Well, at long last, we’re on holiday, traveling between Dallas and Montreal – taking the rather long and scenic route through Arkansas, then Tennessee (for 3 days) and then we’ll head north again.  We’ll trace the states and attractions we hit as we hit them because, quite frankly, we don’t know exactly where we’re going or what the schedule is.  I think I prefer it this way.  If we don’t have precise goals, then we can’t miss them.  In our individual business lives, Wade and I have ne’er ending goals – and we absolutely feel them hovering over us.  For these two weeks, we’ve set very few goals, and the few we do have are temporally forgiving.  I think we both need a distinct LACK of pressure.

And there’s no pressure.  No SIR!  Hey... we left out on Thursday mid-afternoon and hit Little Rock AR that night.  The next morning, first thing, I called my daughter at home (as promised), and Naomi’s first words were, “Have you talked to Leo?”  (For some of you on mIRC, Leo is DblClutch -- our other housemate.)  No... I called you, first...  “Then you don’t know what’s going on?”  Uhhhh... no... (Has Leo had an accident?)  “Well, the water heater exploded!”  WHAT?

No – no pressure.

Naomi was walking through the hallway and stepped in a puddle.  After a bit of research, she discovered an inch and a half of water standing in the water-heater closet.  It had sprung a leak, flooded the closet and hallway.  She ran down to the garage and brought up some tools and shop-vac, then set about trying to turn off the water supply and get the water out of the carpet.  Well, the valve simply would not be turned completely, and the shop-vac wasn’t meant to pull up that much water.  Then she took the garden hose and siphoned off the water heater contents into the bathtub while trying to unclog the shop-vac.  The long and the short of it is that Leo had to buy a new (expensive) on-demand water heater, the carpet is ruined and will have to be replaced, and the frustration-level at home is at an all-time high.  By the way, frustration levels CAN extend from Dallas to Little Rock.

[As a side-note: Phttttttttttttbtbtbtbt to all of you doofuses at the home-repair center who talked to my daughter as if she were only an ignorant sub-human because she happens to be female.  You and I will have a talk when I return home.  You will not be happy.  You will kiss her hand and bow before her – and then you’ll kiss my pasty white ---.]

Hopefully, that will be the last of the stress-producing incidents while Wade and I are... What?  Leo DID have an accident?  No... not an accident?  He was HIT by an accident?  Oh... someone lost a tire going down the road and, after it acted like a ball in a pinball machine, it wedged itself between his tire and trailer?  And he lost the tire?  And it bent the rim?

No – no pressure...

~~Bet~~   (PICTURES ON PAGE 2)

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