I didn’t tell the whole truth; we went to Mackinac Island for a long weekend. I’m not one of those nervous souls who frets constantly about getting robbed, and I normally don’t have a problem with announcing when I’m going to be gone for a while. But this was a short stretch, and I just imagined telling the police officer, both of us regarding the kicked-in window, “Well, yes, I guess some people knew we were going to be gone…Who?…Um, well…”

The fact is, most criminals are pretty stupid. The few who aren’t probably don’t get their targets from reading blogs, though. But you never know.

However, it was time to introduce Kate to her adopted state’s most famous tourist trap, and the last weekend in July seemed the perfect time to escape lower Michigan’s heat and breathe in the clear, cool air of the straits. Uh, no. The heat wave followed us there, not as bad as downstate but plenty bad in a place that is, by and large, without air conditioning. (Even the hotels.) We slept on top of the covers and sought out shade, but still had a good time. The picture shows Kate getting in the local FTF spirit, i.e., Fleece the Fudgies. We didn’t stay at the Grand Hotel — and thank God, since it requires men to wear ties in public areas after 7 p.m. — but one of our last outings was to climb the long hill and see the famous veranda. I figured on being shaken down, but choked on the price. I would have paid $12 for the three of us, but that’s $12 per person. They employed a nice lady in black linen to enforce the perimeter. Forget it. This is why websites were invented.

We stayed here. No huge complaints, other than the vague not-quite-rightness that comes from spending three nights in a place where the prime directive is not “Make guests happy” but rather “Maximize profits.” I’m sure running a hotel, let alone a resort, is complicated beyond belief, but it seems that once you make the prime directive pleasing your customers, a lot of the rest falls into place. Instead, the place was staffed by seasonal help from overseas (we saw this phenomenon at Cedar Point last summer, too), all of whom behaved as though making a decision without upper-management approval would be met with immediate flogging. The food was merely OK, the in-room shampoo the worst ever, and the fan provided for our room — an absolute necessity in the heat — wouldn’t reach the window from the closest outlet without running the cord across the main drawer in the dresser, and then just barely. The maid, from eastern Europe, didn’t understand what an extension cord was. And, in the great tradition of the island, admission to the five-story tower that offered such nice views of the water was extra. Five bucks a head, in fact. To climb some stairs and look around. Please.

But the place had one huge asset — the Great Lawn. Two football fields dotted with comfy Adirondack chairs facing the lake. Even in the sun it was tolerable, as it caught the breezes that always seem to pour through the straits, no matter what the weather. Alan bought Kate a kite, and they flew it Saturday and Sunday:

(That’s Alan, being supportive in the background.)

We had a nice time, but came home poorer. But isn’t that always the story, even for short vacations?

I did some reading while I was up there. A book review, of Scott Smith’s “The Ruins,” coming sometime tomorrow.

Sorry for my absence of late. I’ve been redecorating my office, or rather, Alan has. Also, I have nothing to say, but a lot on my mind, meaning not much to write about. (Although I drafted and trashed three posts in the last day.) So I’m taking the rest of the weekend off, and I’ll be back with pictures late Monday.

In the meantime: I’m very pleased with my new room. It no longer has even a hint of Baby. The walls have changed from lemon yellow to a cool, mind-soothing sage, and we installed the two-inch wooden blinds I’ve been coveting. I hung my framed “Nighthawks” poster, and the Russell Chatham poster, and my fellowship diploma/group picture and a bulletin board. Needless to say, we got new electrical outlets and switchplates, too. I took a close look when I turned on the new ceiling fan today.

Both screws were aligned perfectly vertical.

My man.

Back in a few. You all have a good weekend, too.

Curse you, Lance Mannion. So I followed a link from his joint, and tried out this facial-recognition gimcrackery over at MyHeritage.com, in which you upload a photo of yourself and they compare it to the celebrity database to determine which one you most resemble. I’m not going to show you the photo I used, because I think it makes the punchline more amusing. Are you ready? My celebrity twin?

Kelly Clarkson:

Yes, the woman whom Slate summed up in a phrase: “despite the best efforts of a battery of stylists (she) still looks more like a Dutch mastiff than Jessica Simpson.” Well, I never claimed to be a beauty, either. (And if that’s a Dutch mastiff, I’m…never mind.)

Funnier still was No. 2:

We do have similar senses of humor. So there’s that.

Alan is installing the new switchplates today, and I have laundry, errands, bill-paying and about nine million other things to do this morning. See you back here this afternoon. In the meantime, feel free to find your long-lost famous relatives.

When Alan started work in Detroit and I was back in Fort Wayne getting us ready to move, I became enamored of a show called “Sell This House,” in which a reliable supply of clueless would-be home sellers learn — yes, learn — that before you put a house on the market it’s a good idea to remove your 500-piece teddy-bear collection from the dining room and maybe dust a bit. The usual professionals with mystifying job titles (”staging expert”) give them tips on how to do quick-n-dirty spruce-ups that will get their house sold.

Alan came home for weekends that month, and I tried to get him interested. He found it unbearable. He has bottomless contempt for quick-n-dirty, at least when it comes to home improvements. “They’re PAINTING WALLPAPER?” he moaned, five minutes into the first episode, just before stalking out of the room. I’m sure he’d support a bill that would sentence wallpaper-painters to lengthy prison terms.

So this week we’re working on my office, formerly the baby’s room. Yesterday the peaceable-kingdom wallpaper border bit the dust, and yes, as per our luck in all wallpaper matters, it was seemingly affixed with superglue. Then he set to work on the outlets, which had never, ever been removed for painting, at least not in the last 15 years. You want to see what drives Alan up the wall? Look at this specimen, clotted with layer after layer of very un-Alan-like workmanship. His lip curls with contempt. There’s just no substitute for doing it right the first time, is there?

P.S. When he dismantled the existing shelving system in the garage and found that, paradoxically, he was actually able to store more stuff without shelves than he was with them, he said, “I suspect this was the work of a General Motors engineer.” No idea, so no comment.

Bright, sunny morning. Alan’s on vacation all week; Spriggy’s getting a haircut this morning; Project Table reaches a turning point. I have one story to finish, then jury duty in the latter part of the week. Jury duty! In Detroit! This is why we live in Wayne County, so that we can be called for jury duty in Elmore Leonard country, not out in suburbia somewhere. I hope you know that I speak from the heart when I say: I can’t wait.

Really, I can’t. I love jury duty, even though it’s always the same for a journalist. You sit around, you shuffle here and there, and if it ever gets as far as questioning by an actual attorney, you always get the hook. (I was a peremptory challenge in a federal case once — such a proud moment.) Lawyers don’t want journalists on their juries, for several good reasons and a few bad ones. This, however, is my first time as an unemployed journalist, so maybe things will break differently this time. But I doubt it.

First rule of jury duty, for everybody: Bring something to do. I recommend a book, although you may prefer knitting. Whatever, but make sure it’s something that will keep you happily occupied for at least two or three hours. The ability to pass a 120-minute block of time with minimal resources is a dying trait in this great land of ours, as evidenced by the giant televisions everywhere we go, tuned to Oprah or Maury or some other nightmare. In my first try at jury duty, in the federal case, I read a big chunk of T.C. Boyle’s “World’s End” and had a wonderful, peaceful morning. In my last, the pool was parked in front of a big, loud TV. Bummer. And still, jurors had difficulty sitting still for the hour or two it took the parties upstairs to settle the case and send us all home. ADHD seems to be a culture-wide affliction.

So, the bloggage: Last Sunday the New York Times business-section front was a long, thoughtful analysis on the future of the Ford Motor Co. by the excellent Micheline Maynard. This Sunday the Free Press used their business front to bring us the grumpy opinions of a bunch of GM retirees. It would be one thing if these guys had anything interesting or insightful to say. But what do you say about quotes like these?

Ed Kulba, an 80-year-old GM retiree and World War II veteran, doesn’t see the benefits (of a possible GM merger with Renault or Nissan). He started working in a Detroit auto factory when he was 17. He cringes at the thought of a French or Japanese company controlling GM.”This is what us World War II veterans went over to fight for, so we could keep it American,” Kulba said.

I missed that part of my World War II history. Of course, I was educated in Ohio.

Thanks to Amy Alkon for pointing me toward this ESPN.com story on the death of Pat Tillman. I was struck by the attitude of the officer in charge of the investigation, who suggests that the atheist Tillman family needs to “let go, let God,” essentially:

Kauzlarich, now a battalion commanding officer at Fort Riley in Kansas, further suggested the Tillman family’s unhappiness with the findings of past investigations might be because of the absence of a Christian faith in their lives. In an interview with ESPN.com, Kauzlarich said: “When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don’t believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more — that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don’t know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough.”

Demanding competency and accountability for the needless death of a fine young man = the desperate flailing of a godless family. Huh.

For years, advertisers and those who sell time and space to them have run panting after one market: Women. Broadcasters speak of “the demographic,” which is, basically, women age 29-50, roughly — women in their peak buying years. The thinking is: Men buy golf clubs and beer, and women buy everything else, so that’s who you go for. Virtually everything on TV that isn’t sports-related is aimed at them, including TV news, with its steady diet of fear-tainted boogeymen — sexual predators, germs and Things That Can Kill You AND YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW IT. So what happens, after years and years of this?

Men are leaving TV news. Gee, I wonder how that happened.

P.S. Of course, the pay in TV news is roughly the same as in acting: A few titans earn millions, and millions of peons earn nothing.

The Yarn Harlot — love that name — writes about writing. Truer words, etc. (Thanks, Mindy.)

On to Project Table!

We almost bought one of these four or five years ago, when we came to the Ann Arbor art fairs from Indiana. It was, however, at that precise moment that, with the sun beating down on my head like a blunt instrument, I said, “If I don’t get out of the sun and into some air-conditioning right this instant, I’m going to faint here in the street.” And so we ducked into a restaurant, and somehow lost interest in the retablos being sold by Nicario Jiminez, a Peruvian artist who now lives in Florida.

This year we planned better, and reached Jiminez before the sun did its damage. Ours is from his Mask Maker’s Workshop series. It’s small, but the detail is amazing:

I just love it.

It occurred to me not long ago that unless I croak before my time there’ll be a new laptop in my future. This is a thought simultaneously thrilling and terrifying — of course I want a new MacBook Pro, but what will I do with all my old stuff? My laptop, like no other computer I’ve owned, has insinuated itself into my life in all the ways we were told the machines would, back in 1984. It has my music, my pictures, my finances, my work. I take 95 percent of my notes on it. There are folders upon folders labeled “Knight Ridder rants” and “secret project,” and a brand-new one called “ringtones.” (I’m going into the business; I hear it’s growing.)

If it died tomorrow — knocking wood furiously — I’d be bereft. I’d be out of business. On the other hand, I could buy a new MacBook Pro with a clear conscience. So there’s that.

Sorry for the day off yesterday; we had houseguests. We actually had guests twice in the last few days — for dinner on Saturday and dinner/overnight Monday. I took the recycling to the curb yesterday and noted eight wine bottles. (The beer bottles are returnable, and go in a separate bin.) I guess we had a good time. Actually, I remember all of it, and we did, except for the sailing. On Saturday it was blistering hot and there was too little wind; we got killed by blackflies. On Monday it was blistering hot and there was too much wind, necessitating reefing and scrambling and waves crashing across the bow. But no blackflies! That was good. John and Sam were our guests Monday, and brought their GPS, aka “the crumber,” a device that drops breadcrumbs as you perambulate around the forest. When we got back he synced it to Google Earth and displayed our route, and revealed that he also has a utility that will sync with his digital camera, so that we could download all the pictures we took and show, precisely, at which latitude and longitude they were taken.

If I’m attached to my computer, John is really, really attached. He and Sam were returning from a month in the U.P. “It’s so nice to transition back into wireless broadband,” he said. I could absolutely identify.

I have no bloggage, except to note that the president said a boo-boo word, and once again, the nation’s editors are wringing their hands over what to report about it. I swear, it’s like watching Scarlett and Mammy argue over whether it’s proper to show one’s bosom before 3 o’clock — in 2006.

Off to Ann Arbor for sunstroke the art fair! Pictures and a report, perhaps, later.

Good morning, welcome to July 2006. We’re having a heat wave, the Middle East is in yet another spasm of hatred and death and explosions and blood and guess what? If you choose a doctor or drug store or ambulance driver, now you have another question to ask them. After you go through the usual — proximity to your home or office, staff privileges at a local hospital, willingness to accept new patients, board certification, office hours on weekends/holidays — after all that, now you get to ask them this:

“Do you have any religious convictions that might preclude your delivery of care? Might you balk at a particular vaccine, a circumstance of my lifestyle, a shadow that passes over the world not to your liking? At some point in our relationship, might your fears over the fate of your immortal soul get in the way of my health care? Yes? Well, I guess my search continues.”

WashPost has the story:

Around the United States, health workers and patients are clashing when providers balk at giving care that they feel violates their beliefs, sparking an intense, complex and often bitter debate over religious freedom vs. patients’ rights. …For Debra Shipley, her duties as a nurse began to conflict with her Christian faith when the county health clinic where she worked near Memphis required she dispense the morning-after pill. “I felt like my religious liberties were being violated,” said Shipley, 49, of Atoka, Tenn. “I could not live with myself if it did it. I answer to God first and foremost.”

And so on and on and on. Some anesthesiologists refuse to assist in sterilization procedures. Respiratory therapists sometimes object to removing ventilators from terminally ill patients. Gynecologists around the country may decline to prescribe birth control pills. Some doctors reject requests for Viagra from unmarried men.

I like that last one. They don’t like your sex life. So you don’t get your ED meds. Tough luck, buddy.

Here’s my single favorite anecdote, from a sidebar:

Cynthia Copeland also had a run-in with a pharmacist in 2004. He wrongly assumed she was planning an abortion because she had a prescription for a drug that can be used for that purpose. In fact, Copeland had already had undergone a procedure to remove a fetus that had no pulse, and she needed the drug to complete the process.

“I was sitting there in the drugstore waiting and heard the pharmacist say really loudly, ‘I refuse to participate in an abortion,’ ” said Copeland, 39, who lives near Los Angeles. “I felt so violated. The miscarriage was about grief, and that was made public in a way that really compounded my grief.”

Notice how loud he said it. He wanted to make sure she heard it. Also, God.

Of course, most people who live in large cities will easily be able to find another doctor. It’s the folks stuck in Fargo or Casper or some other remote outpost of civilization who will be stuck driving 120 miles to find a pharmacist who will give them a pack of Plan B after a rape.

OK, I’ll stop now. It’s hot and the world’s at war, and it somehow makes more sense to be bugged by religious hysterics than Hezbollah.

Man, what about this weather we’re having? I spent all of Sunday indoors, my usual policy when the temperature rises much above 90. Frolicking in heat waves is for children and crazy people. The rest of us stay in the shade and try not to exert ourselves.

So I have two stories to write before noon. It’s a different kind of exertion. Back later.

I look at it this way: You can track pop culture through slavish devotion to, and reading of, NN.C.

Or you can wait for the Washington Post to catch up.

Your call.

Sweet criminey, but the work just keeps on comin’. Not that this makes me a bad blogger — for you, I always have time — but it does make me a dull boy. Yesterday I finally looked up from my glowing screen, observed a beautiful day in progress outdoors, and made a run for the pool. I sat under an umbrella and read analog media while Kate swam.

A woman nearby was there with three young children. The whole family seemed a little overrevved; after a minor incident between the two little boys, the older boy had a toddler-style meltdown. (And he wasn’t a toddler.) He was actually jumping up and down in front of his mother, demanding justice for his little brother, which I suspect involved beheading or caning. She finally ended the tirade with a backhanded slap to the midsection and a few harsh words in a foreign tongue. The boy shrieked, “I’M NEVER COMING TO THE POOL AGAIN!” and went off to sulk.

After a bit, a man arrived, not dressed for the pool (black socks with Top-Siders — OMG!). He seemed thrilled to see the children, and the children were thrilled to see him. The mother sat as if turned to stone. I went back to my reading, and when I looked up again, he was gone, and mother was screaming at someone on her cell phone. I mean: Screaming. In another language, which I couldn’t identify, but it had many harsh fricatives. This went on at length; people were edging away from her. Finally she slammed the phone shut, sat up and wept for a while behind her sunglasses. In the midst of this, her youngest, a girl of about one, began to wail. She ignored the screaming baby for what seemed like hours. It was a grim, grim scene.

What are you supposed to do at times like these? I mean, if I had three kids under five and a presumably estranged husband, not to mention about 60 pounds of weight to lose, I’d feel like screaming and weeping myself. But to go over and offer her support would be an open acknowledgment that all this stuff is going on in public, which would be embarrassing, and…and…

I went back to my book. Her burden seemed too enormous, not only for her, but for me, too.

And now I have approximately…checking…2,500 words of copy to send singing out of the house by day’s end. Time to cry havoc and let slip.

Man, you gotta love the British press. If I lived in London, I’d spend all day reading the papers. How can you not love a paper that gives the world a headline like this:

Friend of presidents, defrauder of millions: Texas elite bids farewell to ‘Kenny boy’

The story’s not bad, either. It contains a detail I hadn’t yet heard: Even on his last night alive, Lay was reportedly heckled by diners at an Italian restaurant in Colorado, prompting him to finish his chicken parmesan and leave hurriedly with his wife, Linda.

Each man’s death diminishes me, blah blah blah. But still, that’s kinda funny. A guy with a bad ticker probably shouldn’t be eating chicken parmesan.

“Heckled.” I wonder what form that took. This was Aspen or its environs, after all, and presumably Kenny Boy and Linda weren’t eating at the Olive Garden, but among others of their class, at some place where they know how to pronounce “trattoria.” How do folks like that heckle? A hip check as they pass the table returning from the restroom? A thrown breadstick? A loud request of the waiter? (”Can we have a new table? There seems to be a BAD SMELL in this corner of the room.”) Or outright, classic-definition-of-the-word heckling, as in “Hey, Kenny, I lost my ass on your stock, you jerk.” Somehow I doubt any of the comments had anything to do with the workers deprived of their pensions and savings. Rich people may be people, too, but the keenest pain is always reserved for themselves. They’re like everyone else in that way, too.

A tiny bit o’ bloggage: Two guys walk into a bar in Irkutsk, a much better headline than what’s on this very entertaining essay about the jokes of Communism.

All I’ve done this week is work. So I have to go do some more. Maybe I’ll surface later today, but in the meantime, rattle Kenny Boy’s dead thievin’ bones in the comments!