They're Baaaaaaack...Kinda Sorta Not

About the last week of March, 2006, I met with Japan Lite writer/blogger Amy Chavez at the Buffalo Bar & Grill in Idaho Springs, CO. We'd corresponded some over a few years, and she happened to be in Colorado to ski, so she arranged a meet.

In arranging this meet, Amy asked that I bring Seymour, my pet rock, and Jane, my purloined (for Seymour) earette of corn along, so she could meet 'em. After we met, Amy sprang an unexpected request upon me: could she take Seymour and Jane back to Japan with her? To spend a summer on the beach at her Moooo! Bar, located on the beach of Shiraishi Island, in the Japanese Inland Sea.

While Seymour and Jane sat there stunned, albeit pleased, at the invite, I pondered it all of a couple seconds before saying "yes". I never saw a pet rock and earette of corn so excited (see photo, which is Seymour and Jane, pre-Japan). Actually, I've never seen them show much emotion about anything, other than when something 'morphed' in my 'fridge, and scared Seymour when he tried to get a midnight snack ... or when Seymour watched a marathon of The Outer Limits (TOS) and then 'fixed' my VCR remote into a 'home defence device' that I discovered the hard way ... and there was the katana/iaido episode ... but I digress.

Anyway, Amy said she'd have 'em back the next spring (2007).

Which became the next spring (2008). And then the next spring (2009). Seymour and Jane had returned to the US by the spring of '08, but they spent the rest of that year adorning a dining room table at Amy's parents farm in Ohio. Not exactly the beach outside of the Moooo! Bar, but finally, Seymour and Jane had returned to the USA. And now, they were to return to my care on April 2, 2009.

Or so I'd been led to believe.

When I met Amy and her friend Paul at the Buffalo Bar and Grill in Idaho Springs, I noticed something immediately: both Amy and Paul arrived empty-handed. Okay, I reckoned, I'd pick up Seymour and Jane when we left the bar.

Wrong.

Amy apologetically let me know that Seymour was still in Ohio. Then, she and Paul broke the 'news': Jane was 'missing'. And Seymour was being questioned by local authorities in Ohio as a person...er...pet rock of interest in Jane's 'disappearance'.

It's a good thing I live an absurd life; otherwise, none of this would make any sense...

So...the saga continues. Seymour, being interrogated by some of Ohio's finest, while Jane is...somewhere, physically changed from whenst I last saw her, with a huge brood all over Shiraishi Island and points elsewhere, and not one kernel of evidence asto where she is right now.

*ducking boos and assorted throwd items*

Amy promises to keep me updated on the case. Meantime, if anyone sees a possibly tribal-looking corncob, largely shorn of corn, with a base plate screwed into her butt, and wearing something akin to what Trailer Trash Barbie or Kimono Barbie wears, wandering aimlessly in your neighborhood, drop me an email. Especially if she's muttering dire threats about kicking a pet rock's ass.

I might overcome common sense -- as I frequently do -- and answer it.