late saturday afternoon. i spent some time clearing out the strangleweed in the front, and now my legs burn. i put water on them - that usually helps - but they still burn. might take a shower and yet some more work. the weeds in illinois don't give up without a fight.

there's a chance i may go to hanna city - as i did last night, on the way back from the airport. you can look it up on the map - peoria airport, hanna city, back roads to galesburg - all pretty country during the day but a long slog at night. one tries to stay awake on back roads. i'm especially peeved because a daughter wants to just latch on to another one - that other one has a life - and i feel that if you want a life, you have to go out and make one. i can be accused of not understanding depression - no, i understand it, but i'm reacting against it, i'll admit that. to me if you don't want to be depressed, stop being depressed. that puts it all in a driver's-seat perspective like one can simply change one's mood. perhaps you can't, i don't know. to me it's sad if you have to accept depression as a way of life.

all the different writing projects are somewhat stalled. one of my favorites was a doordash story, barely started, but i so mangled truth and fiction that i immediately lost my spirit to continue. let's face it, galesburg is not going to be the center of a huge crime mystery, and why should i even make it that way? I'm more inclined to make it pure reality, and have the drama set around something personal, small, whimsical. sanity, maybe, or endless coming-and-going, and fast food. dashing makes for this coming-and-going fast-food background but the true drama, the essence of the book, has to be something pure and fitting, not the murder of somebody in the picture. by the way i am kind of dealing with that - a local kid, my son's age, was murdered recently, and they're still getting to the bottom of it - but why should I mix that in, or, how can i mix that in without making it too obvious it's based on reality? and by the way i know almost nothing about the true particulors of the case, or about police process, etc.

the family project has me back at the turn of the century (~1899) when one of them was running a hardware store in council bluffs - it sold stoves, foot balls, that kind of thing. it advertised heavily and the ads are very entertaining. the other relative was working at a bank which folded and was taken over by a rival bank. he was also planning and publishing a magazine for the trans-mississippian exhibition of 1898. this magazine was big - it hit town in february 1897, but after the exhibition, it kind of went by the wayside, as did the whole region. not sure how or if i can spell this out decently.

i'm not sure what has stalled me on that one, possibly just that i don't know what happened after 1900, or at least don't know much for a long several-year stretch. the story gets thicker around the time of the great war, and then again in the depression and the second big war. i've got plenty of material for the 20s and the 30s, just nothing for the aughts. and i think it will be an interesting book.

another one has to do with disney, and is almost done. it's thirteen short stories all putting disney in a different light, by different kinds of narrators. i'm not sure i can unite it around that idea - right now it's just stories - but i could all make them have different narrators pretty easily, since most of them do. one thing blocking me on this one is that i haven't ever been to disney, so i feel guilty and nervous about publishing something that basically might contain things that couldn't possibly be true. i just don't know enough to be sure. and i often find things that i don't know. for example, it is possible that you can just see mickey walking along, in costume but in a hurry? it may be that if they are traveling fast through the park, they're not in costume, and save the costume for performances. but how do i know?

here, work continues steadily on two houses, but i'm tired, all this traveling to hanna city happening. that and my legs burn from the weeding. so i'm not quick to get up, run over there, and do something on either house. i'm just feeling like i need a rest.

so i play endless bog. i try to limit it to 3 games at a time. if some pro-trump player is on there, i change my name to "he knew she was 13" - i won't tolerate pro-trump, unanswered. i use that name for a while, usually they go away. if the screen is non-political, i don't, and just go by the usual moniker (team wheresboofer - g-burg) and go with it as long as there are no other political names. pro-biden names i don't mind, but i don't count them. it's the pro-trump ones i'm looking for to answer. my main problem with him basically is that he knew she was 13 - he has no morals, no compunction about screwing anyone in any way. he would very easily sell out the entire country just for his own desires, which are what, unloading all this debt, and, becoming the "savior" of america, how, deporting a third of the workforce? not sure how this is going to work out. but i do know he has wretched morals, and basically doesn't care about us or what happens to us in the process.

restless puppies hanging about. but as i sit here, i'm not going to hanna city, which suits me just fine. it's too much driving, for a guy who still makes a living driving. i've been dashing most nights, and kind of need to sit back and take a break.