They're heeeeere. Who's here?

The DC people.....

No, it didn't take two weeks to drive XC. It's just that the moment I saw the house, I freaked out and went into a coma from which I just awoke. But never to fear...the "silver lining" version of the story goes like this:
We were thinking about having the floors sanded and refinished anyway. And I was kind of regretting picking green for the new carpet in the basement.
Here's a wierd one. The outside of the front door smells like smoke, but not the inside. I guess the hooligans were at least polite enough to smoke outside. However, they were not polite enough to throw their butts in the trash.
There were dirty hand prints (frat boy sized) everywhere. Even the ceilings!
The neighbors have been reveling in the horror stories, in their not exactly veiled attempt to say: HA! That'll show you to rent out the house next to us!
The end of the drive went fine. I'm sure many interesting things happened which I can't remember since the traumatic coming-home experience. However, in order to prove the widely held suspicion that most accidents happen within a few miles of home, I drove to DC, drove around DC for 15 months and drove home without incident. Then an hour after arriving home, I went to the grocery store and had my accident. Let's just call it an incident. And don't mention it to my car insurance company.

Almost, but not quite

Bombed across Wyoming (already can't remember where we were last night). Screamed through the northeast corner of Utah. Blazed over Idaho. And now we are in OREGON. However, we are still about 400 miles from home. But at least the license plates belong.

Question: What does it mean if the BRAKE light stays on? Just a hypothetical question, really. I mean, no reason I would ask. I would NEVER drive thousands of miles with questionable brakes. Oh, except when I did with the VW, but that was different. I was stupid back then...

Newsflash: Idaho has the plague. Not a pandemic or a bacteria or the black death. Just a classic Old Testament bug plague. Here we are, driving the speed limit (about 130), and it starts to rain. Sounds like rain, seems like rain, but doesn't wipe off like rain. DAMN! It's bugs. Well, now they're X-bugs, and they're smeared all over our sensible camry car. I don't know what Idaho did to anger the great "I am". Whatever it was, they'd better repent fast or else many more windshields may suffer the wrath.

Here I am at the Continental Divide working on the lyrics for a country song. It goes something like this:
When I cry a tear at the continental divide
Where does it go?
How does it know?
To which ocean it should flow.
etc etc, fiddle solo, more rhyming, and a verse about the open road.


Here's Taylor singing the future hit song: Continental Divide


Last news item: Cats with jetlag.
The cats are still on Eastern Daylight time. We are now in Pacific standard time. There is a four hour difference at work here. How do I know the cats have jetlag, you ask? Because they are jumping on the bed, meowing, scratching my feet and sticking their whiskers in my nose...at 3am.

My next screenplay will be the sequel to "Dances with Wolves" called "Drives with Cats". Pixel will be played by Morris, Scruffy by Sylvester. For Taylor, we will cast Jody Foster. For me....Lucy Lawless. Aie yai yai yai yaaaaaaiiiii, XEEEE NAAA!!!!!

Tomorrow---home!