Monday, November 23, 2009

How Many Roadtrips Must a Man Take Before You Can Call Him a Man?


Hey there :)  Thanks to everyone who commented on NaNo (or anything else).  It was a really fun thing to do and it was fun doing it with you all.

If you get a chance, and you feel like it, head on over to shaundavidhutchinson.com for the redesign.  It's not completely final yet, I'm still doing some work on the text in the banner, but for the most part, it's done. Once I figure out how to incorporate it into my Blogger theme, this blog will match it.  And as information comes up, I'll be updating the content with news and contests and stuff.  If there's anything you want to see, I'm all ears.

So I took this weekend off from writing to give myself a chance to recharge.  Yesterday I got some snacks and watched movies all day.  I watched 9 (eh), My Sister's Keeper (totally made me bawl), Julie & Julia (I heart Amy Adams), and Moon (intriguing except that I figured the "twist" out after the first ten minutes).  I also did a lot of reading and thinking about what comes next.  All in all, it was a nice way to get my energy back.


I've been thinking about roadtrips a lot lately. Roadtrips are something that every one must do, they're a rite of passage.  I took a lot of them in my youth.  For one my friends and I drove to a haunted B&B and then to Savannah, GA.  On another I drove straight for 20 hours to Rhode Island.  Another I drove 9 hours to Atlanta, saw Less Than Jake and Blink 182 and then drove right back home (cutting over an hour off my drive) to be with a friend who was going into the hospital.  But my favorite was with my best friend.  We were bored one day and decided to drive to Orlando, just 3 hours away.

Back then she and I both had dreams of being in theatre.  I'd auditioned at NYU and we'd performed at the local theatre.  So we got to talking about moving to Orlando and doing plays there (because when you live in South Florida, Orlando is the closest thing to a city that you can get...Miami doesn't count because the point was to get OUT of Florida, not go further into it).  Anyway, we decided that what we really needed were telephone books.  The fact that we needed phone books totally dates me.


There were so many parts of that trip that were fun.  But the best part was when we got to the telephone company.  I pulled up, leaving the car running, and we both jumped out and grabbed as many phone books as we could, dumping them into my back seat and taking off.  We laughed about it the whole way home, knowing inside that those phone books were there for people to take.  It was just the funniest thing to be driving home with a backseat filled with phone books.

Those are the stories that you tell later and realize how lame it was, but it didn't matter because back then, it was the most fun I'd ever had.

4 comments:

  1. Lol. Yes, the road trip. I'm a huge fan and I've taken many, many, many road trips over the years. Sigh. I think it may be time for another!

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  2. Love the site. I'm going to put one together soon. What host or service did you use? Any quick advice?

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  3. B.J. - Me too! I'm planning one for the beginning of next year. Sort of a tribute to the forgotten roadside.

    Tracy - Thanks :) I use a hosting service called Web Hosting Buzz They're pretty inexpensive and easy to use. In terms of actually designing the site, I'd say that if you can pay someone to do it, that's usually the easiest. I do web design in my job, but I'm not the best visual artist, so I went through a bunch of designs and spent 5 times as much time putting it together as a real designer would have.

    That said, if you've got the time and the resources, doing it yourself can save a ton of money. There are lots of free tools and places where you can find code snippets.

    Oh, you said quick advice? Simplicity rules.

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  4. Road trips! One of my favorite past-times in my 20s. I moved to Colorado after college and actually looked forward to the 20-hour drive home for holidays. I always did it straight through, hopped up on Little Debbies and Dr. Pepper. Sometimes I caught cat naps in random Walmart parking lots - don't tell my mom.

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