Long John Silver

Resolved, that this faux hiatus I was supposedly taking be summarily abandoned in light of recent events. I am returning to the blogsphere. I've decided to discontinue the tattered remains of this hiatus. I know, you're thrilled. So am I; it's good to be back (legitimately). First on the docket is a progress report. I went down to Riverside on Friday and passed the time trial for Lesson #6, coffee and wine drinks. That's four tests down, three to go. I have martinis, shots, and blended drinks left. Shots are supposedly the hardest, since there are so many ingredients. I think I'll do that one after martinis, which are also kind of tricky. Blended drinks should be fairly simple, so I'll save it for last. After that, I'll just have the über-mega-massive final exam left (a time trial with drinks from all the lessons) and some further training, and then I can start using the job placement services and find a bartender's job somewhere. Fancy that! I'll be working nights, serving up drinks, listening to people's problems, getting hit on by cougars, making loads of money in tips, and saving up dough for my summer trip to England. There's nothing new to report on the flying front. I haven't scheduled a test date yet. I'm still studying (or rather, trying to find time to study) for my exams. I'm really, really worried about this. There's a huge amount to remember, most of which I've forgotten and will have to mash back into my brain on short notice. I'm also rapidly running out of money for the $500 examiner's fee. My folks have promised to stump up, but I hate to mooch off them so badly... On the good news front, my folks and I took a trip down to Rancho Cucamonga today to hit up a rather killer retailer that I never knew about (but can't imagine why): BevMo! It's like Costco or Sam's Club, but for booze. You walk in and there's nothing but bottles. Bottles, bottles everywhere, and every drop to drink. I was intoxicated (heh heh) by the very sight. I went straight to the rum section and behold! I found my favorite: Mount Gay, from Barbados. When I think of the word "rum" I think of Mount Gay; that's how good it is. And who'd a thunk it? They had my favorite bourbon too, Old Crow. Mom is so glad to have me home that I don't even need to wheedle anymore. She saw me looking at the Old Crow and offered to buy it right off the bat. She's such a dear. We got the Old Crow, some Johnnie Walker's Black Label (for Dad), a couple bottles of Broker's London Dry Gin (my parents are fiends for that stuff, and I can see why; it's damn good), a six-pack of Anchor Brewery's Liberty Ale, and some Irish coffee glasses (again for me). Why did the world not inform me about BevMo!? Oh...and speaking of good news... There's one thing I simply must report to you. I was going to try to hold it in until I had something more concrete, but I can't stand it any longer. I have to tell you. You, my friends, were not the only people who read the tentative summary I wrote for my novel. Somebody else did. Somebody who happens to be a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of a small publishing company in the American South. Yes indeed. She read it, and thought my novel premise sounded good. So she sent me a personal e-mail and asked if I'd like to send her a synopsis and the first few chapters. She said she'd give me a free critique. If she liked the manuscript, she said her small press might even publish it, if that was all right with me. Can you imagine how that made me feel? Me, so feverishly dreaming of publication? I was naturally suspicious, of course. I come from a family that locks up the cars even if they're parked in the driveway, and believes every friendly e-mail from a complete stranger is a scam. I took steps to make sure that the woman who e-mailed me was indeed the author and publisher she said she was. I assured myself that she was on the level; then, trusting to luck and hope and good fortune, I sent off the synopsis and the excerpt to her. I am now anxiously awaiting her reply. To say that I am excited by all this would be the understatement of the geological epoch. I'll keep you posted. Hang on a minute! We've done the bad news and the good news. But what about the weird news? Not long after I first opened a Site Meter account, I began to notice something odd. I had a slow, steady trickle of visitors, but one visitor kept coming back, multiple times a day, day in and day out. Stranger still, that person's browser was located in Leasburg, Missouri. This according to Site Meter, at least. I couldn't figure it out. Who did I know in Leasburg, Missouri? Who wanted to read my blog that badly? I figured, based on the number of times they came to visit, that they must be an acquaintance of mine. But I didn't know who it could be, not for the life of me. Then I finally figured it out. It was me. I didn't know about setting Site Meter to ignore visits from my own browser. So there I was, editing posts and previewing them on my blog, with Site Meter recording every click and page view. Oopsy-daisy! Why does Site Meter record my firmly California-based visits as originating from Missouri? Tough to tell. My computer's been behaving weirdly ever since I came back from the Orient. It still thinks I'm in Korea, for one thing. My Google, Blogger, and Facebook homepages are all in Korean. I have to log in before they switch back to English. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch for my computer to think it was in Leasburg rather than Apple Valley. Or perhaps it isn't my computer. Perhaps it's my Internet provider. It senses my foreign computer, shrugs its ethnocentric cyber-shoulders and interjects its own home base onto my browser. Bugger... One more thing. If you want to know why I named this post "Long John Silver," you can go whistle. I just felt like it.