StanleyWheeler

  We had a manifold mission for the weekend that took us to Le Chateau au Chat Gris and to the home of olden days. 99 and I loaded the compact white whale and began our voyage. On our arrival au chateau, we immediately commenced the festivities, beginning with celebratory weed-pulling. We harvested three wagon loads or more of the cursed crop, both getting pricked multiple times by the dried stickers that congregated at the base of the foul flora. On the plus side, we had arrived in time to execute our vile vegetation eviction revelry during the hottest part of the day. After we had disposed of the verdant corpses, I analyzed the next scheduled event in our carnival of fun. There had been a storm and the old maple tree, exuberantly cavorting like a featured performer in Cirque du Soleil, became apprised of the fact that her limbs were no longer suited for the gymnastics of a sapling and thus broke a hip. The said fracture was over 20 feet off the ground. The limb had not broken cle...

It was a Thursday.  According to the red book, we had 22 steps for the day's events. I had constructed the red book before we had left home. Every day had been planned with destinations, addresses, telephone numbers, flight numbers, airports, arrival times, etc, from the departure day of May 11 to the return day of May 19--all tucked into clear plastic page protectors. Each day had a schedule page, subsequent pages contained the documents that we might need for that day. The red book had served us well. At hotels, I had pulled out the reservations previously made online; at the car rental when the girl insisted on asking me every question that I had already answered online, I showed her the page from the red book and everything went smoothly. My advice regarding the red book, in the voice of Karl Malden: Don't leave home without it.  But this was Thursday.  We were going to Paris. We would be at Notre Dame by step 3. Step one consisted of breakfast...and we skipped th...

My wife isn't a Star Trek fan, but I'm pretty sure she felt like the lone redshirt in the landing party. I know this because she had expressed some anxiety about going to France. She didn't know a word of French. She had no idea how the metro system, or currency, or anything else in the country worked. She was like a redshirt on her first mission. Fortunately, I didn't have to worry about losing her. I did have trouble at times getting her to let go of my hand so that I could look at the map. Through everything s he was a fabulous 99  to my Maxwell Smart. (I know. How can she be both a redshirt and 99 ? She just was. I guess she felt like a redshirt, but she performed like 99. Would that combination be something like 99 Red Balloons? No. And I'm not linking to it.) I think it took over an hour and a half, including the change of trains to get to our planned stop...except we didn't. I had made another clever Maxwell Smart maneuver when we had switched from...