Steven Harper's Blog, page 54
August 1, 2019
Arriving
For the month of July, I helped chaperone a group of American exchange students through their trip to Germany. I didn't have time to post blogs while I was there, so I'm backposting them now. Enjoy!
We made it to Germany! Almost without incident, too.
Shepherding 24 teenagers through the airport and onto an international flight is always at least a bit of a challenge, especially with group good-byes and photos and such. But KL (the other teachers) and I managed it, and everyone made it aboard the flight.
The flight was boring and uneventful, just the way you want flights to be. But it =was= late, and when we landed in Frankfurt, we discovered we only had about half an hour to make our connecting flight to Berlin.
We were at Gate Z1. The connecting flight was at Gate A21. I’m not kidding you.
All 26 of us literally ran the entire length of Frankfurt airport, doing OJ Simpson wind sprints. We arrived, panting and sweaty, at the connecting gate just in time.
In Berlin, we gathered up our luggage—no one’s was lost—and hopped a charter bus for the hotel in Alexanderplatz. The hotel caters to a lot of American tourists, and all week we heard a lot more English than German! However, there was also an international archery tournament on, so we also ran into a number of other countries. One day I got onto the elevator with a short Asian man. The two of us went down a couple floors, and the elevator stopped. Three men wearing Ukrainian archery uniforms boiled into the elevator. These guys were huge! It was like sharing the elevator with a herd of bulls. The other man and I were squished up against the elevator wall for three more floors. Then the Ukrainians bumbled off the elevator and we could breathe again.
We spent three days in Berlin, and KL and I shepherded the students around to various sites. They saw the remains of the Berlin Wall and the famous art painted on it. We took a bike tour of the city with a very good tour guide who explained quite a lot of Berlin to the students. We shopped along Kurfürstendamm. We visited the ruined/restored Gedaechtniskirche.
I also got a little lost.
It’s true. We were all on an intercity train returning from a visit to a concentration camp (more on that later) and I was on a bunch of headache meds. I fuzzed out at the wrong moment and failed to get off the train with the group.
KL doesn’t have international calling on her phone and is only reachable when she has WiFi. However, I was able to reach one of the students, who told me they were heading for the Memorial Church on the Kurfürstendamm. So I said I would meet them there. Fortunately, the German mass-transit system holds no mysteries for me, and I was able to work out a route, though a quirk of my location meant I had to take another train and then a bus. I arrived at the church after the students had seen it and had split up for some free time, so I window-shopped on the Ku’Damm and got some curry wurst from a street vendor. Heaven!
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July 5, 2019
Gay Book Reviews Reads Kevin
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Guest Blog: My Fiction Nook
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Kevin Guest Blog and Review: Kimmer’s
Kimmer also reviewed the novel. She calls it “thrilling, surprising and highly engaging . . . a gasp-worthy page-turner that you won’t want to put down.” Go see! http://www.kimmerseroticbookbanter.co... http://www.kimmerseroticbookbanter.com/2019/07/03/review-the-importance-of-being-kevin-by-steven-harper/
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June 28, 2019
The Importance of Being Kevin
Kevin Devereaux’s life can't get worse. He’s on probation. He’s stuck with an unemployed ex-convict dad. And he lives in a run-down trailer on the crappy east side of town. To keep his probation officer happy, Kevin joins a theater program for teenagers and falls hard for Peter Finn, the lead actor in the show—and the son of the town's leading family. Despite their differences, Peter returns Kevin’s feelings, and for the first time, Kevin learns what it means to be in love. But Peter’s family won’t accept a gay son—let alone a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks—and in their conservative town, they must keep the romance secret. Still, they have the play, and they have each other, so they’ll get by— Until a brutal attack shatters Kevin’s life and puts Peter in danger of going to jail for murder.
https://www.amazon.com/Importance-Being-Kevin-Steven-Harper/dp/1644052571
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June 27, 2019
Prepping for Germany
I'll be staying with one of the teachers, a bio instructor. We've been chatting electronically for several months, and it'll be cool to meet him in person!
But I'll be gone for about four weeks. This is the longest Darwin and I have ever been separated. It's going to be weird.
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Fair Vasyl
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June 16, 2019
Benefiting from the Keto Craze
Apparently, my best friends are almond flour with a dash of coconut flour, xantham gum, and eggs. Almond flour has no gluten in it, which means it doesn't rise well, though it'll puff up a bit with some help from eggs. Xantham gum helps it hold together during this process. Another plus: Internet shopping. The grocery store doesn't carry a lot of the weirder ingredients, but on-line stores do. They even carry the stuff in bulk. This makes everything a WHOLE lot easier.
My latest experiment was with bread. Darwin misses bread terribly, and I was determined to find a substitute for him. An edible substitute. After some searching, I found what looked to be a decent bread recipe. It's a quick bread--yeast doesn't play nicely with almond flour--but it looked pretty and wouldn't be difficult to make.
I mixed up a batch and baked it. The loaf was low, maybe half the height of normal bread, but it wasn't overly dense. It has a slight nutty flavor to it--the almond flour at work--but it was quite tasty and Darwin deemed it a wonderful bread substitute. So we'll keep this one.
And keep benefiting from the keto craze.
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June 13, 2019
Draggy, Draggy, Drag
Max had to work, so Darwin and I went to supper. I fortified myself with some nice diner lasagna and a salad and a lot of diet pop for the caffeine. But when I got home, I was still logy. It must be the weather--rainy, chilly, damp, low-hanging clouds.
I forced myself to go for a run, and I couldn't get up to full speed. Though it did perk me up a little. A slow, sludgy day.
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Pine Pollen Kaboom
It turned the back deck yellow. It coated the cars in thick dust. It got into our noses and our clothes.
Yesterday, I went out to check the trees on the front lawn. The pollen sacs were still bulging, and even the tiniest shake of the branch brought down a shower of pollen.
But yesterday evening, we got horrendous thunderstorms. Thor fighting Zeus level thunderstorms. Rain bucketed down like someone was pouring Lake Erie over us through a colander. And in the morning, the pollen was gone.
Well, gone from the trees and the cars, anyway. It had turned into gummy gunk on the back deck. Today, Darwin went out with a push broom and a buck of soapy water to scrub it away. Tomorrow I'll wash it off the front porch.
Man. I'd rather rake leaves in the fall than deal with this.
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