Gone Puddin’

I know, we haven’t talked in a while.  It’s, like, I haven’t been around for the past few days or something.

Well, actually, it’s not like that at all. It’s exactly that.  I haven’t been. Around, that is.  I’ve been in Connecticut. Yes, that state in New England. Because I had to do [redacted].

Truth be told, I’ll probably be playing catch-up with pretty much everything for the rest of the week.  Because that’s what happens when you go spend 2+ days somewhere else doing the stuff you don’t usually do.

In a perfect world, of course, there’d be, I dunno, stuff elves that came out when you were gone to take care of the stuff you couldn’t take care of like usual.  You know, like the Grimm Brothers’ Cobbler Elves from that fairy tale, but more modern.  They’d maybe write a blog post for you, keep you up to date on facebook and twitter, post a few Instagrams (no selfies, duh) , and make sure your daily workload gets done for you while you’re away.  File your Status and TPS Reports and whatnot, maybe fill out your timecard.  What-have-you.

Then again, it seems like I just described a muggle version of a “house elf” from Harry Potter.  No one wants to make poor Dobby tweet for them.  And the last thing I want is Dobby trying to keep my daily writing quota caught up for OTHER THING.  The whole book would be about socks.

Which is fine, I guess, if you’re into socks. But maybe not this book.

Anyway, I’m home now, and have to do much catching up. Hopefully I’ll have a more productive – read: entertaining, possibly consistent to a theme – post to offer you tomorrow.  For now, enjoy this brief list of things circling my noggin today:

1. Ranch v. Blue Cheese: I’m not terribly surprised by the responses for the Ranch vs. Blue Cheese Weekend Debate post and poll, but I do find it a little strange that the only option not to have yet been selected is the first pro-ranch option, “Well, ranch, obvs. Not that it has anything to do with buffalo wings.”  It surprises me because I think some of you ranch-ers out there aren’t being honest with yourselves . I know a lot of people go ranch simply because they lurves them some ranch with a serious, Helen of Troy-style obsession.  And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.  But the point is that in such a case wings, rings, fries, cheese sticks, nachos, swizzle-sticks, marshmallows, and whatever-else-you-can-plate-in-a-dippable-form-factor are all – ALL, I say – going to be dunked in the thick, white, bespeckled goo without any further consideration. Because ranch is your dip condiment of choice, not necessarily because you think wings are better for it (although, admittedly, the two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive).
2. Ranch v. Blue Cheese, The Return: Seriously, I just wrote a 150+-word rant atop a ranchy soapbox.  I have a problem.
3. Commercial Air Travel: I missed my connecting flight yesterday because my first flight was delayed 20-minutes on the tarmac due to a traffic issue at the destination airport.  And my replacement flight, which was 6 hours later, was 2+ hours late itself. I spent wasted more than 8 hours in an airport waiting for a flight I didn’t choose to take, but was my only option to get home. The thing is, everyone has at least one story like this.  If you ask me, commercial airline travel is broken. And it’s broken because consumers are cheap, airlines are greedy, and no one has yet, it seems, come up with a better way (Also, I’m not sure how helpful the federal government is in this regard, either).  I can’t wait until teleportation becomes a real thing and no one has to do this crap anymore.
4. Writing: Having so much time to myself yesterday meant extra time to write, but then again, holy hard to write in a bustling airport, Batman.  And I’m not the kind the environmental obsessive that requires a pristine writing space calibrated perfectly to pitch, harmonics, and feng shui. I mean, I have four kids for cripesakes, I understand writing against distraction.  But drafting in a airport – at least, drafting OTHER THING – was harder than trying to thread a needle while walking a balance beam simultaneously amidst a swarm of angry hornets.  In the end, I was just proud I got some words done, but I. Am. Officially. Behind. My blogging schedule will reflect that, methinks.
5. Reading: Although writing smack in the middle of one of the busiest airports in the United States turned out to be more difficult than I’d expected, it left me with plenty of time to read. And read I did.  I finally finished Gone Girl By Gillian Flynn. You can probably expect a full review at some point, but for now I’ll be brief. I can see why so many people loved it and it won awards. It was very well-written and uniquely presented. I’ll definitely read Flynn again. That said, Gone Girl had some flaws for me. It took too long to really hook me, to get the real conflict. And, then, once it did get its claws into me, it built to this wonderful crescendo of conflict and…and…and…just sort of sputters a bit and ends in a whimper. I felt like I waited too long for a payoff that never came.  Of course, as with all book-related thoughts/reviews, that’s, well, just my opinion, man.
6. Hops hopes: Osborn Brewing wants to establish a sustainable hop farm in southwest Ohio to support local breweries and home brewers  I love this idea because a) it would be one more step in the direction of Cincinnati reclaiming it’s pre-Prohibition crown as the City of Brewing, and b) as more people drink craft beer, more hops are going to be needed. So having some grown locally will be an extremely helpful. Osborn Brewing has a Kickstarter project to get everything going, and (as of now) is only $600 short of being funded.  Huzzah! So if you, too, see the benefit of having local-grown hops available, get over there and back them.  Run, don’t walk!  Before it’s too late!

And on that note, puddineers, I’m out.

Pud’n