Out of the frying pan...

I don't learn lessons very well or for very long. I got the second GENE:etc. out, the SPRING 2010 issue, and it was a very great success. So did I breathe a sigh of relief and settle back on a bed of my hard-earned laurels?

No. In a word.

I decided to make a bigger, better, PRINT special issue for the Convention which is coming up ... let's see a year from now? Why no, I believe it is not much more than two weeks away and I just have 3 bulletins, and the church newsletter to do in addition to getting packed and ready to go to Philadelphia on...WAIT FOR IT...


JUNE SECOND AT SOME TERRIBLE HOUR OF THE PRE-DAWN!!!


What was I thinking??!!! I must be very oddly put together inside my skull. That's all I can think. Or I can't or don't think. I've sent a couple of sample pages (2 sheets, 4 sides, 8 pages) to the printer (FedExOffice)...which, it turns out, is directly across the street from the convention hotel, thus no shipping charges...and they turned out magnificently!! So exciting. So what am I thinking? I'm thinking of ordering 250 24-page full-color, slick paper copies. For which I must pay a large, very large, for me immense, amount of money up front. Now, if I should sell them all, all that are left after I give the freebies to the contributors, that is—as is only right—I might clear a little extra for the hours and hours I've put in on the thing. However, if I don't sell them all...the ruin of my financial life looms on the not-very-distant horizon.
But the fun! The fun of doing this thing is way beyond any financial concern. So it ends up costing me the price of a nice cruise. The Caribbean is currently less than a wonderful prospect, thanks to drilling gone mad in the Gulf of Mexico. Mostly just knowing about the doomed sea life would take all the joy out of being in that beautiful place. It's bound to affect the oceans all over the world eventually. Gulf Stream, anyone? Enough with the doom and gloom, even though it is real, it is there, and it is not getting any better as I write this. I'll just say: Humans—the only animals that care not a whit that they loot, foul and destroy their only nesting ground, the earth, taking all the other animals down with them. Except maybe mountain beaver fleas, quarter-inch long nightmare fodder they are, and of course, cockroaches. Won't earth be a fun place with those two as the dominant species!
How did I get here? What is my subject and why does it matter with oil spewing into one of the most vital areas of this hemisphere, perhaps the world?
Okay. I will cheer up. After all how much longer can I live? In less than 29 years I'd hit 100. Surely humans can't destroy the planet that soon...can they?
I think I'll go and play with my dolls.