My friend Smack and I went to one my favorite Nashville used booksellers, The BookWoman, the other day while I was in town. We spent hours perusing the endless dark aisles of books while thunderstorms boomed outside in Hillsboro Village. My perfect definition of a way to spend an afternoon.

She pulled a book off the shelf. It was Siddhartha, a book that’s on my reading list.

“Banana,” Smack said, “have you read this yet?”

“Not yet.” I said.

“It’s only a dollar. You need this.”

She is correct. I do need it. It is, after all, on my list. When the BookWoman tallied up my spoils, the price seemed more than I’d calculated in my head. I asked her to go over the receipt with me. Turns out Siddhartha was $6.95.

“I thought this one was a dollar.” I said, pointing to the book in question.

The BookWoman took a deep breath and a long pause and peered at me over her the top of her bifocals. “Honey,” she said, “That one is never a dollar.”

Fair enough. I’ll be reading it this weekend. Obviously I agreed with her because I purchased the book. I’ll let ya know what I think.

I’ve been staying at my friend Candy’s house for the past week. We all like to eat. Her husband Jesse suggested that we try the new independently owned wing place in their ghetto fabulous ‘hood called Ghot Wingz. It’s a tiny corner joint, almost behind an alley in the back of a building off of Gallatin Road in East Nashville.

The place just opened up one week before and I am quite impressed by the set-up. It’s simple and the smoked wings, offered in nine tantalizing flavors, are quite tasty! They have a community room with a couple of pool tables and an old Nintendo. The decor of giant muscle car posters, Chevy barstools and countertops constructed of old mechanic toolboxes, is, by my guess inspired by The Nashville Auto Diesel College, located directly across the street.

Sharonda Stone, the owner herself, was the one who handed me my order with a smile as she pulled back the lid of the steaming to-go box for my approval. I like it when the owners of a place are involved. I chose the buffalo style wings, which were well paired with Cajun fries and the twelve pack of beer we washed them down with at home during movie night. (Note - twelve pack of beer sold separately from Ghot Wingz’s combo.)

So . . . anyway, lots of beers later, Jesse said, “Oh, they don’t even have menus yet. I bet they need a website. I could offer to do their website and they could just pay me in wings. That’ll be $4000.00 in wings every month, please.”

“Jesse,” I shrieked. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve essentially just given yourself a $48,000.00 a year raise! This is brilliant!”

Then I got an idea.

“I’m a great big ole math dork,” I said. “How many hot wings would Ghot Wingz have to give you every single day in order to give you your raise?”

Jesse grabbed pencil and paper. I ran out of the room to get my 10-key. (Yes, I’m traveling with a 10-key . . . long story.) So there we are in Candy and Jesse’s living room doing math instead of watching films. I was laughing so hard that the tape from my 10-key unfurled all over the living room. Jesse by that time had switched to using his computer for calculations, and therefore came up with the answer in wings before I could punch nary a key on my adding machine.

The answer is - $48,000 in wings at .80 cents per wing breaks down to approximately 52 wings apiece per day for Candy and Jesse each.

That’s alotta hot wangz. You can check Jesse’s math if you want. I didn’t. I’m a math dork and all, but I try not to push it to the extreme.

When I jetted out of Columbia, South Carolina a few days ago, it was a mighty hasty departure indeed.

I had the best time working on that movie. I met the best people in the worst of circumstances. That happens sometimes. When they told us that we had 24 hours to pack up accounting, I just wanted to throw up. And I just wanted to leave town and disappear for a few days.

I was flying to Tennessee, but had only a loose idea where I (and the cat) would be staying in the next days, but I wasn’t sweating it. Sure enough, everything worked out. A friend called me and offered me her place for the Fourth of July weekend since she was going to be out of town.

It was LOVELY. I stayed in bed pretty much for three days solid, read a novel and just decompressed in general.

Today, I’m in Nashville. I’ll be here for a few more days, then I’m meandering northward to Illinois. I just kind of free-floating these days and right now am not sure where I will live/journey to in the next couple of months. I have definite plans, I’m just not sure yet where I will carry them out. It’s a-comin’.