This was one of those Saturdays where every plan I made got screwed up and made for a pretty good day.

• Everybody slept in – I poked my nose out from under the covers at 7:44.
• I rousted the pooches and got their morning routine accomplished, everybody cooperated.
• Turned on the heat. It was 57 degrees in the house. Nancy was in D.C. with Jon Stewart / Stephen Colbert to Rally to Restore the Sanity and/or Fear.  I didn’t want to turn the heat on without her permission, but it was damned cold. First thing to go wrong. Furnace didn’t fire.
• The lawnmowers wouldn’t start so I could mow/mulch the leaves from the neighbor’s tree. (Yes, I have a back-up lawnmower because Nancy said if I bought an electric start she would mow the yard sometimes. Then she had a series of operations that kept her doing it.)  Second thing to go wrong.
• I hooked up the blow-me leaf handler and blew the leaves from the patio and NASCAR room/cigar bar.
• This brought me back to the dogs to do a pee and poop run.
• A message on the answering machine at 11:23 said that the 2:00 zipline run with a bunch of volunteer firefighters had been moved up to 11:30. The zipline was 30 minutes away, but what the heck, it’s Saturday and if I caught up with them, fine, if not fine. Potential third screwed up plan.
• I went anyway and met them just as they were going into get “geared up.”
• After 90 minutes of flying through the tops of the bare trees yelling like an idiot, I was hungry for some good Q.
• Big Bubba Bucks Belly Busting Bliss BBQ was just 20 minutes away. Major problem. Closed. Sign said they would be open Saturday 10 am to 8 pm. It was 2:45.
• In the back lot next to Bubba’s I could see some blue smoke rising from the trees. No such luck, just a bunch of good old boys watching a big pile of brush burn. They didn’t have a clue why Bubba was closed. But they did get a chuckle when I told them when I saw the blue smoke I was afraid they had a hog burning and had put him out of business.
• Lunch was a Diet Coke on the interstate.
• Exercised the Magnum Hemi Wagon by running up to 100 mph a couple times. Zipline fever!
• Back at the old Rancho Del Leafo, I gave the mower another try and vroom! Mulched the leaves. It had been so long since I last used the mower (because of the drought) that I guess it just needed more priming.
• Made myself a healthy snack of two Quaker chocolate coated granola bars and invented a new adult beverage:

1. Take a 24 oz. plastic souvenir cup
2. Add 12 ounces of diet Sierra Mist Cranberry soft drink
3. Add a healthy slosh (maybe 4 ounces +/-) of apple cider
4. Add a like-wise unhealthy slosh of Demon Rum
5. I call it the Seirra Misty Apple

• Took a break to drink and read the latest AARP magazine and was all pissed off at the cover because of the airbrushing done to Jamie Lee Curtis and Betty White – the people who say that plastic surgery isn’t for them! But they sure do like the old photoshop treatment OK.
• Accumulated all the extra long extension cords in Edison’s Cabin to reach get power for the electric hedge trimmers to the bushes near the street.
• Done and done. Well, not really, more like done and a half. I left the trimmings in a heap in the driveway. If I am able to move tomorrow, I’ll put them in trash cans.
• Made myself a hearty meal of Nutrisystem Chili and another Sierra Misty Apple. Read in Business Week how Google doesn’t pay their fair share of taxes. I am conflicted. As an owner, I want Google to make as much money as possible, but corporate tax avoidance through shell corporations to do the Double Irish and the Dutch Sandwich stinks. (Mostly because I can’t do it.)
• Watched a Southwest Airlines jet land at the Smallburg Airport. We don’t have scheduled commercial service to Smallburg. The approach to the main runway lines up with the street behind the house. The muckety-mucks think Smallburg should have scheduled commercial service. They haven’t read that airlines are cutting back on flights. Except for Southwest, which is moving fast and furious to make it easier to jump the Mexican border.  That 737 landing actually was quieter than the corporate jets that zip in and out at tree-top level. The flight originated from Dallas Love field, the home of Southwest. Things that make you say hmmmmmmmm. I should have alerted the media.
• Watched the sun disappear and fired up the chiminea to burn the sticks that had accumulated from a summer of big winds. Had another Seirra Misty Apple.
• The embers died down at 7:44 p.m. and I am inside for the duration of the day.

All in all, not a bad twelve hours for a Saturday.