Today marks the 700th post in a row since I started this bit of blather and it will be a fairly short one as I’m about to argue with one of my daughters and won’t have time to do a retrospective.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is sick which leaves me in charge of cooking and cleaning in addition to my usual duties of issuing instructions, being ignored, enforcing instructions, becoming bad guy, etc.

I managed to get our youngest sent to bed although there is no actual evidence she brushed her teeth.

Our oldest is studying for a high school entrance exam this coming Friday and believes that exempts her from doing the handful of dishes from tonight’s supper. I will soon prove how mistaken she is, especially when she takes a break to check texts and Twitter on her tablet.

A few steps will then ensue:
–I will attempt Daddy Logic first by saying “Since you’re not doing anything, go wash dishes”.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly.
–She will ignore me.
–I will raise my voice slightly more.
–She will, at this point, remove one earphone–the one farthest away from me–and say “What?” in a way that indicates how annoying I’m being.
–I will repeat my request.
–She will snap that it’s impossible because she’s busy.
–I will tell her not to talk to me like that.
–She will snap that she doesn’t understand what “that” means.
–I will promise to turn off the Wi-Fi hub and cut her off from the net if she doesn’t go do the dishes “right now”.
–She will react with a huff.
–I will tell her not to huff at me.
–She will deny that she huffed at me.
–I will repeat my promise to unplug the W–Fi hub if she doesn’t go do the dishes.
–She will pretend she doesn’t care about using the net and return to checking texts because “teen logic”.
–I will unplug the Wi-Fi hub.
–She will panic and go do dishes.

She will, however, neither dry anything nor put anything away.

I spent part of today smearing ink with my fingers. Just to be safe, I did it on two different pieces of paper. I also took a lot of pictures.

As part of my occasional quest to, on occasion, appear productive, I spent the afternoon taking pictures of a few things I plan to review. For a future ink review I had to track down a quote from This is Spinal Tap. That, of course, led me to spend some time watching clips from the movie.

I call this “research.”

After a half-hour or so of research, I then had to write out the quote on a piece of paper, and then draw a few lines and see how many seconds it took them to dry. The lines didn’t dry quickly and I ended up with inky fingers.

That prompted me to try a different piece of paper and then to dribble water over parts of the pages to see how the ink held up to water.

Luckily, no one in my family saw me do this so I didn’t have any ‘splainin’ to do. (Although part of me is curious to know what the reaction would have been so there may be more “ink testing” in the future.)

I now have to edit the pictures I took and decide what day I’m going to write the actual review.

Then there were pictures of pens and a valiant but ultimately failed attempt to catch up on a few daily projects I’ve been neglecting. Yeah, I know that catching up on daily projects in a single day means they are not, technically, daily projects, but I want to catch up on them in order to keep up with something resembling a habit.

The day ended with homemade cheesecake as we finally had a full day to finish celebrating our oldest’s birthday (we had the celebratory dinner yesterday. More on that in another post.)

Now I have to get to bed because I’m working tomorrow. Perhaps I need to double check the definition of “weekend”.

One of the things I liked about Mississippi was that it’s acceptable for a young gentleman to take his date to a gas station for a meal.

The funny part is, I never took my then girlfriend to a gas station for dinner. Instead I got her catfish in the back of a grocery store. I also tried to convince other people to go there.

As I understand it, this a common phenomenon in the South and stems partly from the fluctuation in oil and gas prices, the need for income diversity and an exploitation of the Southern love of automobiles.

Oddly, when I was in Oxford, I never went to a gas station for a meal and I consider that a terrible mistake. I was more prone to get fast food rather than go next door and get ribs and an oil check.

My favorite place, though, was Taylor Grocery, which is outside of Oxford, Ms and is accessed by a creepy tree-lined road where you keep expecting to see an in-bred kid playing a banjo and Bill McKinney telling you to “squeal like a pig”. (Although, technically, that’s the kind of thing that happens in Georgia.)

At the back of the tiny grocery store is a restaurant that serves terrific catfish and hush-puppies and, if I remember correctly, allows you to bring your own wine but not your own beer. You might have to wait in line and at some point are expected to write on the walls.

I also tried to convince Mom and Dad Two to try it, although that suggestion was met with skepticism. Mom Two is from Cape Cod and considers mushy fish to be either a form of bait or a form or garbage. Eventually they went and said they’d liked it.

Now, in Japan, the closest I get to a good meal in a gas station is a coffee shop in a gas station and the rest areas on the expressways.

It’s not quite the same, though.

There is a Japanese saying I heard once along the lines of “He who climbs Mount Fuji is a wise man; He who climbs it twice is a fool.” A similar thing can be said about visiting Graceland.

I of course, have visited Graceland twice which means, well, yeah, pretty much.

The first time I went to Graceland I went because I felt it was something I ought to do. I lived in Oxford, Mississippi and had friends from Albania (Mom and Dad Two) who lived in Memphis and they agreed to drive me to Graceland, but wouldn’t go back inside. Instead Dad Two sat in the cafe across the street (which served Elvis specialties like deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches) and drank coffee whilst I went inside.

I visited the car museum and the planes (both of which are worth a visit) and then crossed the street to the mansion.

A couple things struck me about the mansion. First, except for the jungle room, and some random leopard skin, it was less gaudy than I was expecting, or at least I was surprised by how it all seemed to work. Also, I remember how bored the room guides were. They weren’t tour guides, instead they were human tape players who waited in a room and recited the same speech many times a day and had grown bored and robotic about it all. When the young woman explained how Elvis saw the jungle furniture and decided to build a room around it, she could have been a text to speech computer.

The second time I went with my father and step-mother. That time the bored human tape players had been replaced with actual tape players (with headphones) and Priscilla Presley’s voice guided visitors through the mansion and the museum of Elvis guitars and jumpsuits. There were two problems with this.

First, many tourists followed the tapes so exactly that when Priscilla Presley told them to move they moved. She didn’t tell them to look though, so I got stepped on and bumped into a lot.

Second, the recordings couldn’t be hurried. You moved at Priscilla Presley’s pace and no faster. If you weren’t interested in the subtleties of the American Eagle jumpsuits from the Aloha Via Satellite from Hawaii concert, you were out of luck. You had to listen to the explanation before you got to move to the Mexican Sundial jumpsuit.

I ended up just letting the tape run and moved along at my own pace. This though, proved rather creepy, as I found myself surrounded by people who moved silently when Priscilla Presley told them to. I also got to visit a back building that had been closed the first time I visited.

I recommend everyone visit Graceland once, mostly because Memphis is worth visiting. Graceland is in a rough neighborhood, though, and don’t go in mid-August around the anniversary of Elvis death unless you have a place to stay. That’s when all the Elvis fans and Elvis impersonators do their annual hajj to Graceland. It’s kind of fun, but you’ll never get a room and you never, ever, criticize Harum Scarum.