Yes, on my last work trip I saw someone with very dark hair and blue eyes; there was a Subway employee sweeping the floor while I ate; and there was a woman who somewhat comically heard me wrong when I mentioned her eyes.

Rather than write separately about all three, I decided to combine them into one person. I hear “real” writers do this all the time, which is one way they are able to put the disclaimer in their books saying, “characters depicted in this work of fiction… not real people… blah blah blah.”

On the plane ride into the customer site (or the nearest airport, anyway), I saw a little girl, maybe about four or five years old, sitting directly across the aisle from me. A scruffy man I guessed to be her grandfather sat next to her. Her hair was very dark — almost black, yet she had pale skin along with bright blue eyes that nearly glowed.

At the Subway, which was the only fast food establishment in the customer’s town or within 15 miles of it, I saw a young, hefty woman sweeping the floor, and except for the parts about her eyes and my getting between her and the Thank You trash can, that scene went down exactly as I described it.

On my way back home, at the airport security point where someone checks the travelers’ ID and boarding pass before letting them go through the scanners, an older woman checked my driver’s license and used her neon yellow highlight pen to make an approving mark on my boarding pass. I noticed her eyes were a shade of green I rarely see, and, hoping that the fact I most likely never would see her again decreased her suspicion that I was flirting with her (I was not), I commented that they were nice. Our dialog played out as I depicted it in “Sweeper’s Peepers.”

So, while the scene itself (except for my stopping Sweeper and talking directly to her) was completely real, the character was a combination of three different people — all complete strangers — whom I saw during the trip. I guess I wrote it as practice just to see how it felt.

The earpieces on her glasses push into the side of her pudgy, pink cheek, but her young, taut skin refuses to wrap around them. Her tan shirt outlines the contour of skin on her back as she moves a chair out of her broom’s way. Dark brown hair, clean and neat, spills down just a few inches below her baseball cap.

Each metal chair skids across the tile floor, the heaviness of the sound belying its size. The area under that table clean, she noisily slides the chairs back into place and keeps sweeping.

She has about half the floor clean now, but a customer making her way down the sandwich line steps around large chunks of dirt.

Three men wearing bright orange t-shirts enter, welcomed by the automatic doorbell’s wordless ping. One of them stops and shuffles his feet on the welcome mat, but still his heavy boots drop tiny clumps of mud in a jagged trail to the sandwich line.

Sweeper’s expression never changes. She continues on her original course while they order, get their food, and leave. Sweep, skid, sweep, sweep.

“At least they didn’t walk in the part you already swept,” I say, and something tells me that was not by accident.

She knows the heavy traffic areas. There for my second time, even I can tell by now that most lunch hour patrons get their food to go.

A woman’s voice comes from the kitchen, where only a head of shaggy, dishwater blonde hair is visible. “That’s what you get in a farming community.” The hair shakes with each word.

The blonde head tilts back and reveals a middle-aged face. A gap-tooth grin spreads across it. “You just do what you can, when you can.” She laughs.

Sweeper remains expressionless and silent, methodically working her way across the floor. Sweep, sweep, sweep. She stops just long enough to look up and take a deep breath.

Her eyes are blue. More unexpected than fetching, they shine through her thin glasses, from below the ball cap, above those high, puffy cheeks. She looks back down and continues the task at hand.

I want to make her say something, but instead I wordlessly carry my empty sandwich wrapper to the fake wood box with the flippy door labeled THANK YOU. Out of habit from my days of wearing an orthodontic retainer, I check the tray one last time before pushing one end through the flap and sliding its contents into the shallow abyss. I stack it with the others.

Sweeper leans the broom on a chair and makes her way toward me with a full dustpan. I cross between her and the THANK YOU box and look directly at her. “You have nice eyes,” I say, trying to appear neither flirtatious nor furtive.

“You, too, sir,” she says as she looks around me at the THANK YOU.

I stand there, certain she heard something else. I raise one eyebrow.

“I mean, um, thank you.” She laughs nervously. “I just thought you said, ‘Have a nice day.’”

I smile. “That’s okay. Do that, too,” I say and turn to leave, back to my own work.

Remember that night I recorded you while you read one of your bedtime books? You read Slip, Slide, Skate, and then you asked me to record myself reading the next one.

In my hotel room on Tuesday night I listened to you reading the one about the little girl who goes ice skating. I listened to the whole thing, and you did a great job. I smiled when I heard your voice and the pages turning.

I thought that on your last day of being six you might like to hear the recording of me. If you are at home, then pull out Duck and a Book and follow along; if not, then just imagine the pictures. It’s only a little more than a minute long.

I am sorry my work trip got extended by a day and I can’t be there to read it to you in person. I will see you on your birthday.

Love,
Daddy

My latest fiction, “Shootings,” is getting tough, folks, but I’m determined to keep it worth reading as I trudge toward an ending. I have a few ideas for where we’re going, and a convergence is starting to form in my head. Hang in there.

It was the perfect outlet for a reporter/photographer who had left journalism but still had the bug.

I quickly ramped up to between three and five posts per week, often mining my past for a “Drama in Real Life” approach. When that wasn’t enough I created my own drama by making a music and voice-over video of cups that had spent an inordinate amount of time occupying a street drain. In addition I occasionally wrote serial fiction, publishing each chapter on my story blog as I wrote it, often falling asleep at the keyboard.

I was way too busy.

Unexpectedly, Regular Life became part of a multi-blog community where I got to know several people — some of whom I have met in person more than once, one of whom I barely missed in Boston. I even helped one guy move, and that’s serious.

Others have fallen by the wayside, and once they disappeared digitally they became unknown to me. In a few cases it was a bit like losing a friend but having no closure.

A few I maintain contact with via methods outside this space, including e-mail, phone, and, dare I admit, FaceBook. That last one, I suspect, is responsible for the veritable ghost towns that now inhabit so many personal blogs’ comment areas.

Apparently reading 15 words from dozens of people is better than reading 415 from a few.

I also have added several local friends to those already here when we moved. Nothing can substitute for breathing the same air in the same room.

On top of that, I am making an effort to turn my eyes away from the computer screen, which I already stare at all day in my job, and around which too many of my hobbies already revolve.

I say all this not as a farewell, but to let you know why I might not be out here as often as in the past. I hope most of you have my blog in your RSS Reader. For sporadic publications such as this, RSS is a much less frustrating way to stay current. You avoid checking the site and seeing the same old thing you saw two days ago.

Here’s to stops and starts!

Remember when Charlie would go to his mailbox hoping to find a letter, only to be disappointed by an empty box?

It happens to me when I check my Gmail, then my Yahoo! Mail, and then my FaceBook, and then my Twitter. I’m setting myself up just like that world-renowned blockhead.

At least I don’t have to go all the way outside to check. And, because they aren’t limited to delivery once a day, I can be disappointed several times a day, or, heck, several times an hour!

Do I check only after I have written something that requires or suggests a reply? No. Does that change my hope that I might see a number in parentheses beside my Inbox indicating there is something new? No.

Notification of comments on my blog posts go to Gmail. Alerts to activity on FaceBook go to Yahoo!, what I like to call my “online forms” account. Apparently I felt I could trust my blog (run by me) more than I could FB.

Since switching from our minitower PC to a used laptop I bought from Alvis, I rarely use my home e-mail account. That’s mostly because I don’t remember the password for AT&T’s outgoing mail server. At least I’m sparing myself a little disappointment there.

In fact, I just now checked it, and all but about four of the 140 new e-mails are from me. I use that account to forward myself links that I receive but can’t view at work. Only an old friend from high school and a few folks who are mistaking me for a realtor use that one.

I tell myself that it is not a letdown if I receive nothing new, but I’m sure on some level the fruitless checking is pecking away at me.

If Charlie Brown had this many mailboxes, message boards, and social networking sites, and could check them as many times a day as he wanted, would he go insane? How often do you check?

 
Sound Clip – Ben explains how some spiders catch their prey.
 

It wasn’t what I had in mind when I started the car Sunday morning.

After my son and I played catch and other games in the back yard early, I decided we needed to get out of the house, to one of the places I recently discovered while wandering away from work.

On past walks and bicycle rides to the donut shop, Benjamin had toted along books in his backpack. The tradition became this: move a while, then stop and sit on the sidewalk for me to read him a book. Benjamin decided to continue this tradition on trips that don’t involve deep-fried breakfast food.

This time there was a twist that, while initially undesirable, turned out to be pleasant. (as usual, please use headphones or earbuds for maximum immersion)

Shortly after we entered the woods, I had Benjamin stop and pose with the first big tree. The boy doesn’t do “still” very well, but on some level I think he likes to humor his old man. He compromises by striking wacky poses.

In our stillness, we were bombarded. Newborn mosquitoes, hungry and agile, attacked with a vigor unknown to summertime bloodsuckers. Maybe they knew that cooler weather was coming soon to cut short their miserable lives.

“The mosquitoes found us already,” I said. “Come on, son, we need to keep moving.”

Benjamin quickly unzipped his backpack and chose a book: Green Eggs and Ham.

“We can’t stop and read a book on this trail, Benjamin.”

“I can read it while we walk, Daddy.”

It wasn’t a particularly treacherous trail, so I let him have his fun. “Just keep up with me, son.”

My memory of these woods rooted in harsh noon light, I noticed how much more serene they seemed in the morning sun. The shafts of light came in at a sharper angle and made the forest glow.

“I do not like them, Sam I Am,” Benjamin intoned from behind me.

As we approached the creek’s high bank for a second time, I stopped in a patch of sunlight, with hope it would provide respite from the biting bugs. I snapped two quick shots of Benjamin, the water rushing past in the background as he continued reading aloud the timeless words of Dr. Seuss.

Unlike their vampire cousins of lore, the mosquitoes seemed completely unfazed by the sunlight. They swarmed.

“Okay, son, let’s get moving again.”

We did, but less than a minute back on the trail, Benjamin’s reading stopped and he grunted. I turned back and saw him, still standing as he bent over a fallen log that blocked my view of his shins and his feet. He tilted his head up to face me. “I’m okay,” he said.

“Try to watch where you’re going, Benjamin,” I said, and made a note to myself to warn him of future obstacles. Sure, I probably should have told him to keep the book in the bag while he walked, but if I couldn’t put down the camera and just enjoy the walk, then I suppose I wasn’t going to insist he put down his book.

Plus, when you tell a six-year-old boy growing up in a big-city suburb that you’re going to a park, he’s picturing playground equipment, not a trail in the woods. He might have arrived with something completely different in mind, and there were worse things than his asking to read a book. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed hearing him reading confidently as we wound our way through the 800-acre oasis.

The only drawback — besides the danger of tripping — was that we were not going to sneak up on any wildlife with his voice carefully enunciating the persistent insistence of Sam I Am.

At one point as we walked under a low canopy of tree branches and shrubs, Benjamin stopped and said, “Wow, this is cool, that we’re under right now.”

“Yes, it is,” I said. You might see some other cool things, too, if you look up from that book a little more often.

“Okay, we’re at the spot now where we can walk down to the creek, like you wanted,” I said. “Let’s zip your book back into your pack and check this out.”

With me in the lead, we worked our way carefully down the bank toward toward the stream. The trail was muddy clay and my feet slipped a bit with each step. Only half way down, so much clay was caked up on my shoes that I couldn’t keep from slipping. “Okay, son, we need to go back up.”

“Daddy, I’m slipping!” Benjamin said.

“I got you. I got you,” I said.

But nobody had me.

My feet slid toward the edge of the steep trail. One hand still on Benjamin, I grabbed a thick tree root to steady myself. “Okay, we’re fine. We’re just going to make our way up slowly,” I said. “Sorry, kiddo, this trail wasn’t like this the day I came out here from work.”

“Daddy, I’m scared,” Benjamin said.

“We’re fine, son. I have a grip now.” Viny undergrowth covered the hill to our left. “You just grab onto whatever you can if you start slipping, but I have you, too.”

We worked our way up, very slowly, and made it to level ground. My shoes were noticeably heavier from the clay covering and sticking out from the edge of their soles.

The rest of the walk went smoothly, although we had to turn around once where a puddle pond made the trail impassable. On the parking lot we dragged our feet with each step to clear off some of the mud, then doffed our shoes before getting in the car.

“Daddy, can we go somewhere to a playground now?” Benjamin said.

“You mean with equipment?”

“Yes.”

“You bet, kiddo.”

And we did.

Would some of the most renowned novelists of the past have written for and/or directed movies had they existed? Or would that have fallen in the lap of the playwrights?

This came up because, as I read the script, I wanted to skip over the brief descriptive passages to get to the dialogue. The imagery already ingrained in my brain from several past viewings, I saw the narrative as a hindrance to my enjoyment of the movie’s witty verbal exchanges. (Had it been the actual script rather than a transcript of the film, I would have enjoyed it on a completely different level.)

Those details, however, are vital to a novelist. While some things can be left to the reader’s imagination, there are other times that details are important to the story, and without prior knowledge of a place, the reader needs the author’s painstakingly specific depiction. In today’s culture of instant worldwide communication, it’s harder to reach a reader who has no preconceived notions of a setting.

We also should remember that some of the most well-known authors were published in literary magazines that paid by the word. Excess description and flowery adjectives helped line the struggling artists’ pockets.

With a moving picture to assist them, however, would the literary greats have gone to such great lengths holed up in their writing cubbies, or would they have concentrated on the dialogue and a few simple settings? Would Charles Dickens have scratched out his ideas for “A Christmas Carol” on a pub napkin and let a filmmaker do the rest?

I shudder to think that Great Expectations might never have existed in novel form. In it Dickens seems to be working from a palette most modern writers don’t even know exists. Then again, maybe I just haven’t read enough “real” literature.

Much of the shift of eyeballs from the printed word to the screen, whether to read or to watch, is thanks to technology much newer than film.

Perhaps writers of classic novels thrust into today’s world still would toil over the niggling details, yet publish them online. Certainly this would be the perfect model for those wishing to get read, not get rich. I know an online novelist who says he would make movies if he had the budget, but since blogging is so cheap he uses that medium to foist his considerable talents upon the world.

As increasingly portable devices make it easier for us to be viewers rather than readers, will our appreciation for expertly crafted narrative give way to cinematography that looks good on a 4-inch screen? I have given in to this more than a few times over my lunch hour, propping my PocketDish up against my insulated lunch pail rather than reading a book. On trips, it is not unusual for me to read a book only until the flight attendant says it’s okay to turn on “approved electronic devices.”

I tell myself that I do it because, with a wife who is a fan of neither horror nor unflinching independent films, I get less time at home to watch whatever I want. In reality, however, I grew up a TV viewer and movie lover, reading only when neither of those was convenient.

In recent years I find I’m usually happier writing than reading or viewing, and so at that same lunch table I often can be found tapping at these keys.

At the rate technology is progressing, watching a screen anywhere will be convenient, and the restroom will no longer be nicknamed “the library.” Devices like the Amazon Kindle, however, are using technology to keep “print” alive. Perhaps if it and related products become as ubiquitous as the iPod, reading will not be completely replaced by viewing.

In the end, I suppose that writers plucked from the past and dropped into present day would tailor their craft toward whatever medium allowed them to avoid working a regular job.

When deciding between reading or viewing I just can’t let myself forget that very few things I have watched have been as engrossing, entertaining, and thought-provoking as a good book. I have to make myself believe it, because my ultimate goal is to write one.

The main reason? I watch more television this season than I have in several years. As I wrote this post, I became alarmed at how much I watch — 5.5 hours per week, not counting Razorbacks games when they’re televised. I suppose that still averages out to less than an hour per night, but it feels like a lot when writing about it.

My wife and I have spent the last two nights getting her caught up on the show “Flash Forward.” The DVR now has more free space, and we have only two episodes to go. I hope it fares better than two other recent shows that hooked me in the first episode.

Like “Heroes,” and the new “Battlestar Galactica,” this show came out of the gate very strong, and the entire first season (so far) maintained a high level of character development and storyline originality. Sadly, “Heroes” held me for only one more season, and although I stuck it out longer for BSG, it eventually became a letdown.

I’m hoping that “Flash Forward” either stops after a great standalone first season, as “Heroes” definitely could have, or stays strong for a second season. Pieces are falling into place much more quickly than I thought they would, so unless the pace slows considerably I’m not sure how they will keep it going.

I’m not saying I could do any better at any of the above; it’s just hard to stop expecting riveting entertainment once the bar has been set. “Flash Forward” has set that bar very high.

Sadly, “Dollhouse” has not turned out as well as I had hoped. In fact, I barely tuned in for the second season and have lost track of it after it took a week off. No character in it had enough redeeming qualities to keep me interested. It’s too bad that the one character I can pull for is played by Eliza Dushku. Although she worked great for 2003’s Wrong Turn, she is not versatile enough to play the multiple roles required by this show’s plot.

This bothers me because “Dollhouse” is the brainchild of Joss Whedon, whose wonderful series “Firefly,” and subsequent (if delayed) movie Serenity were some of the best fun ever on the small and big screens. Sorry, all you Whedon diehards, but I couldn’t get beyond the sixth episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” before losing interest. It just didn’t measure up to “Firefly.” Had I picked it up back when it first appeared, and when I was younger, maybe I would have liked it better.

A show I was glad to see back, and on which I now have my wife hooked, is “Castle.” Nathan Fillion plays a murder mystery writer who, through his friendship with the mayor, tags along with a detective. He’s a very good actor and perfect for this role. Shannon and I enjoy trying to guess whodunit, and get at least a few good chuckles from the comedic moments.

We have picked up the original (and still our only) “CSI” again, and it’s still a very strong show despite the impossible things they do when zooming in on low-resolution images. I suspect that CSI’s don’t really interrogate suspects as depicted in the show, but my direct experience with police work was troubleshooting the department’s computers.

We also watch “Grey’s Anatomy” together. It is not nearly as good as it was the first and second seasons, and I hold my tongue only most of the time when it wanders into soap opera territory. The lessons that the characters learn from the patients are far too predictable and come across as ploys to make it a serious show.

This brings me to the reason I haven’t kept up with “The Office” this season: when it is on, so are “Grey’s” and “CSI,” and the DVR’s dual-tuner does just that. I tried to compensate by watching it online, but after looking at a computer screen all day at work, and using it to write, the last thing I want to do is use it to watch TV shows (another thing “Buffy” had working against it).

Our one sitcom is “Two and a Half Men,” which as the most popular comedy doesn’t set us apart from the rest of TV viewers. I laughed the two times I watched “The Big Bang Theory,” but I just didn’t feel up to adding another show.

We watch only one “reality” show. Unlike most of its competitors (which it consistently defeats at the Emmy Awards) “The Amazing Race” does not incude voting out the participants. This focuses attention on completing the challenges rather than on lying, cheating, and scheming. Barring any “the fix is in” scenarios, it is the most “real” show of its genre.

Coincidentally, while I dropped Whedon’s “Dollhouse” before Fox did, three of the stars of one of his greatest achievements figure in the shows I either watch or wish I watched. Fillion stars in “Castle,” where his character hilariously dressed up as “Firefly” captain Mal Reynolds for Halloween, and Gina Torres plays a part in “Flash Forward.” The remake of “V,” which I have not watched, stars magnetic onscreen presence Morena Baccarin as the alien leader.

Regardless of what I’m watching, it’s a passive endeavor, an act of consumption. Here’s hoping that once the reruns begin, I will read and write more.

What are you watching?

I just couldn’t resist the immediacy. Like nothing before, it scratched my writing itch, and the blog added the rush of being published and being read. Actual feedback from real people was like one of those stiff-fingered wooden back-scratchers getting the really tough spots. Sure, I could ignore the itch, but it felt oh so good to scratch it.

Years before the blog was invented, I relished any content I could mine to put words on paper. Just like now, vacations were perfect fodder, and the technology I used to chronicle them evolved from ancient to present day.

This dates all the way back to a handwritten account of a trip my father, brother, and I took to Destin, Florida when I was 15. Awash in hormones, I hung out on the beach and got to know a beautiful Georgia girl who thought Arkansas was “somewhere up there by Montana.” I haven’t tackled typing that one yet, for fear I might actually put it out here.

After a long hiatus from trip journaling, in spring 2001 I returned to painstaking form. During a week-long trip to San Francisco and surrounding areas, I kept a spiral notebook with me everywhere we went. Each time we all piled back into the rented van, I opened up the notebook and wrote what I could remember. Back at the big house on the hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay Bridge, I borrowed a fellow traveler’s laptop and copied my scrawl into digital format. Despite that, it remains unseen by the public, languishing somewhere on a floppy disk.

Later that same year, we celebrated Christmas with a week in Key West. Only a few months after the September 11 hijacking attacks, getting there was more interesting than we had hoped. For that trip I carried around a tiny micro-cassette recorder and dictated my thoughts to it periodically, including our first time snorkeling, when a barracuda scared me back to the boat. I still have not transcribed that tape.

The following summer, prior to our 10th anniversary trip to western Wyoming, I dragged my writing into the 21st century. I created a page on Blogger and an opt-in form for those who wished to receive an e-mail each time I updated the journal (this was before most people knew about RSS feeds and other fancy blog-related features). I kept the photos separate, in an online photo album on Fotki.com. Warning: it reads more like a personal journal than a polished piece of travel writing.

Reader Simon converted one of his old trip journals to a series of blog posts covering his teen-aged trip to China. His writing at that age was much farther along than mine, in some ways rivaling the prose in my 2002 anniversary trip journal (after all, how many times in one paragraph should a writer use the word “stuff?”).

When I was a newspaper reporter/photographer, I never wanted for content. Now, I find myself considering resurrecting those old trip journals (and possibly photos) for filler between new inspirations.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.