Road Trip! (And a couple of short reviews)

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Note: Photo may not reflect actual vehicle used on indicated trip.

Would you believe I have three blog posts written, and yet, here I sit on a Tuesday evening with not one post ready to go? I have roughed out three very different essays: a review, a rant and a business / leadership reflection. Having done so, I didn’t sweat last night. Normally, on Monday nights, I finish (or start and finish) my blog while Christian has his Taekwondo class. 2,000 words in an hour. Not hard. And I can spend 20 minutes editing on Tuesday. Last night I thought I was ahead of the game.

Tonight, I looked at my three “roughed out” blogs. Put the emphasis on “rough.” None of these were ready to edit! What was I thinking? Of course, I was thinking about twelve other things–work deadlines, the story I was editing, personal business that needed to be dealt with in the wake of a whirlwind trip to my family home in the mountains…

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Homecoming – Part 2

ChocolateHouse2013SMAs I said last week, before Christmas, the opportunity to visit my hometown presented itself. Actually, it was a little less of an opportunity and a little more of a pressing need. In addition to being a cultural center of some repute, Yancey County is also (yay!) one of the meth capitals of these United States. I know, right? What a distinction. I guess lots of acres of remote, forested areas provide meth heads with ample opportunity to build meth shacks and run meth labs.

Said meth heads use some unique tricks to finance their rather idiotic illegal enterprises: they steal copper. In my particular case, they illegally entered my family’s house in the mountains and used tin snips to cut out all the copper hot water pipes. These they planned to sell to finance their idiotic lifestyle. These idiots, though, we apprehended by the County Sheriff on the road from our house, the copper pipes rattling around in their open truck bed. They claimed both that they were members of my family and that a family member who didn’t own the house had given them permission to vandalize it. Continue reading

Homecoming – Part 1

YCI

The Yancey County Public Library, formerly the Yancey Collegiate Institute.

Writing… or any kind of work that requires planning and forethought… is not coming easily to me lately. I started out 2013 very hopeful, ready to take on the challenges the year was going to throw at me, determined that I would maintain the sense of calm and control which I’d attained while spending Christmas with my family and away from the concerns of work. For the most part, I succeeded. From the perspective of my ability to manage the chaos around me, it’s been a pretty good year.

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