recipe:

3 cups water

2 small onions, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

1 one pound can of tomatoes (I use fresh tomatoes)

1 teaspoon pepper 

1 16 ounce package of frozen mixed vegetables  (recipe calls for 10 ounces but I like lots of veggies). 

1 pound coarsely group beef or finely diced chuck roast, browned and drained

2 to 4 tablespoons of beef base

1/2 cup butter  (and yes, I do use real butter) 

1/2 cup flour

Put all the ingredients except the butter and flour into the crockpot.  Cover and cook on low 8 to 10 hours.  One hour before serving, turn to high.  Make a roux of 1 stick melted butter and 1/2 cup flour.  Stir until smooth.  Pour into crockpot and stir. Cook on High until thickened. 

Put a dollop of sour cream on just before serving.  

Yum.