We were all crammed into a van, which boarded the ferry for a seventeen hour trip to Mooseland. There was Rye and Ginger, Illa, and Medicine Man.

Illa had generously offered half of her bed the night before, but neither of us was comfortable sleeping with someone, so it was an iffy nights sleep. And we had to be up at five am to catch the ferry.

There was entertainment on the ferry in many forms. I saw a little kid bouncing up and down in the video arcade around midnight.

Luckily, Tenderheart had rented a cabin, and various members of the psychic tour took turns crashing on one of the bunks in it. It was pure heaven to the sleep deprived.

Speaking of sleep-deprived, this morning Illa volunteered to go to Timmie’s and fetch us some breakkie. She asked if I wanted something, and I said I wasn’t hungry. I have no recollection of this.

But I digress.

On the ship was a husband and wife act in the lounge. I could tell by the way she cut her eyes at him that there was trouble in paradise that day.

He had a script of jokes, which he told well. He brought out this mandolin, which he informed us was his “girlfriend” adding that the wife was jealous of her.

Do I have a big mouth? Why, yes, yes I do.

I cracked “Does that bitch (the mandolin) make your supper for you?”

Immediately, the wife cracked up. Just lost it.

The husband? Not so much.

Will-Yummy and a few of his relatives hung out with me.

We always manage to have a good time.

I’m low man on the totem pole with these shared accommodations. Last one to get a shower, so left behind when the others run errands.

Will-Yummy and Tenderheart are showing the rellies around, and promised to stop by and take me with.

I have a plan. Let’s hope they remember the plan.

I’ve been home for a week, hence the posting, but tomorrow, I set off for parts relatively unknown for two weeks.

So, intermittent, hit and miss posting for the next few weeks. Subscribe in a reader. It will save you the trouble of stopping by to see nothing going on.

Some of you are all kinds of psyched about your own trips to BlogHer in SF, which is wicked.

Blackbird is holding BlogHere, at her house. No, I’m not attending that either. I have to work. On the psychic tour.

I expect to be keeping a watchful eye out for moose on the highway. The highway which is foggy. Must be all the swampy moose habitat which lines the road to my venue that creates all the fog.

I was a nervous wreck last time. Those critters are huge. And? They will charge a car, and I’m not talking credit cards here. A car that collides with a moose will hit it about knee level, and the moose will fall forward into the windshield, thrashing its antlers about inside the vehicle in its death throes. People seldom survive these collisions. At least this time, I’m not the driver. I’ve never been so happy to be in the back seat since high school.

Keep my seat warm for me when I’m away?

I’ve been having some doubts about the wisdom of using tarot cards for my readings lately.

My guides seem to want me to just channel them and be done with it, but I’m totally a rebel who doesn’t want anyone telling me what to do. I wonder where Ass Burger Boy gets that from? No need to answer. Rhetorical question.

When I do readings, a nice flow of energy is important, so I will bring very uptight clients through a quick relaxation/connecting technique.

What I haven’t encountered until this summer is the difficulty of reading really old ladies. Deaf old ladies.

First off, the usual things are not going to appeal to them. They are often retired from their jobs, have mostly outlived their husbands, and couldn’t care less about romance.

The only things that might appeal are money and health. Okay, lady, if you really insist on knowing, I can tell you how much longer you will live. Don’t expect me to tell you that you will be living with dementia, because I just cannot bring myself to do that. Yet it will show ever so plainly on the hand.

When the client is deaf-ish, I have to look directly at her, and enunciate slowly and clearly. This takes away from my focus and trance state, to say the least. Then I have to work at it.

When it doesn’t flow naturally, working at it means that the reading is not going to be nearly as good as when it comes easily.

Ask an artist or musician. Most of their best work just came together. Because they were in the zone. The zone where there is no yelling at old ladies.

They didn’t complain, but I gave them their money back anyway.

Next time? I’m just going to say that I’m unable to read them.

I already do that with the crazies.

Summer is my peak work time. I travel from venue to venue throughout my region, putting in long hours at psychic fairs, and not knowing what kind of internet access I will have. Oh, the pain.

I’m off on my travels next week, so there is lots of packing and prep to be done for the tour. Besides business cards and other supplies, I have to load the laptop with the correct software and create a new database for my clients and their sound files.

Luckily, Ass Burger Boy will be holding down the home front fort. It didn’t always used to be that way. I used to have to take him with me.

I remember the summer he was 14. I remember it well. The first venue of the summer was in Skinny Bitch’s city. He stayed in the hotel room and ordered room service, and lolled around the pool while I sweated to make expenses. Try feeding a teenage boy on room service, and you don’t have a large profit margin.

That wasn’t what chapped my chops. It just underlined his travelling demise.

I was struggling to get my gear from the car to the venue, which was up a steep flight of stairs. In the heat.

My boy? Threw a complete hissy fit. In the lobby of the hotel. Seems he was too heavy for light work, and too light for heavy work.

Mama was not amused.

The next venue was my own city, and I parked that chile with a vengeance. I left the neighbours with my itinerary, and strict instructions to His Majesty, and never took him with me again to work.

He doesn’t cross me often, but when he does? Doozy.

I’d forgotten how ridiculously easy Dreamweaver is to work with for web developers.

It’s like if you sneeze, Dreamweaver hands you a tissue.

And, it made me absurdly happy to fix my purple plates site. If you have Internet Explorer 6, you can access the site from a link on the page.

I was singing in my head, because that is the only place it sounds good to anybody, “Wooo-oooo, you’re my best friend” and I was referring to Dreamweaver.

I wouldn’t make out with it and have its babies, because, Hello? It’s software.

I’m guessing not much that is soft makes the babies. Where was I?

The reason the site was wonky? One tiny piece of code, three characters long, on one page.

../

Yep, those three. I was too sick over the weekend to tackle any kind of task requiring any smarts at all. I stayed up late last night, poring over code, and had the solution for IE6 this morning. All of the problems with the site had to do with file management.

Or, in my case, file mis-management.

I feel much better now.

Go buy some. They’re awesome. You are too, and you always smell nice.