Draw your own conclusions

Mac, please don’t crash on me now.

The old MacBook has entered the terrible twos a little early, and last year’s problem of sudden shutdowns has returned with extreme prejudice. At this point, the screen goes black arbitrarily, so I am typing this on borrowed time and will hope for a software patching floating out there in the great digital frontier.

I’m already tired of the Scott McClellan media blitz. Ooh, another former Bush administration official writes a tell-all – and he was the press secretary, no less. We could populate a small country with former administration types who’ve written Bush screeds.

A memoir from a former PR flack bashing his president boss – real original, Scott. Maybe you're just quietly gunning for fellow Texan Bob Schieffer's Sunday morning seat when he retires. Hopefully the CBS suits don't feel the need to hire another former flack to herd the partisans.

Anyway, I was overdue to update. Memorial Day, actually, is my two-year bloggin' anniversary. Who knew I'd still be at it - from Nashville, no less.

Night at Coats Mountain

I’m fortunate to have made friends who live in the country, which in Nashville means living 10 minutes beyond Downtown. When you can reach out your front window and touch the cars on Interstate 40 like me, any taste of the country – and more importantly, quiet not constantly broken by tanker trucks shifting up 51^st Avenue – goes a long way.

So when the Coats family held their old-fashioned Memorial Day cookout, with a pack of kids running in and out of the pool while the adults sipped our beers on 2008’s first scorching day, I couldn’t miss it. I spent Easter there, and jumped at the chance to return.

They do actually live on a mountain, with the steepest driveway the Corolla ever tackled. The food was great, the conversation even better.

I stayed until all the alcohol wore off and the sky sprouted a beard of stars above the harmonizing insects. When doused with the light pollution on my street, the same sky looks no better than a bad teenage mustache.

Un-Memorial Day

After a morning uplifted by The Seven Samurai, laundry and a gentle sunrise, the black clouds settled in, and let loose a shower left over from the tornadoes that tore up The Plains. The skies poured for so long that I watched the uncut Once Upon A Time in American and had two hours to spare for nap

After an evening race through my phone book – high gas prices or not, Nashville emptied out from Friday to Monday- I wandered to Las Palmas for some greasy Mexican. The holiday weekend couldn’t end without a little more spice.

Inside the half-full former fast food outlet, I saw a possible, unwelcome future. At too many of the occupied tables, middle-aged men held their lonely courts. With apologies to Bob Dylan, I really could have rearranged their faces and given them all another name.

That I landed at the same hacienda as this unofficial bachelor gathering was not a fun coincidence.

Was this a Ghost of Memorial Days Future moment, when a shaggy, salt-and-peppered Bill Melville will fight his arthritic limbs to slink into a booth and think nothing of fajitas for one?

I ordered quickly and greedily ate my chicken poblano, well aware that I still had time before I fell under the twilight that shaded them.