Hello from the Runoffs

Good morning, all.

I don't know the first thing about myself. I'll toss out a few items, and leave order to the ordinal mind.

I am a veteran of the peacetime Air Force, post-Viet Nam. It was my way out of a poke-and-plumb desert town. "Poke-and-plumb" was my grandad's term -- poke your head out the window and you're plumb out of town. That's been around so long it shows more chin than forehead.

About the Air Force. It is said that the military will make a man out of a boy. This is untrue. Service will offer the opportunity. I come away with a story or two.

I am of a technical bent. I put in some twenty-odd years working on slot machines, and some few-odd months on computers. I passed the A+ and built a pretty good head of steam toward Cisco certification.

Then my heart went, and I almost drowned standing on dry land. It was a memorable sensation, leaning against my truck in the cool drouth of a desert night, uttering, "glug, glug" from deep in my chest. For years hence, the memory will suffice.

I may be the Guinness Book leader for Years Unpublished. Since that category is not published, I can let the years go unnumbered. Soon enough, it'll be +1.

I like to play with the language. I love the pith of lyrics, the discipline of a story told in sixteen lines. I'll wade in swamp water to collect a lily of a synonym. I always aspire to alliteration. I strive daily to arouse a wonderful obstruction to the mind of Google, et al.

Here goes.

Hi, Maryn,

I'm still chuckling over Van Gogh in Time of Plague.

A word to my fellow new subscribers. I gave. It was pocket money, and it was dead simple.

In four days of reading and one of active membership, I have found at least two people I'd like to know better. I think of it as buying time.

Nuff sed.

Hi, friend! If you can read upside down, it's the least I can do.

Is "drouth" in regular usage in parts of Australia? Or are you, like me, someone who picks up words like change dropped through heedless fingers?

Thank you, DanielSTJ. Congratulations on a mile (American) of posts.

Slow down, sweetheart. I would never marry in winter.

Spring comes early in the NA High Desert. Whaddya say, first day?

We call it on February 30.

My mom explained it to me when I was very young. I was to keep the women around me happy if I had any hopes of ever going to Heaven. Well, I just tacked on another month in Purgatory.

You two should get together and give me, in absentia, the roasting I deserve. Pick up an Ernie (Muppets, Bert's simpleton friend) doll, a dozen hatpins, and a meat-tenderizing mallet. Stop on the way for a few of those bottles of wine that won't be going to China any time soon.

Only you can save me from my earned scourging in Perdition. Have mercy.

mccardey and I would like to thank you for following our rom-com-in-twelve-posts. Especially, we would like to thank be frank for her cameo as the Sanguine Friend. We all see great things in her future.

Our world-spanning fantasy quest in forty-eight posts is in pre-production. Watch for it at your local AW Forum, coming in Summer, 2022.