White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Uff-Dah! It was a wing-dinger again. The Saturday morning hound husbandry/fire starter/breakfast/swim/refuel chain of events went off fairly well. I'm always a bit nervous when we have more than a few seconds of spare time though. It's as if I have forgotten to do something. Troublesome, but I suppose efficiency happens after a while. In any event, the big disappointment for the morning was my mid-air refueling mission over the Gassetria Row Sea. Apparently, Wawa isn't the cheapest gas in town anymore. I zoomed over and guzzled my fill at 2.29$/gal only to find out that there was a CLOSER station with a list price of 2.25$/gal! So, let's review the math ... 4 cents difference ... 30 gallons ... MY GOD! That's nearly a buck and a quarter ... FRAUD I SAY! Convert that cash into miles at 30mpg and it is nearly 16 miles of ground I will not cover. Or the charge for one trip on the turnpike. Or, a 1 liter soda. I may have to file for bankruptcy.

After I returned to the swim club after my tragic experience with petro-chemicals, the Mrs and I changed the kids back into dry clothing and headed on over to Mr Wilson's Grey Goose farm. I intended on making a barter exchange with him. A bottle of wine for five one gallon buckets of bamboo clumps. We found him puttering about his driveway and quickly made our presence known. Surprisingly enough, he and his clan were in the throes of a minor flu outbreak. This was not known to me until I had finished what I was doing and rendezvoused at the SuperSaturn with the Mrs. This little 15 second snippet of data did not convey the importance it should have. Little did I know that within 24 hours I would be well aware how ominous it was. More of that later. Once back at the Manor, I went about planting the last of the 1000 bulbs in the back 50 and doing a little bit of clean-up. Flowers are so aesthetically pleasing in the warmer months, but the dried remains are not to be tolerated in the arboreally and sylvan setting of our grounds. Chop-chop, hack-hack. Sweat began to trickle down my spine.

We are scheduled to drive up to Chinatown for the Mrs's Grandmother's 82nd birthday bash at one of the finer banquet halls in Manhattan. Leaving at 1300 hours for an event to be held later in the evening is called for due to the unpredictable traffic on the NJ turnpike, Holland Tunnel crossing and Canal Street Free-for-all bisect of lower Manhattan. Indeed, we were well underway at 1330 when the Mrs got a call on her brain-tumor cell phone. It was her Minister in the Making brother informing us that He, his Lady Friend School Marm Eileen and the Mother-In-Law were interested in returning to the Manor with us after the banquet to spend time with the kids. Fine, ok. Good thing we got the alert before I hit the point of no return on the PA Turnpike. You see, once you are on that road, you just cannot stop and head back home unless you really need to. For example, if there is a nuclear strike or a meteor hits the bridge over the Delaware river or a volcano erupts beneath the east river. Acceptable interrupts to invoke a back-track. In any event, we return to the Manor and transfer the personnel and hardware to the Family Tank and do an IPL on our trip. Fast forward an hour and a half ... we are sitting about 3 miles outside the Holland Tunnel staring at sea of what must have been 1 BILLION blazing brake (see Paul, I spelled it write) lights. Once we hacked our way through that mess with a battery of rapid-fire LAW rockets and a few well placed daisy-cutters, we then found ourselves in queue to get on Canal street ... which made the wait for the Tunnel look like the AutoBahn. Thinking quickly, we swerved off course to the South to the Court House and came up Bowery to Confucius center. Quite a bit out of the way but much more expedient. If you have ever tried to hammer your way through lower Manhattan on a weekend, you know exactly what I mean. We pass off our keys to the well groomed and courteous parking attendants (an obvious rarity in any part of the world, let alone public parking in NYC) in the bowels of Confucius Center and make our way up to Paw-Paw's apartment. We are an hour early so it gives us a bit of time to do some minor socializing and a quick shopping excursion. All this before the mammoth feast upon the best beasts that land, air and sea have to offer.

The banquet goes well as far as the traditional ones go. Various dishes of which the components have never been identified by western science landed upon the table momentarily before quickly becoming so much molecular residue upon clacking chopsticks and the gasps of awe by onlookers. It almost made me feel bad, but I did let others get a taste too. ;) Jacob and I eat like the kings of old while Alexis reserves her palate for noodles and butter sauteed sugar snap peas. That, and the concluding desert dishes. My precious little angel was coming down with a cold and had the resulting moody disposition. Combine that with a multi-hour meal and you understand how this could be a synergetic combination that the Manhattan Project architects would blush at the consideration. After a few visits to a less than anti-septic disposal center, we called it a night. Rounded up the troops and got ready to make the loooong trek back to the Haupertonian HQ from the lands concrete canyons. Amongst the raging truckers hopped up on illicits and the drowsy purveyors of Broadway we clawed our way down the safe grounds of Pennsyltucky. Arriving shortly after 2300 hours, we shuttled the Twins right to bed and I retired shortly afterwards. The great upside to the evening is that even though I left the dogs out of their kennels, the did not use the floor as a dumping ground. Ahhh, halcyon days!

Sunday Morning ... Mass at 0700. I fed the dogs and stoked the fire before departing the slumber filled manor. Apparently, after I left the Hounds finished their 2 tons of morning feast and spent the next 10 minutes howling at my abrupt departure. Poor guys, just can't do without daddy's attention on weekend mornings. I too often howl at the departure of the Mrs. Of course, it's because she has gone shopping with a credit card. This morning though, it is I with the credit card and permission to use it at the grocery store. Oh, and use it I shall. The meat section shall feel the wrath and unending depths of my appetite. No comfort shall be found in the Dairy section either. No, I left great swaths of destruction in my wake ... bacon and kielbasa were things of fond legend and myth. When I arrived home, the kids and Mrs were now awake. The rest of the day was spent either cooking breakfast (bacon, eggs, toast, sausage, hash browns, turnovers, etc...), cooking lunch, cooking dinner (20 BBQ chicken legs, 20 BBQ thighs, a skillet full of provincial chicken, 3 racks of BBQ ribs, salad) or doing laundry. Oh, I did throw wood on the fire every so often and completed the day by driving the outlaws ... err, inlaws to the local train station after the sun had set and filling up the FamilyTank with gas at 2.25/gal. Busy weekend indeed. Little did I know that keeping my activities inside would not save me from an impending virus that had slowly crept upon me.