Fully Recovered?

The post-convention recovery thing used to be about eating better and flushing the remnants of alcohol from my system. Oh, and catching up on sleep. Now it is literal PT — trying to get my spine back in line after a weekend of sitting in hotel chairs and driving for 8 hours.

Sigh.

On the plus side, we had a lot of fun at Horror On Main. We had great neighbors all around us, got to meet some people who recognized our brand from the Stokers, and even met some of our Kickstarter backers! Plus, the drive to and from the far side of Pennsylvania allowed us to listen to some great audiobooks. I got really lucky and two of the audiobooks I had on hold at the library came through in time for the drive home (more on that below).

On the home front, our deck is looking quite bare. We are having it repaired and restained. The first step in the process was having it power washed and all of the boards look super light without the accumulated dirt and debris. Unfortunately, in the process of power washing the deck there was a small electrical fire related to the timer attached to the pool pump. I’m not able to crawl underneath, but The Mrs says that it just looks like the timer that was fried. When she gets home from work today we’re going to hook up a new electrical cord to make sure everything is working, then get back to getting the water clear again. At least it was available for the really hot weather that blew through while I was away.

Last week I racked the blueberry mead to a smaller container. The plan is to let that sit for a while, then possibly back-sweeten with more honey. It will have to go back under air-lock just in case it starts to ferment again. I’m toying with the idea of pasteurizing before I do that to make sure it doesn’t make anymore alcohol. Today I’ll do the first set of readings on the other two batches that are in primary fermentation.

Listening To: As hinted above, long drives are great for plugging away at ones Goodreads goals. On the way out to PA I listened to We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor. The story of a digitized consciousness exploring the outer regions of space is sci-fi at its finest. The best part is that this is the first in a series of five that I will most definitely be diving in to. On the return trip I listened to Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green (yes, the The Fault in Our Stars guy). It combines the history of TB with extremely moving individual stories. With a few hours left to drive, I started Another Fine Mess by Stephanie Németh-Parker, the sequel to Bless Your Heart which I discussed in a previous post.

Currently Reading: My across the row neighbor at Horror On Main was Matthew C. DuPée, a very nice person. He was primarily promoting his history of the making of the movie Critters entitled We’re Here for the Krites. However, the book I picked up was A Very Scary Christmas: A History of Yuletide Horror Films, 1972 - 2020. I’ll be dipping into this one every once in a while.

Current Obsession: Trying to figure out how to get the kinks out of my back so I can move without sounding like I’m 400 years old.

Horror On Main was our last show for a while. We have all of July off. Our next appearance will be in Chicago for Flashback Weekend. We will be talking about that more as we get closer to August.

If you are reading this on the day it goes out, you are officially on Jack Bauer time — less than 24 hours to go for the Nightmerica Kickstarter. We hit our goal a few days ago and are only a few hundred dollars away from our first stretch goal! If you are a backer, you know that I did a variation on that joke calling it Ramones time (24 hours to go…). If you are not a backer, or if you want to upgrade to that sweet Kickstarter Exclusive Hardcover, act fast. Klick this link before time runs out.

We had some down time while in Harrisburg, but as the saying goes, there’s no rest for the editor. We finished up the first round of edits for Frank Oreto’s It’s Dark in Here in between customers. Also, the proof copy for Peggy Christie’s Here There Be Horrors arrived yesterday so we know what will be coming up next.

Anyone who follows are socials knows that the weekend driving, especially the trip out, was less than pleasant. I already have a true Michigander’s disdain for Ohio, and driving on the turnpike certainly didn’t help matters any.

I have talked about turnpikes a lot in the past. I am a firm believer in the idea that the money I am paying to access a toll road should allow me to drive however the fuck fast I want. This, of course, is not the case as the unique soil structure of the areas surrounding the turnpike, especially blind areas at the bottom of hills where one naturally picks up speed, seem to foster the growth of State Troopers like some sort of fungus.

No, I’m not bitching because I got a ticket. I’m not going to say that I didn’t get a ticket because I have to drive another toll road in Aug to get to and from Chicago and I don’t want to jinx myself. I’ll just say that at no time did I have to pull over on to the shoulder of the road and provide identification.

What made this particular drive infinitely worse was the fact that from the moment I passed Toledo until I reached the outskirts of Pittsburgh, I was pelted by thunderstorms so vicious that the windshield wipers could not keep up with the water. Twice I had to pull off into a rest area to wait for the rain to pass. What super sucked was that the concrete barriers they had installed on either side of the road allowed for no drainage of the deluge. I had water shooting up to my window on either side despite the fact I was crawling along with my flashers on in a Chevy Equinox that I have to climb up to get in to.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is a metric shit tonne of construction in Michigan. In fact, the exit closest to my house and a portion of Grand River are currently closed and will remain so for months making it a real hassle to get anywhere. The thing is, when I look at those areas I see things like construction workers, huge pieces of equipment, mounds of dirt being moved, actual construction happening.

This was not the case in Ohio which seemed to consist of closed lanes and reduced speeds with no indication of anything going on. There would be a warning that the speed was going to be reduced from 70 mph to 50 mph (FIFTY?) and that fines would be doubled. Then you would cruise along an area with no trucks, no torn up roads, no people.

Except, of course, for the cars with the light bars on top waiting on the side of the road.

Am I saying that there is no actual construction on the Ohio Turnpike and that all of the reduced speed zones are nothing more than speed traps? No, of course not.

But if you want to infer that from this rant, feel free to do so.