The rumors of my travel have been greatly exaggerated.

[captainsblog]

Despite planning for being away for two whole days, with a packed bag in the trunk and everything, I was home by early this afternoon and have the entire day tomorrow with no fixed plans. All I endured was a snowy, but safe, quick trip to Rachacha to pick up necessities for what would've been today's hearing (and is now next Friday's), and to speak with the Magic Trustee Counsel who agreed to either settle or postpone all of tomorrow's (depending on what mood the judge is in round noon tomorrow).

We have an appointment tomorrow with Hamburg Overhead Door for a fixing of our now Half-Overhead Door. I think it's pretty clear that it's a pulley in the machinery that's had its metal wire go off treadle. Not something I'm going to attempt to fix myself.

Likewise, the part to Eleanor's printer- at least not yet. It arrived today, but without a hint of instruction on how one removes and replaces the broken part. She will probably tackle this task over the weekend, since she has far more Mad Vizul Skillz than I do with this sort of thing.

Because I had to be up Ass Early today, I didn't stay up for SOTU, but heard plenty about it in my travels. MY candidate talking about expanding tax cuts, eliminating capital gain taxes on small businesses, pimping offshore drilling and nuclear power? No wonder the Repugs weren't applauding; it's hard to do while creaming your pants. Yet all of the other-side spin I heard today was about his arrogance because he wasn't going to cave to them, and how unpresidential and petty he was. Mr. President? I'm happy for you, and Ima gonna let you finish, but eventually you have to replace your olive branch with the arm's-length accessory preferred by progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt: the Big Stick.

Speaking of things that are hard to do while TMIing: a resident of our town was killed on the 90 last month when her car, disabled in a deer strike, was mowed down by a semi on a clear sunny day. It now appears that the fucking trucker (or trucking fucker- they're pretty interchangeable) was busy watching porn on the laptop in his cab at the moment of impact. Talk about misheard lyrics: I never realized the real ones were "The Interstate is for porn."

High school English teachers will no doubt spend all of tomorrow mourning the death of J.D. Salinger and forcing yet another "relevant" reading of Catcher on their charges. As for the mythical massive stash of manuscripts in his safe? If I were J.D. (and, I assure you, I am not), my will would contain the following provision:

I direct my Executor to produce fresh copies of each of my unpublished works in an apparently new manuscript form, and to send each one, under a non-obvious pseudonym, to a random yet representative selection of literary agents, publishing houses and internet sites. Should any of those works be accepted for publication, I direct that my authorship be revealed and that prescient party be the beneficiary of all of the publicity and revenue coming from their "discovery" of my work. Any work not so accepted upon three separate attempts shall, in my Executor's sole discretion, be either published without copyright on jdsalinger.com or destroyed.

So check those slush piles, You Who Must Not Be Named.