This picture is out of context for today, but I’m heading into Miami tomorrow and this is one place I’ve visit. This is the front door of Alaine’s place in the Gables. The entrance is set off to left center, and right center is the window to my room. That’s a figure of speech, I live 26 miles away. It’s the room I stay in when invited overnight, which usually happens only when it is dangerous to drive the scooter home after dark. It sure is nice to get the invite, but face it, gang, home is home.
Some time ago I clicked on a site purporting to list area club activities. This is the outfit I joke about, with clubs like “Baby Stroller Boot Camp” and “Emerging Christians”. I keep it on feed because it is a hilarious slice of what is wrong with the dating scene. The site is aimed at singles. (Singles with baby strollers?) There’s a group of single Jewish ladies who have their own vocabulary, for example, this is “Feb Fin”, where they offer seminars on elbowing your date into proposing before month’s end. Sounds like a great bunch of gals. I dunno, ladies, it seems to me if you are over thirty and still resorting to subterfuge, just move in with a boyfriend and shut up about the marriage thing. It just seems too obvious that older women want commitments so they don’t have to pretend to be so nice all the time.
I’m what is called immersed in another murder mystery, this time by an author called James Rollins. Names don’t make it here unless I really like or dislike the book, and this one is fine, called “Map of Bones”. Written around 2005, it would help if the reader knew more than I do about Catholic rituals. Rollins is also a candy-ass for injecting paragraphs blatantly aimed at the ditzy broad crowd. The plot is familiar, the superhero ex-US Army types versus the ancient evil society of secret knowledge.
Rollins has all the ingredients. Terrific character names, the bad guys aren’t just evil, they are also sex perverts, and there’s corruption and double agents pretty much everywhere. Every woman character is tall, slim, sexy, unmarried, tough as nails, and better than any three men. The only stereotype lacking so far is the loose cannon divorced cop who turned in his badge last week.
However, for those with a background in history and metallurgy, this book offers some graduate level twists. At least I’ve heard of the m-state, but I assure you it is possible to enjoy the plot by glossing over such deep references. (The m is for “monoatomic”, a state where atoms with incomplete valence levels exist as single atoms. Think of it as oxygen molecules being forced to exist as O with becoming O2. Metals in this state become superconductors for the electrons are not locked in orbitals.)
Last item, prompted by several unpublished reader comments. Let me clarify something. I never recovered fully from 2003, and nothing here is meant to convey that I am athletic. What you read here is selective, albeit very broadly so. I cannot lift more than twenty pounds, nor walk more than two blocks. The only reason I don’t have a handicap parking sticker is I don’t want women seeing such a thing on my scooter.
Favorite Rollins blooper: “Get to the back of the boat,” the Captain said in a stern voice.
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