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.

Everybody knows everybody in small towns.

Yesterday, we went to grab some food at Green Acres diner - home of the monster burger - in Adairville, Kentucky. As we waited for our burgers, I perused the community bulletin board. On it, I found a business card for The Ghost Hunter.

As we entertained ourselves with speculation about The Ghost Hunter, I thought to myself, “Hmm . . I wonder if that person is sitting in here right now or if someone he knows is.” I felt as though the chances were slim since there were only four other patrons in the restaurant.

Our top questions for the Ghost Hunter are:

Does he investigate crop circles? What is his stance on aliens? How ’bout ghost-aliens? Ghost-robots? And where did he find the clip art for his card?

After we finished the last of our tater tots and onion rings, we got up to pay the bill just as the two now remaining customers were also getting up to check out. I thumb-tacked the Ghost Hunter’s card back up to the cork board. The man in line said, “You got a kick outta my card, huh?”

“Do you do aliens too?” I asked.

He just laughed and pointed to his wife. “Naw, that’s her territory.”

I left East Nashville on Monday and headed up to visit my friends Matt and Hardy at Hardy’s farm, which sits right on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line. I stayed only two delightful days, but packed alot of good times inside of 48 hours.

I had a bit of trouble finding the place and cell signals don’t work so well up there, so I stopped in for a respite at the Tenn-Tucky Tavern, located on the state line between Tennessee and Kentucky. I knew they’d wonder where I was and eventually find me, so I wasn’t too worried.

“Do ya’ll serve food here?” I asked the bartender, who just shook her head and laughed. “All right then, I guess I’ll just be having a PBR tallboy and a pack of smokes.” Turns out that bartender was one of my customers when I used to be a traveling sex toy saleslady in those parts. Such a small world.

After Matt and Hardy collected me from the Tavern, we went to the farm and visited two completely different ends of the culinary spectrum. First we cracked open a wheel of brie and a nice bottle of red wine and then followed that up with lots of PBR and some boy-scout style open pit cooking using nothing but hot coals and shovel.

We waited til dark, grabbed some tobacco sticks to use as hiking poles and then tromped through the woods, exploring a long abandoned one-room schoolhouse and a pre Civil War graveyard. We ran through fields of mist. We hung out for a bit on the state-line road. I stretched out with my head on the Tennessee pavement as my legs dangled into Kentucky’s border. Why that was so much fun is beyond me, but it was.

We stayed up all night long listening to music. I played some air banjo. We danced our asses off to old records - my favorite in particular was The Crazy Water Barn Dance. When the sun rose, casting a golden sheen on the cut wheat fields, I finally went to bed.

I love unemployment.

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.

I just won a contest sponsored by Beth at wanderlustandlipstick.com by submitting unique eco-travel tips . . . here are my winning suggestions. I won a really cool portable water filtration unit called a Steripen. Thanks Beth, for sponsoring this contest! I can’t wait to get out there and be someplace where I need to use my new toy.

Here are my Eco Travel Tips -

* Carry a flat plastic universal sink stopper to plug up sinks or shower drains and save water.

* Invest in a metal/vintage razor with removable blades. They are sleek, sexy and NOT plastic. You don’t need a moisturizing strip, contrary to what Gilette may have taught you to believe.

* Pick up beach glass in lieu of shells. The shells on the beaches in Puget Sound, for example, are being depleted by scavenging humans more quickly than they can be replaced. Beach glass is awesome for any kind of art project and all the pieces are unique, plus the act of collecting it helps the planet!

* My spoon has traveled 10,000 miles. It’s saved me from using countless plastic sporks.

Last Sunday in Murfreesboro I roller skated for hours in the hot mid-afternoon sun. After a bit of that, I was hungry - and thirsty. Being a holiday weekend, not much in the way of eateries was open in the historic downtown area of Murfreesboro, where I was happily tucked away with no car.

I rolled up to the square. Sadly, no coffee shops open. In fact, nothing open at all. I was headed back home when I noticed that B. McNeel’s was open for 20 more minutes. This restaurant is elegant; housed in a historic building just a block off the square. This establishment reminds me of something one might see adorned with magnolia blossoms and featured in Southern Living Magazine, it’s that beautiful on the inside.

I walked up the stairs to the front door on my skate stoppers and a smiling hostess opened the door for me.

“Can I eat in here?” I asked. The hostess kind of gave me a funny look. I pointed to my skates. “I don’t want to mess up your hardwoods.”

“I’ll go ask my manager,” she said.

I waited, sweating outside no more than thirty seconds before the front door was flung open yet again by another smiling face. It was Barbara herself, the owner of the restaurant.

“Get in here, girl!” she said, laughing. “Just don’t fall.”

I did have to catch my balance momentarily as I rolled across those slick, polished hardwood floors. The menu at B. McNeel’s is simple for Sunday brunch. There’s a buffet with everything you can imagine, but I didn’t want to get out of my seat or walk up to the buffet line in my socked feet amongst all the families who were sporting their Sunday finery.

My waitress came to get my drink order and informed me that Barbara was taking care of my tab! I wanted something special and made-to-order and insisted that I pay. “No,” the waitress repeated. “It’s on us.”

“Thank you! How nice!” I said. “I’m a guest in this town!”

I ordered the huevos rancheros and was very pleasantly surprised by this Southern restaurant’s rendition of my favorite Latin breakfast. The refried beans were whole beans, not refried bean paste. And the sauce! Oh the sauce! It was just spicy enough and very dark reddish brown, full of speckles of peppers and herbs and goodness and full of flavor too. I’m sure they make it in the kitchen from scratch.

The restaurant is full of dappled light from the long windows and has a great feel in general. I indeed felt as though I stepped into a magazine. And then, just when I thought the experience couldn’t get any better, Lyle Lovett’s voice pumped through the loudspeaker. My favorite song was playing.

My little getaway abode over the 4th of July weekend turned out to be in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A friend of mine was out of town and graciously offered her apartment to me.

Murfreesboro was the first place I lived solo. I was 17 years old and rented part of an historic house in the antebellum, but kinda run-down part of town. The place my friend offered was three blocks away from my old house! It was so exciting to be in that part of the world again. I popped on my roller skates and skated through the streets, past all those crumbling and gorgeous pre Civil War homes.

The thing I love most about that part of town are all the carriage stones. Just about every front yard has an old rock or concrete slab in front. The carriages would drop the ladies off at the stone step. Ah! Such elegant days . . . The friend’s home I stayed at has three in the yard. I told her that the yard must’ve been some odd bus stop for carriages.

Not a lot has changed in that neighborhood. The Kwik Stop is still up the street and there’s still about 50 brands of cigarettes I’ve never heard of in my life being sold there from cardboard barrels - probably so kids can steal ‘em easier. They also have an impressive collection of knives and swords in prominent display over a new fancy ice cream cooler. Whoa. All this is clever marketing, but I’m not sure I approve.

Junior’s Foodland is still down the street, which thrills me to no end! In a world where corporations are trying to run every last little guy out of business, it was sheer joy to walk into that tiny little grocery store . . . you know the kind. The kind that smell like a tiny grocery store because they’ve got a butcher shop in the back. Junior’s Foodland also specializes in fresh fried chicken. I was happy to see chicken wings smashed into the black asphalt of the parking lot. Again, some things, thankfully, never change.

I skated past MTSU (Middle Tn State University). I took part of one class there once. The day I was supposed to pith a live frog for Biology class, I walked out the door, never to return. I rolled in figure 8’s in the parking lot of The Boro Bar and Grill, the only first bar I’ve ever been kicked out of. I skated up to Oakland’s Mansion, which sits at the end of my old street and read about Nathan Bedford Forrest’s attack on the Union army back in 1863. (Gosh, I don’t even think I knew about that when I lived there . . . !)

I rolled past my old place enough times that I eventually ran into the older dude who lives there now. He let me poke my head inside his part of the crumbling post Civil War mansion. The house itself is older and more dilapidated than when I lived there, but this guy takes much better care of the apartment than I did when I was a 17 year old kid living there alone. The peeled wallpaper has been patched and fixed. The horrific paint job I once gave to the grandiose 90 degree staircase has been amended. The old electric heater is the same.

The only thing that’s missing is the carriage stone that used to sit out front.

I always travel with a floppy, ribboned straw hat. It serves several functions including - shelter from the sun, cuteness as an accessory and occasionally, camouflage during flights.

I’m traveling gypsy style right now with a large rolling duffle, a box, a cat in a carrier and medium-sized bag/purse. I checked the duffle and the box, leaving me with room for one personal item and one carry on. Frank in his travel bag is my carry-on. My purse has all critical items in it when on the plane such as my laptop and camera.

My purse doesn’t close, though and since Frank gets shoved underneath the seat in front of me while on the plane, this leaves me with nowhere to put my purse. I don’t want to put it in the over head bins because my fear is that all my stuff including sensitive electronic equipment would fall out.

Enter big floppy straw hat.

I put Frank under the seat and slipped my purse behind my legs, which you are not allowed to do, according to some FAA regulation. So, I just put my big hat in my lap and let it dangle a bit across my legs and voila! The flight attendant doesn’t see the contraband stowed behind my legs.

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’.

Sorry for the excessive negativity there on that last post, folks.

I’ve just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Hocus Pocus”. The main character, Eugene Hartke Debs, does not curse. He says that cursing is a way for judgemental people to choose not to listen to what you’ve got to say. This character prefers to say “when the excrement hit the air conditioning” and I like this thought process. But I think I enjoy f-bombs more . . .

Anyway, since in my last post, I publicly smeared my former employer, I feel an update is in order. Some good news. Capitol Films has come up with enough money to pay the crew for their final week of shooting. It’s still very wrong that they paid those crew members late. It’s still very wrong that they, (at least to my knowledge) have not paid their vendors - this includes huge outstanding hotel and rental car accounts. This is a classic display of excrement hitting the air conditioning. For sure, for sure.

But, paying the crew is a huge step forward.

Ok, now I’m on to the more positive aspects of life . . . and there are many.

And so it goes.