Saturday, January 25, 2014

Bros don't know.

Howdy, Pardners.

Welcome back to the "Saturday" update.  This week, we're dropping in on the McGreevy family's Thursday evening, which happens to be drenched in rain and metaphor (and so, too, will this update).

If you're having a bad week, Thursday is probably the darkest hour (being just before the dawn and all).  You've been in the grind of work and school and life and chores for four days, and not one of those days has gone particularly well.  If you grind for long enough you're probably going to grind yourself right down into a rut.

Here's what it looked like the first time we took a gander at Thursday night:

For me, the grind is seldom (if ever) fun.  Every day involves a certain amount of life maintenance stuff that just has to be done, and no amount of that Pollyanna positive thinking garbage is going to make it enjoyable.  "Maybe if I just tell myself how much fun it will be to clean soggy food out of the kitchen sink, I'll start to enjoy the feeling of water-logged rice and onion bits on my fingers!"


If you add a stupid fight with your significant other onto the top of that pile of obnoxious maintenance stuff, you're in for a real crap Thursday.  Of course, it didn't have to be this way for Fred and Elizabeth.

I think most fights (most of the fights I've ever had, anyway) can be sewn up pretty quickly if you just learn to ignore your own pride.  He's like one of those obnoxious bystanders who wants to see a good fight and will do and say every helpful thing he can to bring that fight to fruition.  The minute it looks like there's going to be trouble, he starts talking.  And it NEVER makes things better.  It's always along the lines of:

-"Dude, what did she mean by THAT?"
-"You gonna take that?  I wouldn't."
-"You didn't do anything wrong here.  It was HER fault and now she's trying to blame YOU for it."
-"C'mon bro.  Let's bail.  We don't need her."

And if you listen to that dude, you're going to end up hanging out with him.  And he's a loser.  He seemed like he had your back in the fight, but he didn't.  And now that it's just you and him, you've started to notice that he says nothing but obnoxious, stupid things, he wears cargo shorts all year round, and his visor is on upside down and backwards.  Oh, and his stupidity is contagious.  Hang out with him long enough and you're going to take a 18 point hit to your IQ.  He'll make a problem for you and then leave you stuck in that problem:

So, the moral is: No matter how much sense that bro makes when you're in the thick of it, don't listen to him.  Unless you WANT to end up drinking Coors Light, watching reruns "Pawn Stars", and wondering why you listened to him in the first place.


Sunday, January 19, 2014

Now with extra tentacle!

Oh, hi.  Oh.

Welcome to this week's update of "Saturday" the book.  We're back up to Thursday in India's world.  I realize all this jumping back and forth is going to seem a bit choppy and disjointed, but you'll have to bear with me.

Here's what Thursday looked like the first time we dropped in on India McGreevy some months ago:

When I'm having an awful day, food is usually the one thing I can count on to bring me a modicum of comfort and solace.  I've mentioned before that I think food is nourishing not just physically, but also emotionally.  Plus, food is delicious.

Sometimes, though, when the universe is feeling particularly spiteful (or it just works out that way by chance), your one opportunity for comfort on a bad day turns out to be a big, steaming disappointment:

Years ago, I visited Japan.  One stop was on an island called Naoshima.  It has an incredible hotel and an even more incredible art museum.  I was traveling with a good friend of mine and we spent the day exploring the island and museum.  Dinner time rolled around, but the hotel restaurant was booked.  It struck me as odd that there were NO other options for food within miles of the hotel and the one option that did exist couldn't accommodate the guests.   Also, they were a bit snooty about it.

Deciding to teach that snooty hotel a lesson, we had the hotel drive us ("In your FACE, snooty hotel! By the way, could you give us a ride?") to the small fishing town nearby.  The drive was like a roller coaster.  Not the fun kind.  The kind where the fun part is that you lived.

The restaurant was traditional.  Up until that point, I'd assumed we had already eaten traditional Japanese food and that I was ready for anything.  Turns out: Not so much.   The first thing they served us was some kind of pickled vegetable mix.  I think the pickling agent was formaldehyde.  The second course was sashimi (which the dictionary wants to correct to "mishmash", so I assume it's never eaten sashimi).  Oh, you think, I love sashimi.  This wasn't a cute, 2-ounce portion of delicately cut raw fish.  This was a STEAK of raw fish.  It had scales on one side.  Finally, there was octopus tentacle.  Again, not a cute, manageable portion.  I could have worn this thing as a scarf, but I was afraid it would strangle me.  This tentacle had suckers on it.  Actual suckers.

Not wanting to appear as culturally insensitive as I actually am, I ate all of it.  And I learned a lesson.  To this day, I have no idea what that lesson was.  It should also be noted that the hotel did not learn a lesson from this experience.

Progress Report:

I can't remember when I told you I would be finished with "Saturday".  It's possible that when the Kickstarter campaign wrapped up, I said I'd be done in about a year.  Well, we're well past that point at this point.

I'm currently working on page 32.  There will be 35 pages total.  I had to add a page because I screwed up the page count at some point and forgot to correct it.  That pushes the finishing date further out.  So, to sum up, here's my action item list:

-Four pages
-Get this book printed

I don't know how long these things will take.  I'll guess 9 or 10 months.  That seems like a long time.  And, in some respects, it is.  But I've been working on this book for five or six years now, so ten months is comparatively brief.  Also, it's important to me to take as much time as I need to make this book as good as I can.

These last four pages are going to be as spectacular as I can make them.  They're an intense amount of fun.  But they'll take time.  The extra time is worth it to me.  I'll keep my fingers crossed that, once the book is finally complete and in your hands, it will have been worth it to you, too.


Saturday, January 11, 2014


Good morning (or good whenever-you-happen-to-be-reading-this).

Welcome to the latest update of "Saturday" the book, hot off the digital presses.  It was Wednesday morning when we last checked in with the McGreevy family.  It hasn't exactly been a stellar week for anyone.  India's creative slump and consequent depression continue to haunt her like the crab cakes at a Chinese buffet.  Efforts to cheer her up are ongoing:

Meanwhile, India's parents, Fred and Elizabeth, have been knee deep in the quagmire of a fight about nothing much in particular.  And now that fight is just sitting there, stewing inside them and causing problems.  Like the crab cakes at a Chinese Buffet.

Earlier in the day, Fred tried to patch things up with a romantic gesture.  Unfortunately, sometimes cleaning up a mess means making a bigger mess in the process:

Cleanup is rarely fun.  Particularly if the mess is a formidable one.  Sometimes the only thing to do is roll up your sleeves, grab the dish on top of the pile, and start scrubbing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some dishes to put away.


Sunday, January 5, 2014

Clench and Quench.

Hello there!

Thanks for dropping by the latest update of "Saturday" the book.  When we last checked in with India it was a not-so-great Tuesday evening.  And now Wednesday has reared its ugly head just so it can spit right in India's hot chocolate.  Here's a little something to jog your memory:

It's been a fairly standard Wednesday so far.  Which is to say, a drag.  A painfully early morning after a sleepless night, excruciatingly boring lessons about stuff that can never ever be applied in real life, a freezing, soggy gym class, and poisonous, unidentifiable cafeteria food.  And the hits just keep on comin':

It isn't that school is a bad place.  But when you're having a terrible week, spending an obligatory six to eight hours a day some place is enough to scrape the frosting off of anyone's doughnut.  Plus, it's Wednesday, which I always thought was an awful day of the week.  Some people might call that a pessimistic opinion, but whatevs.  The middle of a bad week is like being forced to drink a glass of expired eggnog.  It doesn't matter if it's half full or half empty.  You choked down half of it and you still have to drink the rest.

And to top it off, you get in trouble for doing something that doesn't cause any harm to anyone, like drawing in class or drinking during that meeting with the CFO.  That bottle was in a discreet brown paper bag and you STILL got in trouble.  If that CFO had to sit through his own meetings, he'd drink, too.

But what can you do, really?  About the only thing there is to do is take a deep breath, pick up that half glass of expired eggnog, try not to breathe though your nose, and hope that tomorrow, whether it's half full or half empty, there will be something less revolting in your glass.