If everything worked right, we made it to Hawaii.
If it didn’t, well, enjoy splitting up my stuff.
We left Tulsa 11 November just after 8 AM CST. In theory, that gets us to Lihue (via Salt Lake and Seattle) just after 8 PM HST. Hawaii is 4 hours behind Tulsa, making it about midnight for our bodies.
It’ll be fun.
The flights were pretty okay. We chose Delta Comfort Plus seats from Tulsa to Salt Lake and from Seattle to Lihue, which gave us a couple of extra inches of leg room. That couple of inches made a huge difference. I was surprised by how light our first flight was—only about half full. The other two flights were much closer to capacity.
We ran into a hiccup at SLC though. As the flight crew went through their preflight checks after we pushed back from the gate, they heard bad noises from the ailerons. Of course, “bad noises” is redundant when you’re talking about control surfaces. We deplaned (at a different gate from the one we’d just pushed back from) and were told to stand by as they tried to find another aircraft for us. Stroke of luck: there was a flight due in in 20 minutes, so they reassigned that plane to our flight. We ended up leaving about 90 minutes late, which all in all wasn’t bad, I thought. That included turning around the new flight and getting all the bags moved from one plane to the other. Our previous itinerary included a roughly 3-hour layover at Seattle so we had time to spare. Well done, Delta SLC.
And I still get a kick out of watching the world pass by at 400 miles an hour from 36,000 feet. I don’t think that’ll ever get old.
Meanwhile, Back At The Ranch
The carpet install didn’t happen. The store called me Wednesday to let me know the order didn’t arrive. They wanted to reschedule for next/this week, but I didn’t want Middle Son and Youngest Daughter to have to deal with it by themselves, so we’re waiting until after Thanksgiving. That’s probably going to throw a wrench in our tradition of getting the Christmas tree on Black Friday, because I don’t want to have to move the tree for the carpet guys. I hope Middle Son isn’t too upset; that’s one of his favorite traditions.
Middle Son, Youngest Son, Youngest Daughter, Diana and I continued our semi-tradition of Marvel premiere attendance with The Marvels Thursday night. I’ll probably never be able to hear “Memories” again without thinking of this movie. Good flick. I went into it without having seen WandaVision or Ms Marvel and I understood events well enough.
Football
I am less than impressed with the Big Ten’s actions on Friday. If you’re going to make a decision that affects how a team runs its game, you should inform them as soon as you can. You shouldn’t wait until the team is flying to the venue, less than 24 hours before the game. You shouldn’t wait until practically the close of business on a Friday that’s also a court holiday. The wording—which amounted to “We’re penalizing the team, not the coach”—comes across as a way to weasel out of the 2-game suspension limit imposed by B1G regulations. For all the crowing about sportsmanship and integrity, you’d think they’d follow their own rules.
I also don’t understand the rush to punishment by the conference, especially when the NCAA hasn’t finished their investigation.
I expected the injunction to go through, given the fungible nature of a football game. In the end, it apparently didn’t matter. Michigan is now 10-0 on the season, and 4-0 without Coach Harbaugh.
And as someone pointed out in the Wolverines subreddit, Ryan Day will have to opportunity to lose to two different Michigan coaches in three years.
Anyway, Go Blue. And Roll Green Wave.
Writing
I got a little bit of writing done when we were traveling Saturday, mostly cast development in Ghost. It’s an almost indescribably unsettling feeling to be thinking so much about how and why and where my serial killer chooses his victims. It’s especially so when I’m sitting next to my pastor wife while she’s reading Prayer In The Night.
I do occasionally wonder how or if other mystery/thriller/suspense writers have any difficulty or concerns about how violent they are in writing their stories.
Maybe difficulty isn’t the right word. I’m not worried that I’ll snap one day and start living out one of my stories.
But I do ponder the apparent ease with which I can come up with ways and reasons to kill people. Then again, people murder for all sorts of reasons. As Keith Vincent says in Ghost, “Most of the killers I’d met in jail and prison killed in the heat of the moment. The girlfriend or wife pissed them off about something, and the beating got out of hand. Or she cheated on him. Or stole from him. Even the gang stuff wasn’t that psychotic. Those were all about some form of retribution. You dissed me or my momma or my baby momma. You stole drugs or sold dope in our territory. It was simple crap like that.”
And my antagonist in Ghost isn’t all that creative about how he kills his victims. He’s strangled all of them. But that’s an especially intimate way to murder someone, even more so than stabbing, I’d think. When you use a knife, you’re very close to a person, deep within their personal space. But you don’t necessarily have to face them when you stab someone. True, you can strangle someone from behind, but the killer in Ghost does it from the front. He gets off a little bit from watching the girls faces as they die.
And knowing him that well scares me just a little.
Sunday, we’re kicking back and relaxing. Monday is the helicopter tour and the evening dinner sail. Y’all have fun.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to share a thought in the comments. Sign up for my infrequent newsletter here. Find some of my other writing at The Good Men Project, too. Subscribe to the blog via the link in the right sidebar or follow it on Mastodon. You can also add my RSS feed to your favorite reader.
Share your thoughts!