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Sunday - 6/22/08 
Maynard, MA, er, Aberdeen, MD
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And we're back! Well, I'm back. You've always been there. Unless you aren't there, in which case you may not have been there in the first place which tends to make me sad. That wasn't nearly as grandiose as it should have been with such a lapse on my part so I'll start again...

I'm back!!! "Where did you go?" You ask. Well as many of you know I went off to L.A. and gallivanted around the country for an inordinate amount of time in sincerely unemployed fashion but now I'm back. My utmost apologies go out to all of you for my lapse in the blog, and the lapse in pretty much everything else in my life. But I'm tired of apologizing. Screw you all.

I was going to write a blog about my new pad, of which I have had a few pads since I've written here. Truth be told since I left for LA I have lived 13 places. Thirteen. Can you imagine? That isn't including hotel rooms both now and back in the day when I was running about the countryside all confused-like. If I counted the hotel rooms I figure I've lived 964 places in the last 4 minutes. No, That's way too much of an exaggeration, even for me. Let's just say I've lived more places in the last 2 years than you could shake a stick at. So instead of writing about my new pad(s) I had to suddenly leave the area yet again for work down here in Aberdeen, Maryland where the girls are toothless and eager to wheeze. I am again working at the Army labs as many of you have realized. My (good) friend was good enough (friend) to get me a job and give me his car. I figure if he manages to find me a bride we'll be even. So now I am working again and the money is rolling on in...that is when the contracting department actually decides to pay me. The finance office apparently closed due to a herd of BRACcish wildebeest stampeding on through and us contractors were left high and dry wallowing in a dung ridden pile of bullish cowntractual non-payment. It was udderly ridiculous. I honestly didn't get paid for about 8 weeks at one point and was resorting to stealing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the children at the local elementary school while they were out at recess. I'm truly sorry, Billy, Bobby and little Janie. So I left this morning to embark on the lovely ~6 hour drive from Massachusetts to Maryland. I headed out around 7:30 am and arrived at my destination around 2pm which worked out well as check-in at the hotel was precisely at 2. ...Oh yeah... The drive down was uneventful except for the moronic masses swerving in and out of traffic trying to get ahead in the world in their oversized SUV's. Not me. I'm sporting the sporty yet gruesome Chrysler PT cruiser. 

Give me strength... I wanted a sub compact anti-chick repelling magnet car that got at least 80 mpg but the bozos at Enterprise rent-a-car had different ideas. Although I explicitly reserved a sub compact they stuck my in this Addam's family looking PT cruiser thing. 

They may as well have plopped me in this and sent me on my way-

or this

Whatever the case I looked like this after getting a 
mere 5 hours sleep and then driving 360 miles

Granted it's convenient that Enterprise rent-a-car is almost directly across the street from my house and I can stroll on in wearing my slippers and a bathrobe with a cup of coffee steaming in my non-dominant hand but did they have to stick me in this Frankenstein looking piece of rubbish?

All jokes aside this car is reasonably useless. Although it is smaller than the average "mid-sized" car as the yahoo at Enterprise dubbed it, it gets a mere 23 miles per gallon which is hauntingly bad for sacrificing undue amounts of comfort and self-esteem.

All jokes aside (or most of them) I did hit some rain squalls on the way down

(Forgive me for using google's image search to embellish my ceaseless canterwallowings here but Frankly I was too tired and Frankensteinly exhausted to take pictures of my own on the way down. I'm lucky I made it here in one piece and having a coffin shaped car may have been in order but luckily, was not)

So I PT cruised effortlessly through Connecticut and onward over the George Washington bridge as all the masses lay huddled sleeping in the wee hours at 12 noon. Big party night last night in NYC so I hear. So I guess all the riff raff were off the roads, as I could easily have driven off the road myself, but I digress, I don't want my mom to worry (hi mom)

So besides work related issues that will remain semi-classified the big goings on down here in near Mason-Dixie-ville are somewhat entertaining. There is a concert going on tonight at the Army base I happen to be working at-

with special guest
BLIND MELON

That's right, aside from the semi-mundane tasks awaiting my non-bespectacled self there 
is a glimmer of awesomeness in that ZZ-TOP IS PLAYING HERE BABY>>>YEAH!!

These sure-fire geezers are still at it? Holy smokes. They were going at it in all their bespectacledism with their large beards and spinning guitars when I was back in grade school having disgruntled Army contractors stealing my bag lunches while I was at recess. Granted their beards are a bit longer, and a bit greyer, and their cheap sunglasses are the wrap around elderly driver type while their guitars gently weep and spin a bit less energetically, I'm still hoping for a good show here tonight. Well the show is at six and it's now 5:30 so I must be PT'ing along. A full review of the show is forthcoming.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support and tolerance

-the VSO