A Week In the La Vida Loca

First of all, I apologize. No one deserves to have that song in their head. No one. But now it is probably in yours, and so I apologize.

Friday November 23
Our family having come through the stomach bug/mild flu-like symptoms, Kevin and I got packed for our whirlwind anniversary weekend. After waking and pretty much immediately sitting down at my sewing machine to quilt while the three boys played, I was content to give up the trip and stay home and bask in the domestic bliss. Kevin--shockingly!--insisted that we go. At 10, we walked the kids across the driveway to the grandparents and took off down the back roads to Hannibal.

We arrived at the Quality Inn on the edge of town and, after a brief surf through the cable, headed into Hannibal to see what we could see. We took a few pictures of Mark Twain's house and their charming downtown and the mighty Mississippi. Kevin got hungry and just couldn't wait until our reservation time at the best restaurant in town and wouldn't settle for a Snickers. So we ended up eating our anniversary dinner at a sub-par sports bar with a fake Irish name that was so memorable that I've forgotten it. I had a cheeseburger, fries, and--the big splurge--potato skins and spent the rest of the evening regretting it. Disappointed, but slightly heartened at the prospect of LSU getting beat.

We headed back to the hotel and proceeded to watch the electrifying final minutes of the LSU game and cheered heartily when they lost in triple OT. Kevin drank the champagne--my belly was just a little too full and, perhaps, there were a few hearty viruses still kicking around in there--and we watched football. And then other stuff. All the while, a wedding reception was happening in the lobby right outside and below our door. The music stopped at midnight, but the idiots partied as if there were no one trying to sleep in the hotel until I went to talk with a manager at 2:20 a.m. Even after that, I heard a refrain of "Going to the Chapel" out in the hallway. Why did the Comfort Inn fail to tell us that they rent out their lobby to wedding receptions and place people who have nothing to do with it in the room most likely to be bothered by it? We got a free stay out of it, but I doubt we'll head back to Hannibal any time soon.

Saturday, November 24
After four hours of sleep (for me) and little more for Kevin, we headed down one of the few scenic byways in Missouri along the Mississippi River and the "Fifty Miles of Art". Our next stop was Louisiana, MO, which--despite its claims--was pretty lame and even behind Hometown in the whole fix-up-your-downtown game. In fact, after this trip, I felt a whole lot better about Hometown's tourism outlook. The one cool place in town was a large store featuring pewter made on the premises. It was quite the class act, and had prices to match.

Our last stop was Clarksville. What a cool place. It's one of the last towns on the Mississippi with both a downtown that faces the river and with no hideous levees to block the view. Bald eagles have chosen the islands in this segment of the Mississippi to build nests and local residents celebrate this fact. Instead of bulldozing their old buildings, a group got together, bought them, and invited artists to come in and set up studios and shops on the cheap. Now they have a unified studio district--small, but cool--where local artists sell pottery, glass, sculptures, lotions and balms made from bee leavings, etc. We bought some pottery and some ham and bean soup and took off for home.

Once home, I got back to my quilt and my boys and we watched Mizzou kick ass in a great football game and all was right with our little world.

Sunday, November 25
Lounged around, did a little cleaning, a little quilting, baked four loaves of banana bread, fed the animals. Good day.

Monday, November 26
Ugh. Back to work and not feeling very enthused. Uncharacteristic of me lately. I love not having to work at the Hill anymore, and I especially love not driving 50 miles per day to do it. Still, I just wasn't into working and didn't get a whole lot accomplished.

Tuesday, November 27
Sick again! Marky caught a cold right after the whole stomach bug thing, and I got it. I stayed home and felt anxious about it all day. I needn't have--nothing went on in the tourism office or at the shop.

Wednesday, November 28
Although I dreaded going because I often view meetings as a jolt from my routine at best and an annoying waste of time at worst, I went to the VISTA Intern training in nearby Rock Port. What a great meeting it turned out to be. In the Hometown tourism office, we have an intern at our disposal for the entire year. It is my job to make sure he has jobs to do. He's a pretty annoying guy and I wasn't enthused about working with him, but he was already here and had been working with economic development and, if nothing else, presented us with a hell of a human makeover prospect. How is he annoying? He's a 27-year old healthy white American male from a middle-class family. He had THREE children with a drug-addled idiot who, not surprisingly, is barely in the pictures but only when she kinda wants to be. He has an intern's salary but also an intern's free health care and day care. This single dad with three children--which is the first thing he'll tell you about himself--lives with his folks. He is often sick and places those really annoying, shaky, stuffing "I'm sick and won't be in today" phone calls. He called the two women he works with "hon". (Once.) He occasionally makes reference to his Bible and then says something like "Hermann (a very successful tourist town with lots of wineries) caters to Germans, gays, and alcoholics. Do we really want that in Hometown?" So he's a Bible-thumping whiner who, none-the-less, found something holy in the pants of an idiot and had three children out-of-wedlock. Annoying.

I guess I needed to vent a little. Back to the meeting! An organization called Missouri River Communities Network wants to use a small team of interns to catalog the cultural heritage of the towns along the Missouri and develop a regional marketing plan to increase tourism along the corridor which will, hopefully, lead to increased opportunities for farmers and entrepreneurs who want to preserve the environment of the area. Whew. The cause is just, it's part of my job, and the speakers were inspirational.

Because Mr. Heifer lives very near Rock Port, I headed out to his farm afterwards, hoping to find him and share this positive project with him. And see Daisy, too. He was home, I shared, he was glad, and he also told me about a colleague of his who was working to establish a mid-MO cuisine based on wine and, hopefully, signature crops (think Vidalia onions). And, since the trailer was already hooked onto his truck and since I needed to get a ram to my place if I wanted spring lambs, he loaded up a ram and, since there's a lot of room in the trailer, a ewe who wasn't gaining weight like she should (who "may or may not ever come back to my farm") and a baby ram, one of May's little guys, that I could just keep, what the heck.

I drove the sheep into Hometown, picked up a very pleased Stevie, and together we unloaded the new sheep and put up a string of polyrope near the ground to keep the wee ones from running around the yard. Did I mention that I bought the pretty brown fence and rigged it up so that my animals have the run of the east pasture? I still need to sink corner posts and put up proper gates, but it's an operable fence and the animals have been frolicking around, loving the space and the still-green and plentiful grass. The animals got on great, the ram immediately tried to mount everybody, and Stevie and I gave them some hay and sweet feed to welcome them.

I took the truck and trailer back out to Mr. Heifers and Stevie and I went into College Town to buy something for him to wear to his Christmas program at school the following evening. While we were at it, we picked up a Christmas-y (and complementary to Stevie's) vest with a choo-choo on it for Mark. He balked at his Nordic-inspired sweater vest that I got at the Gap for a DOLLAR--perhaps he would be a little more charitable to one with trains on it (he was).

Thursday, November 29
God this is a long post! On Thursday, it was back to the Mo River meeting and guess who the first speaker was? Mr. Heifer's colleague, the one trying to develop an alternative economic model for rural food producers. How totally, totally, cool is that? It was such a positive vibe. I never dreamed that I would meet all of these fabulous people. All of a sudden, I find myself in a position to DO all of the things I've dreamed of doing since I was a hippie on the 1990s version of Walden Pond. I have the animals, the space, the time (mostly), the support, the vision (mostly), and the ability. For the first time I'm feeling my age and wishing that I had found all of this 20 years ago. Of course, the real sign of maturity is realizing that there's no way in hell a 17-year old knows what I know now. Just have to make the best of it!

I left that meeting feeling great. I got the mail and found out that Stevie has been accepted into the gifted program at his school--the well-developed, true gifted program--and that his strengths are in "math and science thinking". Cool. I really hope that he finds a way of learning that really interests him and meets The Friend that he's been really needing.

Then we all got gussied up and went to the 2nd grade Christmas Program. Mark was great the whole time...up until Stevie's classmates came on stage. Then he started crying and Kevin and I tag-teamed holding him at the back of the gym. I tell ya, it takes a special person to be an elementary school music teacher. She stood in front of a gym-full of parents and made all the exaggerated motions necessary to direct 70 second-graders to jingle bell rock and roll around the Christmas tree. It was cute but, frankly, I could live without those little photo-ops.

Friday, November 30
So here I am, getting ready for next week's big tourism funding meeting and thinking that I need to make a list of all I need and want to do this weekend: put up Christmas decorations at the shop, go grocery shopping, get the Christmas cards mailed, put up the corner posts and take down the temporary fencing, watch the Big 12 championship game (despite the benefit for OSU if they lost, I'd like to see Mizzou win), quilt, learn how to make soap, clean out the boy's toys in preparation for the Christmas bounty, get ready for my mom's visit next week, etc.

I'd better get to it. So long, patient reader (so long, indeed!). Have a great weekend.

A Humble Thanksgiving Prayer

Dear Lord, let us thank thee for butter and salt.

For without these thy blessed food additives, as was witnessed this day, Thanksgiving dinner, well, it's not just not quite there is it?

And please, Lord, next Thanksgiving, please spare us thy family-wide stomach flu smoting. And, Lord, please deliver us yonder stepfathers, who can really cook the sh-, er, stuffing out of thine artificially plumped fowl, and tubers, and green fruit-of-the-vine, and who serve us beer and football, and everything else that makes Thanksgiving worth it's place in our hearts and stomachs.

Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Lord.

Amen.

Why Can't Christians Make Decent Christian Music?

I'm at work, I'm listening to the AM station, I'm hoping that the news goes on and on because, when there's no news, there's music.

Because Mr. Rogers is a former minister, and because Christians are, seemingly, EVERYWHERE, there is usually a "spiritual minute" at some point during the morning. This morning, surprisesurprise, there was a guy going on about Thanksgiving, and how we need to pause and thank "Gau-ud" each and every day, and he was all serious and sober and I just don't understand why so many preachers feel they need to talk like preachers, i.e. Reverend Lovejoy from The Simpsons.
So that bland and generic message (I'm all for giving thanks, but must it ONLY be around Thanksgiving? Let's be a little more original, people.) was followed by Bad Christian Music. Not a bad song--"This is my story, this is my song, praising my Savior, all the day long...." but so horribly, grossly oversung, overproduced (with all-so-many achingly high violin strings), that I found myself covering my ears at the end, just when I should be praising my Savior the most (higher voice volume = more praise, right?).

Last night I watched "Paper Clips", a very tasteful documentary about a middle school in rural Tennessee that started a Holocaust Project and collected 29 million paperclips and ended up housing 11 million of them in an old German railcar. The 11 million, of course, representing the 6 million Jews and 5 million homosexuals, gypsies, and "others" murdered by the Nazis. That was followed by "Baseketball", which has lost a lot in 10 years. In "Baseketball", they featured one of those songs that Trey and Matt wrote that take on those ridiculous anthems put out by third-level rock gods full of inane lyrics ("it's the eye of the tiger it's the cream of the fight, rising UP to the challenge of our rivals") and insane amounts of uber-emoting ("Beth I hear you callin'" or "and he's watching us all with the EYYYYYYYYEEEEE...of the tiiii-gerrrr..."). Anyway, this hymn reminded me of THAT!

Which forces me to ask...Why can't Christians make decent Christian music?

Now, I know there are a LOT of exceptions out there. I'm thinking mostly of gospel--really fun bluesy gospel like James Brown sang in "Blues Brothers". But that's few and far between, especially on lily white AM station, in pretty much all white Protestant churches in the world, on all Christian "rock" stations, etc. There are great hymns--"Amazing Grace" is wonderful, and I love Christmas music. So there is some hope. But why would God allow his most faithful to put out such crap in His honor?

A few weeks ago I had the terrible misfortune of catching a group of white teenagers singing the worst fricking God song ever in the most annoying way possible. The song was about how God "takes care of me" and precious few other words were spoken. But these lame white kids stared at their music sheets the entire time (kids, there's 7 words and 3 notes in this song) and barely opened their mouths. They weren't joyful, they weren't reverent, they were as in touch with their audience as a horribly drunk Jim Morrison or a super-snotty Jesus and Mary Chain. I wanted to STRANGLE these pious teens. Madalyn Murray O'Hair would sing God's praises with more feeling.

Yes, dear reader, I'm ranting. I'm allowed. But I think what I'm really after is an education. Christians! Can you hook me up with some decent Christian fare? I'm not after a conversion or anything, just some relief from my lifelong annoyance with bad religious music. If I believed in God, I would ROCK it!

Examples?

p.s. I have a sneaking suspicion I've written about this topic, too. Am I to the point of recycling my very thoughts?! I'm going to print out all my blogs to 1. check and 2. because I don't trust blogspot to not just delete everything for no reason.

Sometimes I'm kind of a dumbass.

Take last night. I stayed up until 2:15 a.m. watching the first EIGHT shows of Season 3 of . . . Project Runway!

One of the best shows on TV.

And I drank about 2/3 of a bottle of deep red wine. On a school night!

Because my everyday wardrobe, including my sparse and weak "business casual" wardrobe that I thought I was done with forever, consists of cotton and flannel with an eye toward comfort and 'give', AND because I abhor our new national obsession with brand names and spending tons of money to buy ersatz status and the vapid question "who are you wearing?", you MIGHT think that I would find a REALITY show about aspiring and often OBNOXIOUS FASHION designers loathsome at best and an affront to all those who spend their lives trying to better the lives of others at worst.

You would be wrong.

I think I've gone on in the past about how much I like it, and Season 3 has been sitting in my Netflix queue before it even aired on TV. (I just looked down and saw a small hole in my light woolen sock with stripes that totally clash with my blue and red feathery earrings, AND a safety pin (!?) on the inside of my hem, a necessity when one buys cheaply made JC Penney suit pants. Horrifying!)

Anyhoo, I guess I should admit that I've always liked clothes. I used to put some thought into my decidedly grunge (today's "street") wardrobe. I just never had any money to buy the good stuff. Later, when I decided to use my money for food and rent and, still later, diapers, my mind hardened even further against the idea of using the tiny amount of money that I had (have) on really great pieces.

And then, when I grew out of the normal sizes, it was all over for me. I don't care what Lane Bryant says--there are still no fashionable clothes out there for fat girls. I hate capries, Ms. Bryant, and I will never, ever wear a hankerchief top in some hideous sheer paisley that 1. you have to buy ANOTHER shirt to wear underneath of, and 2. is really nothing more than a lame and uncreative poncho. Hate it! And I don't have fat girl boobs so the seams are always in the wrong place and when it comes to shopping I'm just really screwed. The best the zaftig can do is to stumble on a flattering pair of jeans every few years and buy a cheap classic in women's from Eddie Bauer.

Or lose weight.

As I write this, I know I've written about this before so I'll stop. But I must say that I love the challenges on the show, I love the creativity, I love the fact that those contestants can actually do things--hard things! Sewing well is a skill that takes a long while to master; to be able to top it by creating something brand new out of, say, recycling, or $100 worth of fabric for 3 pieces of clothing...that's something.

So I'm working with less than 5 hours of sleep and I have to put together an updated community calendar for the nearly worthless Hometown Women's Club meeting in 2 hours. This isn't a difficult task, but it is forcing me to work around it. Then I have to take minutes and give excellent suggestions at the Tourism Commission's budget meeting later this afternoon. Still not difficult, but, you know, today I'd rather be doing something else. (Sewing, anyone?)

I can only hope that a fresh batch of Project Runways is in the mailbox when I get home.

Hump Day

The City Hall building doesn't open until 8:30, and I've often found myself floundering about the house in the morning, killing time by cleaning up Cheerio dishes and gathering laundry until I can go to work.

But now I have a key.

So I came in at 8 this morning. I worked for a solid, productive 20 minutes. Then I checked all the blogs (Burb's, Sven's, Flip's, mine, Stevie's). Occasionally I'll check Spec's. Checking blogs is something I do every morning. A very pleasant routine, I must say.

"Shake, Rattle, and Roll", the Bill Haley and the Comets version, is on that AM station that normally plays really bad classic country. This is, without a doubt, the most rockin' and dirty song I've ever heard on this station! "I'm like a one-eyed cat, peepin' in a seafood store..." Did no one in the early 50s realize what that meant? Ah, willful blindless. They also played a Johnny Cash song--the first I've heard. There's good rockin' today.

At noon, I am going to a Kiwanis Club meeting to speak about Tourism. I have no idea what I'll say or what they want to hear, but I got gussied up in all my finery (grey suit, grey sweater, pretty blue beads) and am ready to . . . answer questions, I guess.

Out at the shop, things are going well. It's slowing, but it's steady. I love my accountant! Whenever I screw up on Quickbooks (twice now), all I have to do is call her and she comes over! Yesterday she cleared up some errant entries that I could NOT get rid of and clued me in to a bill-writing short-cut AND told me that I was going to be ready to turn everything over to her for taxes! This is the kind of stuff that could, potentially, replace sex and booze and even quilting for me. Do you know how awesome, how absolutely wonderful it is, to get a house call from someone who happily clears up all the tax and money issues that, when I think about having to fix them myself, settle in my chest like an elephant's foot? Weight, lifted! Best $35 an hour I could ever, ever spend.

So with that hideous burden gone, it's a matter of daily upkeep and cleaning out the filing cabinet that I haven't gotten to yet. Oh yeah--and decorating for Christmas. I started addressing Christmas cards last night. I don't understand why everyone gets so uptight about the holidays. For me, the little rituals involved in sending Christmas cards and making a gift list for people and slowly, creatively (I try) knocking off that list...I find it pleasurable. The only stressful thing is dealing with everyone else's baggage. As the years go by, I am able to shut more and more of that completely out. Ah, age.

I'm going to get back to work now. Thanks for reading!

(Just heard our ad on the radio! Cool.)

Lulu: Shepherd

I tell you, my sheep are just the sweetest things. The yellow tagger (June) is a bit stand-offish, but April and May are like big sweet doggies, standing quietly, gently jostling each other for position, soaking up the ear scratching.

This is April, the leader of the tri-flock. Her name reflects her leadership--she's always first--but we didn't realize that until later. Cool!


This is May. She's a big sweetie!


June doesn't like to be photographed, but she finds group pictures less offensive.


June is the oldest. Mr. Heifer almost didn't bring her, as she wasn't feeling well the day before she came. She rallied and he brought her, but she seemed to go downhill when she got to my place. Maybe a cold? I don't know, but she was very sluggish and not eating much and we feared the worst. Good news is that she has rallied and is acting like a normal old ewe. This is her (and April's and May's) retirement villa, and I think she's really enjoying her small, stress-free flock and green grass, not to mention all the nice weather we've been having.

Not all sheep are this tame. I feel lucky to start with such upstanding gals. And yes, I said "start". How could I NOT want more???

Halloween 2007: A Very Scary Year

Thanks for asking, Sven. I was just about to write about this Halloween. Unfortunately, it was not as idyllic as last year.

First of all, Hometown, MO doesn't have a scheduled time for trick-or-treat like Hometown, OH does. This might surprise you given my rebel nature, but I think there should be a set time for trick-or-treating. Halloween goes all day, but if you give kids, say, 3 hours to collect candy, it helps people. And I'm all about helping people. How does it help people? Setting parameters help people plan their evening, and might lead to more participation if more people were assured that kids wouldn't be knocking on their doors all damn night.

Also, there's this: The Lions have a Halloween parade that begins at 6 p.m. Costumed kids line up behind the costumed high school band and walk down Main Street. At the end, there is a little costume contest. Here's the problem: A lot of kids don't participate in the parade, and many less participate in the costume contest, because they are out trick-or-treating. So the whole event has this sense of urgency--you could almost feel the wafting "I know I'm missing out" vibes. It was a street (mostly) full of Sally Browns, lamenting their decision to hang out and wait for the Great Pumpkin with Linus instead of being out, tearing up the town, getting tons of candy. If the parade went from, say, 6-6:30, and trick-or-treating went from 6:30-9:30, there'd be a lot more kids in the Halloween parade.



Stevie was in the parade, owning his homemade ninja costume, stealthily slipping up to even teenagers and going "Yaaaaaahhhh!" while delivering the fatal blow. He even approached a little boy who was wearing a store-bought ninja costume and said, "I saw your costume in a catalog! I based my costume on the one you have!" At the end of the line, he was in the 2nd and 3rd grade contest, fiercely competing against 4 others for 3 cash prizes ($10 for first, $5 for second, $3 for third). One of his cousins was helping with the judging. Perhaps her diligence to remain fair was one reason for his loss, or it could have been the score I gave her on her 4-H paper, which, I'm sure, was lower than she thought it should be (Hey--I was looking for some emotion, not just a laundry list of all the damn horse workshops you attended. But you're not a real emotional gal, unless snottiness is an "emotion".).

Either way, he didn't win, place, or show. And that crushing loss to the first place cowgirl "who didn't even look like a cowgirl!" (she did), a generic witch, and a pretty good (and bloody) werewolf pissed Stevie off but GOOD.

After a little shout-out to injustice, Stevie pulled it together and we started trick-or-treating in earnest. But it was a lame charade! A shadow of a trick-or-treat! Not only were we sans cousins, we were practically sans other revelers. We had walked across Main Street to one half of the charming old part of Hometown, hoping for some old-timey goodness.

What we got were at least 3 dark porches between each lit one, only one attempt at a real scary porch, and very few kids to share the experience with. There was one bright spot: As we were trudging along between many candy-less homes, a group of 3 teenagers walked toward us. Stevie, who seemed oblivious to them, suddenly sprang into ninja action! right in front of them! yelling out something like "Kai-yah!" and challenging his opponent's neck with his lighted-blue sword. The trio was brought to a temporary halt, the nearly dead girl squealing "Oh my gosh!!" before we all started laughing. That kid is fearless.

But it didn't overcome the pall of the evening. The final humiliation? At the FINAL home on our washed-out route, Stevie was greeted by who else but the lame cowgirl with $10 ill-earned bucks who handed out...tan-colored pencils. PENCILS!! TAN ONES!!

This event was not lost on Stevie. But at least he was gracious to her face.

I told him that we might be flying back to Ohio for Halloween next year. This, and the 7-Up he was given by one house that slaked his terrible thirst, brightened his mood somewhat.

To wrap up: I bought a huge amount of candy two weeks before Halloween. We ate half of it before the 31st and I gave the other 1/2 to Stevie to make up for his piddly take. We're still eating it. No one comes to our house--we're on a road without sidewalks and we're 100 yards from it. What was Mark doing this whole time? Mostly riding on shoulders, though he was game for a lot of treating. He had a good evening.



But I was sorely disappointed in new Hometown's lame Halloween. I might even write a letter.

It's Friday Morning and I'm Kinda Bored.

So I'll blog!

I'm here at the Tourism office. After some wrangling about my title among other female professionals, I've decided to call myself the Tourism Tsar. "Secretary" was pish-poshed, though I'm not sure why or when that title went out of fashion. What's wrong with it? Why replace a totally useful title with "Administrative Assistant"? What makes that ponderous title any better?

I was told that I was much more than a mere secretary. I am the driving force behind the Tourism Commission, don't ya know. I said that maybe their definition of "secretary" was too limited, because everybody knows that a good secretary is the driving force behind most big wigs.

Tsar is better anyway. No one can argue with a title like that, unless to quibble about spelling.

Anyhoo, I'm here in my basement office, listening to the local AM station's local morning broadcast. They play "classic country". Oh, don't they all? And it's never really "classic". I don't hear a whole lot of Hank Williams or Loretta Lynn or the Carter Family or any bluegrass. It's mostly just 80s and 90s country schlock like "Baby's Got Her Bluejeans On" and other would-be forgettable tunes if it wasn't for classic country stations regurgitating them into our suffering ears.

Still, I put up with it because of the local news and, especially, for the 9:30-10:00 "party line" where people call in and announce stupid birthdays and the DJ, a fixture on the station, says, "I knew someone special had a birthday today! Now we know who it is!" and sings "Happy Birthday" in a style that can only be compared to Mr. Rogers. In fact, he's very Mr. Rogers-ish; a former minister with a soothing voice and absolutely nothing funny to say but with a lot of comforting words and an aptitude for dealing with the old people who call party line and prattle on about having horrible colds and old refrigerators for sale that need a little work. He skillfully guides them through their stump speeches and ends with something like "We can take comfort knowing that Jesus is there for us when we're not feeling well. OK, bye-bye now."

Of course, I've been featured on this morning program more times than I can count! If I suddenly couldn't count beyond, say, 3! Our advertisements have led to a good amount of business. There aren't too many people who don't listen to this station between the hours of 6 and 10.

Normally when I get in, I turn on my computer, check my 1-2 (if any) email messages, and listen to my 1 or none voicemails. It's not a spectacularly busy place. Then I check the Event Calendar (www.hometownmo.org--I'm using code names)and the paper, to see if there's anything to add. Then I get bet busy on one of many plans to increase tourism here in Hometown. For example, I contact various billboard companies and figure out different costs for different numbers of billboards in different areas. Then I boil that down to one page of expertly presented information for the Commission. They vote Yay or Nay, and I carry on from there. I meet with other tourism-related entities to see what they're up to, what kind of help they would like from the Commission, what we can do to make this or that event more successful. I deal with marketing, special events (like the upcoming Civil War sesquicentennial in 2011), lead fulfillment, redoing the website to make it more tourist-friendly, the budget, the agendas for the monthly meetings, and all of the paperwork related to T.C. funding.

It's turned into a really nice gig. It's part-time, I have immensely flexible hours--my scheduled hours are 8:30-12:30 M-F, but if I go to an evening meeting I can work fewer hours one morning, if I'm sick or volunteering at the school, I can shape-shift my workweek to make up the hours. I'm meeting everybody, I'm in on all the hot gossip, and I have a somewhat high-profile (for this small pond) position yet it's a neutral-to-positive role so I avoid the ire of those inevitable small-town irelings.

And I can stream "The Office" while I work on less concentration-heavy tasks, so I never get lonely.

So how 'bout I get back to it, eh?