What! - Free Weekend?!!

I am confounded by two sources of consternation today. One – how the hell can it already be approaching October!? I just turned the air conditioning off (again) last evening. September somehow, by some subterfuge slinked by almost without notice. There is something patently unfair. I know time speeds up as we get older but this seems excessive. The second surprise involves a free weekend. I’m almost at a loss to explain how this came about but I have run out of children to visit so my Favorite Panamanian and I are on our own this weekend. She, never to let such a blatant opportunity slip by, is already making noises about going out dancing on Saturday night. Well. I suppose. I may even get a chance to test drive the ugly fire pit for the first time. But first, we will have to less than solemnly welcome the First Friday of the Week!

Birthday Gal - Showing Off Some of her Shopping Loot to her Mom

We finally connected with the birthday girl yesterday who was rocking her day yesterday. She got the day off from work (courtesy of the company in honor of her birthday) and Wingman hung with the FBR so she could hit the mall with a fellow Curbside Gal. She immediately put some fo her birthday gift cards to work and that warmed my wife’s heart. She thinks everyone should love shopping (still trying to figure out how we ended up together). The FBR did her best to wish her mother a happy birthday. Wingman provided this utterly charming video of her practicing her birthday wishes.

We lost a true icon this week with the passing of Hugh Hefner. I don’t think anybody from my generation, at least secular ones like myself, didn’t want to be him. One of the first things I did after starting my first paying job was get a Playboy subscription. Mom was not pleased. There will be an eternal debate about his place in history but he certainly opened a door in overly Puritanical thinking that less refined publishers rushed through. He always included some stellar short story writing in his magazines which I discovered a couple years after starting my subscription. Yes I actually did read a Playboy magazine a few times and might have glanced at some of the photography. Rest in peace, he probably needed a break.

Bye Hef - Get Some Rest

I also finished off the next in the Imager series by L.E. Modesitt with Rex Regis. This one only took a couple days for a very long book – it was that good as I literally stormed through it. You know a book is good when the struggle to find enough time to get back to reading becomes paramount. While this is not the last book in the series it is the last featuring Quaeryt the indomitable but humble hero. There’s very little of the action packed imaging most the earlier books in the series had but somehow the author raised my interest to a fever pitch anyways as Quaeryt uncovers and attempts to unravel a high level military conspiracy against himself and his brother in law ruler. I’m going to miss Quaeryt a lot but I can say that about any of Modesitt’s heroes. I do like how Quaeryt ended up, he’d more than earned it. I’m going to wander away from the Imager series for a while so Modesitt can complete some more books, one is currently pending.

The Bad Cinema project count rises #17 out of 100 with Crash of the Moons, an amalgam of several episodes from a black and white 1950’s sci fi TV series – so bad but featuring SGT Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes!