Abq2. It rhymes, so I'm sticking with it.

Oh the lament of New Mexico and this one's voyage through it.

Hey kids! Our last story time left off in the exotic hippie town of Taos, and since my lazy brain prefers its tales in a largely linear format, that's where we'll pick back up.

The mom decided that we should take a detour on the return trip and mosey on through the Sante Fe National Forrest. I seconded. I still am not sure why I would make this choice, but that is in retrospect. In retrospect, I can see that I had a long weekend still ahead of sitting in the back of that car, staring out the window as a landscape of unrelenting shades of brown slowly crawled by. Yep, there was tan, and reddish brown. Ohh, that's a nice little bit of common European Standards weights and measurements brown. You may call me a brownoisseur. But if you do, I might feel inclined to give you one helluva pinch for ever saying something so astoundingly stupid in my presence.

Self-inflicted pain is the best kind, that's my motto, along with Not in the Face! So I voiced my agreement for the plan. Two positive votes beat out two ambivalent votes, so the clan meandered off the beaten path back to the city and onto the beaten path up into the mountains. So, we took 64 east, and here's the thing, the map made the detour seem a lot shorter than it was. Stupid lying maps.

I think that I was hearkening back to the scenery in Alaska. Sights from my childhood that I would like to see again. There are mountains in both places! How different could it be? Rivers, lakes and waterfalls. Trees marching up snow-capped mountains. And such a vivid rainbow of colors! Yay Alaska. And there were trees – alas, where between them I would expect a bevy of pleasing undergrowth to add a wealth of color and texture to the scenery, there was only sandy soul. BROWN.

There was little else in the spring of memory to remind me of my childhood.

Well. Aside from the creepy little settlements that lie way off the beaten path, settlements where a visitor might feel a bit wary of stepping out of their car, just in case the banjo music suddenly started up. New Mexico shares that in common with Alaska.

New Mexico is a poor state in so many ways. You know that fundamental building block of life? If you said Cheese, I'll grant you that, but it wasn't the answer I was looking for. I was hoping that you yelled out 'Water', that simple chemical that makes up 80% of the human body. A chemical that covers 75% of our planet's surface. In terms of bodily needs for our species it goes AIR>WATER>FOOD, in that order. We can survive maybe 3 days without ingesting it. WE need it to grow food. Waterfront property goes for a premium. Water has replaced earthship for my word of the day. But only because you can't drink Earthships – which does not make a bit of sense, but I am sticking with the sentiment regardless.

Our collective human civilizations have built most of their cities around sources of water. As it happens, water is not very common in the desert. My mind is blown! Deserts are dry? You think that would be common knowledge, causing people to avoid living in deserts. But it's true. And people seem to choose to live there! Or maybe I am being Naive, and many of the residents have become mired in the shifting sands.

Some people do. I am left to wonder if many of these people are trapped there by economic circumstances. Who would chose to live like this? Rural dwellings in Alaska, I can understand. Alaska has abundant natural resources that can be harvested with hard work. Sure, winters are long and importing food and fuel is expensive, but that seems to be a fair trade for living in Alaska.

New Mexico seems to be less so. Though it must have some mineral wealth at the very least – one still needs to overcome the water problem – and all of the challenges that accompany a water poor landscape.

All along the highway there were clustered settlements of homes, usually bunched with a small Catholic church in the Spanish/Mexican style. From time to time, one will see signs announcing a Land Grant community. Back in days of yore, the various Governments of Mexico would entice citizens to move in to the vast, and largely empty, territory by offering them huge tracts of land. Tracts that would number in the tens of thousands of acres. Some of those villages and families still reside on that land.

I do not know what services that one needed to perform for king and country to gain such a boon, but a little research has revealed the outlines of the process involved with the actual grant. I only know that the various governments used the grants as a way to settle land. Rather like our own government has done. As has any society with a vast new frontier to conquer.

First, the land had to be uninhabited by people(including natives – good on you Spain). Second, the grantee would need to stay on the land for four or more years, after which, in the eyes of Spain they owned that land and could do what they pleased with it. Most of the land seemed to be used for ranching and some subsistence farming. Though I find it difficult to believe that one could do more than scratch out a living there. Some of the land grants were made to entire villages, where individuals and families were assigned a small plot to homestead while the rest of the grant was communal.

After the Spanish-American war, the entire region changed hands. The American government seems to have largely respected the claims of the preexisting communities, but America being what she is and always has been, justice hasn't always been done and after the Mexican American war in the late 1840s, Land Speculators stirred up quite a mess. Now there are legal questions being raised about who actually owns the land.

Our route wove up, down and around the mountain, taking us through several flyspeck little settlements as previously described. Places which the mere existence of boggle my mind. They're like communities on a foreign planet and I cannot understand how they continue to exist. At least in some part, many of them are supported by the illicit art trade that runs through Taos. Of course it's illicit, Hippies are involved. Some of the views from well up high was actually rather pretty. But don't tell anyone I said so.

Speckled along the highways from Albuquerque to Taos are more mobile homes than I have ever seen before in my life. Many of them seemed to be in poor shape. And the further away into the boonies you got, the worse the decay – a surprising correlation to exactly 0% of the population of humans who are capable of understanding the word correlation and using it in a sentence. As well as pretty much anyone else as well. Except perhaps movie executives. Those assholes are idiots.

Seriously you assholes, stop remaking the good movies. A remake of Highlander? What's the fucking point? If you need to revisit the past, due to cowardice on your part and a lack of ideas, then revisit the thousands of broken movies that your factories have churned out over the last hundred years. You can start slow, maybe with Highlander 2. Then when you've got the hang of it, jump in deep and try to unbork the library of Ed Wood. Dicks.

There are some run down locales, even entire cities, in my home state. But New Mexico seems to have us beat(or vice versa). I think that seeing those sad domiciles was the most depressing reality of the visit. It was like someone had torn apart the worst neighborhoods of Detroit, ground them up, and sprinkled it all over the desert.

Eventually we crawled back to the city and called it a day. At home we continued with our grand family tradition, camping out on the couch while bathing in the cold glow of the television. Letting the depressing images of poverty fade from our consciousness as we followed the adventures of the Incredible Hulk as he made his way through Latin America. If only the Hulk, like some cosmic green rage driven god, could smash all of our social problems. If only.

Monday crept in slowly in a manner that Mondays so rarely do. But alas, there was more sitting in the back of the car on the schedule. The mom wanted us to see the Ruins. Which I would find out later to mean ruins of old Spanish Missions. Who knows, somewhere in the wilds there might be an ancient city of a lost civilization that is lined with dangers for the daring adventure to endure. Mutants roam trap riddled streets and in its very heart lies The Greatest Treasure of Them All. Since The Greatest Treasure of Them All is absolutely subjective and based on an individuals desires, I'll let you fill that part in. Will it be wealth? Magic powers? Or maybe a vibrating, 12 inch, fully prehensile penis?

Or maybe all that lies out there is unending desolate brown countryside. With the only ruins being those in National Parks run by the Forest Service. As a man who majored in history, I guess that's almost as cool.

Have I mentioned brown lately? How about Earthships? They tend to be on the brown side as well. I really need a new word for brown. I'm sick of typing those 5 letters. Tan? Dung? Umber! Now that sounds posh! Man, when I get my Earthship I shall name it the Nostromo and I will be damned if it is going to be Umber.

On the road west we encountered it. The most delightfully honest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Now, Taos had Italian Restaurant as a jewel in its hemp belt. There was no further name to the dive. No Luigi's, or Fred's or Mama's. Just Italian Restaurant. Straight forward. The sign leads me to think that New Mexicans are a rather honest, straight forward, and extremely unimaginative lot. Nothing more, just big red letters that declare that within one can acquire Italian cooking.

What does this mean? Is the food so astoundingly good that the owners only feel that they are the alpha and omega of the cuisine? Italian Restaurant, the dizzying heights to which all other establishments purporting to make Lasagna and pizza are trying to aspire?

Perhaps I am misreading the intent, and actually the food isn't that good. It could be that Italian Restaurant is like a cheap ripoff of Olive Garden that was founded by people who had only gotten so close to that franchise as to see the middle three seconds of one of their ads. A place so sketchy that in fact the twin specialties of the house are DiGiornos and Spaghetti-os. With an unlimited And since this is New Mexico, both are loaded down with your choice of green or red chillies.

Here Taos gets its Italian food. Or a facsimile there of. I shall leave them to it.

Italian Restaurant is great and all, but it doesn't hold a candle to the magnificent sight we encountered on monday. BEHOLDs: ROADSIDE ATTRACTION!

Roadside Attraction. That was it and all. I could be mistaken, but for the sake of this narrative, I'm not. It was brilliantly generic. As we had a rather hectic schedule of driving in a giant loop ahead of us, we didn't stop. I didn't get to venture inside and explore the wonders. I don't know how I feel about this, as I have seen far too many horror movies in my time to walk into a seedy join that is clearly tourist bait.

Roadside Attraction! Maybe it was owned by the same folks who owned Italian Restaurant. Honest, hardworking folk who were skipped over by whatever force instills in human beings the ability to instill interesting (if not memorable, as I am talking about it now) names. People who have named all seven of their children , boys and girls alike, a variation of Brad. Brad, Bradly, Bradford, Bradette, Bradina, and Brad 2. Child four doesn't get a name, as it is hidden in the basement and never talked about by the family.

Certainly, the sign could have been a bait and switch scheme. Oh, did you come from very far? Does anyone know that you're here? They might ask with a knowing wink, a long bladed kitchen knife in their hand as they waited for someone to step into range.

Then again, there are so many tantalizing secrets that their vaults could have held. I don't know what wonders were cradled within those four walls, and the mystery burns my mind!

Maybe there was an arena where reanimated, heads of Walt Disney and Adolf Hitler were attached to bionic dog bodies and forced to do battle in an eternal death match pitting evil vrs slightly more evil for the entertainment of the locals. Gears and circuits would fly in the dimly lit and dank basement. All while color commentary flowed smoothly. Meanwhile, off in an even more shady and dank corner, an old man with a squinty eye would be selling some rather questionable objects.

What else can you expect from a place named Roadside Attraction? A freaking giant ball of yarn? Though not enough to hop a plane back to New Mexico to find out. Cause if I did, I'd only find strings of dried chillies, post cards, touristy hats, and other brickabrac. And I'd probably be kicked in the junk. The Earthship tour experience seems to have jaded me some.

But for some reason we skipped on by the cannibalistic, Hitler-Disney-headed-robot-dog-fighting-ring running hillbillies. Dunno why. We had to go see the ruins, and not get kidnapped, raped to death and eaten by the inbred family of nuclear mutants that lived in the shed out back. Worst vacation ever.

There are three different sets of ruins in the park. We only visited two. Because the reality is that one stack of stones that used to be a church looks almost identical to every other stack of stones that used to be a church. That, and after searching desperately for the secret entrance to the dungeon/entrance to hell, and finding bupkis, TWICE, I was sorely discouraged. I don't know about the rest of the family. They just seemed bored. I can't blame them, as we didn't have to fight a passel of animated skeletons once. Not once. Lamest temple ruins ever.

There isn't much to describe. We got out and walked around. I took pictures, trying to use my art degree to create interesting images. I failed.

The exploding schoolbus signs! Yes, that sentence was intentional. This is a thing in New Mexico. As are cattle crossing signs sporting UFOs. The latter are expected. The former were a surprise indeed. The signs were posted in a hilly region and I took them as a warning about school buses being in the area. School buses that exploded when they got angry, and were ever waiting in ambush for unwary travelers.

But what can you expect? In an environment as harsh as that, only the most well adapted will survive, and I'm willing to lay dollars to donuts that the exploding school bus is at the top of the foodchain.

One final thing that I noticed was that it seemed like a quarter of all the houses had bars on the windows and doors. I don't know if this is a cultural quirk or if the crime is that terrible. It was true in the nicer/newer neighborhoods as well as the rotting old ones. This, as much as the...well everything else to be honest, made me not really consider it when the folks asked if we wanted to move down.

New Mexico Part the First.

Well, I'm finally sitting down and hammering this out.  We took the trip back in Mid-May.  It is now the second half of July.  Sure some/most of the details have faded, but this country is built on people making strong statements based on half-remembered impressions. 

This was my second trip to the Land of Enchantment. I shall say now that, for me at least, Enchantment must be a euphemism. Though not on a scale that one would expect with the crossover from “Genocide” to the milder sounding “Ethnic Cleansing”. But not so tame as how “Auto-tuned” has come to mean “covering up for a talentless singer.”

The first time I ventured forth to the American South West was back in the fall of 2007. Though it was something new and relatively interesting, I don't generally have good memories of the experience. That was the year that Robert Jordan died. Actually, I was at my folks house in Albuquerque when I read the news. That was a kick to the gut, moreso than the death of either my Uncle or my Grandmother. Horrible as that might sound, but in reading his stories I feel that I knew him better than either of my estranged, introverted relatives.

We ventured out somewhat, but mostly I was there to keep my mother company while my dad was on a trip back up in Alaska. What this translates to is that, I hung out at the house all day while she worked, and then I hung out in the house all night while she napped on the couch after work. We are not exciting people. We did visit the used book stores that Albuquerque – that is a dorkly tradition that I started in high school. New city: visit used book stores. Mission Fucking Accomplished.

Aside from that we hit up a few tourist traps and sampled the local restaurants. I hung out on the couch and read and wrote(which was what I did at home). I had finished my first two zombie novels and was working on the second pair. The air conditioning went out in the first couple days after a lightning strike. This wore harder on the mom than it did me. I have been living without Air Conditioning for years, and the midwest has some brutally hot and humid weather in the summer time.

Largely I avoided going outside in general. I hate hot weather.

This is what I recall most about my first adventure in New Mexico. That and our visit to Taos. Taos was a trip in and of itself. If you ever goto New Mexico, be sure to visit Taos. If you can skip over the rest of the state, all the better.

Now to the more recent adventure. The folks have been after the sister and myself to come down and visit for years. They offered to pay the airfare, so we took a long weekend and went on down. I spent the weeks leading up to it by psyching myself up for a huge panic attack! Getting up at 4:30 in the morning and then flying? Wheeeee!

I really don't want to do this. I hate heights. I hate being trapped in public spaces. I hate heights. I really don't want to do this. I hate being trapped in public spaces. I really don't want to do this. I hate heights. I hate being trapped in public spaces. Over and over those thoughts wore on my mind. Until I realized that this was a stupid attitude. Flying most likely won't kill you, it's just a hugely uncomfortable drag that I would rather avoid. That helped, and after the fear freaking out passed I actually rather enjoyed some aspects of the flight. I love looking down at the landscape below. There is nothing as awesome as a bird's eye view of the world.

Texas sucks.

Aside from a few sweaty-palm inducing jolts of turbulence, the flight down went smoothly. But damn, I do hate when an airplane drops several feet and shudders about like a Fundy thinking about the naughty bits on a human body. After a rough patch on the approach to the Albuquerque airport, we set down and were ready to go.

Firstly, New Mexico is brown. I don't mean this in the sense that the state has a bevy of sexy Latin folk meandering around, though that is fairly true. I refer instead to the landscape, with the largely unbroken drab sandy soil that is spotted with green bushes like some sort of rash. I tried to like Browntopia. But as a resident of the evergreen midwest, I could only ever keep coming back to the question “Who would want to live here?” I am not terribly fond of the city I live in. It does nothing for me. But I would gladly take it over Albuquerque.

The folks met us at the airport. This is to be expected. But what is a narrative without a few obvious points?

Nearly entire city seems to have jumped on the Adobe theme. Even the McDonalds. Which is cool. It gives it an exotic flavor to us out-of-towners, and to be honest visiting a city that isn't exactly like the sprawled hole that I just left feels nice. Sometimes it seems like too many towns across the country have become carbon copies of one another. Seeing a place with an identity of it's own is refreshing. New Mexico is not the midwest, and I don't see any reason that it should look like the midwest. Or vice versa.

We had breakfast-lunch at ChileRio. It was Fantastic. At least through the filter of not having eaten yet that day. Else, I'm sure that I'd need to downgrade my review to merely Good. The folks like it enough to have gone back several times, and to have brought their offspring along. Whatever, it was food and I was hungry.

Now the vast sight-seeing extravaganza could begin.

Albuquerque is a vast sprawl of a city. It spreads over the valley floor and is cut into a grid. I was not at all fond of it. I think I've mentioned it before. The only real homey sight for me was the belt of green that clad the Rio Grande. Notice that I did not add River to Rio Grande. I am just that sophisticated.

Our first stop on the itinerary was the petroglyphs on the edge of Albuquerque. For those who don't know, they are a series of figures carved into boulders on the side of a mountain outside of town. The weather was pleasantly sunny and warm, so we engaged in a small hike up and around the hillside to see the marks that long centuries of past generations had left behind. In my mind these crude carvings aren't great achievements in human art, but they are rather cool still. They are a mark of the past and to be enjoyed.

The coolest part of this hike(and all of the others to follow) were the signs that warned visitors to remain on the trail. Else beware the wrath of the rattlesnakes. Sweet! I so wanted to see a rattlesnake! It was a crushing blow that I didn't even catch the faintest jingle of a rattle. Stupid lofty dreams!

After the Petroglyphs the folks dragged us to a housewarming party at one of my dad's co-workers. He had long since decided to 'introduce me' to one of said coworkers. A pretty redhead. I do like pretty redheads. But I do not like people trying to prod me in a direction. I dig in and resist. Especially when they cannot answer a simple 'why is this a good idea?'

Sometime back the Mom took it upon herself to try and reintroduce me to her best friend's daughter(a very pretty girl). We had played together a few times as kids. I got mulely. Because that is how I do. This is just an aside. Feel free to read and judge.

The reasoning behind these shenanigans damn well better be 'she's pretty and you're both single. Thus a perfect match!' This cannot be the extent of our commonalities that might connect us. Though I do like pretty redheads. I viewed the encounter with the same nervous trepidation that have with all forced social meetings. I did not look forward to it. Thus why I am still single.

All in all, it was moot. He never got around to introducing us.

Well, it was a long day. I decided to crash out around 9:30 PM local time. Weak, I know, but I had been running for about 19 hours by that point. Much longer than I like. And tomorrow, Taos and the Earthships!

Have you done much traveling? I liked the trip to Taos the first time. Sure, the way is grey, but you finally get into the mountains. We moved away from Alaska in 1997, and I've not seen anything larger than a hill since. I forgot how much I miss the beauty of mountains – some of that is why I yearn to move out to the Pacific North West. Alaska lite.

The downside of the weekend was going to be that I was spending it in the back seat of a car. Sight-seeing from the back seat of a sedan is not really sight-seeing at all. Mostly you get one angle. Worse yet when that angle revealed the drab, post-apocalyptic wasteland that is New Mexico.

I must say that Taos makes for a pretty trip. Relatively speaking of course. The highlight was the Rio Grande, which is a sparkling green that high up. It was even more fantastic in the gorge.

Segway time!

The gorge was just that. A deep cut in the rock face where the river has worn through for hundreds of years. I think that at the apex it is some 450 feet deep. We got out of the car and decided to walk the bridge. I don't like heights. But I tried walking out on the bridge anyhow. Self-inflicted pain is the best kind.

I made it somewhere between an third and halfway across before I decided to turn back. My legs just got squiggly and I decided that I really didn't enjoy what I was trying to do. What bothered me the most was sudden gaps in the guardrail between sections. They were maybe an inch, two tops, wide. But it was enough that my hand lost contact with something solid. My brain didn't like this. My feet reversed course and walked us back.

The mom and sister made it all the way across, and laughed at us.

Earthships! I how I natter on about them. I want one. This is why I spend so much talking about them. A house that heats and cools itself and also grows some of the food the residents need? They seem so solid, built with tires, earth and concrete. Enough to repel any invaders. This is an Apocalyptic novelists' dream come true. Honestly, writing zombie stories has been made so much easier by the years I've spent daydreaming about surviving the Apocalypse. I admit, part of my brain is always devoted to that line of questions.

The mom asked over and over what we wanted to do on our visit. My only goal was to roadtrip to Taos and visit the Earthships. Now, that's two and a half, or three hours of sitting in a car for a man who does that for a living. Not really appealing. But, Earthships. For $7, you can take a self-guided tour of the compound. And for a couple hundred dollars you can even rent an Earthship for the night. While we weren't down for the former, we were up for the latter.

I am a cynic and a pessimist, but only when it doesn't get in the way of my mindless and boundless optimism(read this as I play the lotto and hope to win). This is a funny mix of personality traits, one that involves no little amusement on my part. After weeks and weeks of build up, I was wary that the self-tour might not live up to my expectations. I mean really, we just flew to New Mexico and drove up from Albuquerque. I've been waiting for this for weeks! Months even, as I have long daydreamed about taking a long cross-country tour that involved visiting the Earthships as I passed through the South West.

I had been waiting for this moment. And was of course disappointed. It's a running theme in my life. The tour involved a gift shop, a video that you could easily find on the internet – not to mention the fact that, if you're into Earthships enough to visit the landing sight in Taos, then you know all of that already – and the rest of the welcome center. After that, you're free to walk around the parking lot and take the 'self-guided tour' of following the ropeline.

If you were to take the tour as a form of exercise, then you'd just be as well off walking back and forth from your couch to the fridge. Tweren't much there. We didn't even get to go inside any of the other Earthships. Just the visitors center, which is set up as a visitor's center. Very un-houselike and dull. Darker than I expected too...though on second thought it is largely an earth-sheltered house. All in all, I think that the Visitor's Center was a bit like trying out Lucky Charms cereal for the first time while only eating the drab cardboardy bits that most people discard.

Seeing the outside of Earthships from a distance is Lame at best. I have a few other choice words that would fully express my feelings, but I don't feel like getting that base.

The highlight of the tour was the pretty blonde girl. Not only was she a beauty with a dazzling smile, but she was pleasant and knowledgeable, as well as borderline fanatical about the movement. Then again, she was working as the greeter in the Earthship visitors center, so this is to be expected. I myself, though devoted to the idea of personally acquiring an Earthship and experiencing the lifestyle, am not so interested in being part of a large scale social movement. Sure, it seems keen. I just don't have the personality or the energy required to bring folks into the fold. I am not an evangelist or used car salesman. I'm a dorky wannabe hack novelist with a negative charisma stat. Come to think of it... my talking about Earthships here is probably harming their cause.

Sorry hippies.

You see how many times I wrote Earthships in that last bit? Well that's about what my folks had to endure. Truly mine is a Rain Manesque obsession.

Though I do dabble with the idea of settling down with a few like minded friends and forming a community of homesteader types. This usually seems too damn communesque, hippieish, etc. for my liking. Not to mention I don't think I have a core of friends who would be remotely interested in such an endeavor. And I'm really not good at making new friends. Though it is all a pleasant fancy. Maybe I'll just weave it into a story that I write.

Despite all that, I still want an Earthship. Maybe after I pay off my student loans and hook up with a girl that one of my relatives thinks I should meet. I of course will be stuffing my lotto winnings into a mattress by then, so the expenses won't be an issue!

Back in town, we got out of the car only to have lunch. We played a game that is a sign of dysfunction in my family. I call it “Where do you want to eat? I don't know. Where do you want to eat?” Oh the Passive Aggressive Midwesterners are on vacation, how cute! But finally we decided on a local(as opposed to chain) place that was down town. Taos, is an art colony. Which means that it is full of A) hippies and B) tourist traps. Some of the latter being run by the former.

I think we finally went with a place called The Gorge.

The food was delicious. They get my seal of approval and I am willing to pimp them here... to all 3 people who might actually read this. I had my usual, burger and fries. Can't go wrong with that. I would go back(if I were in Taos again).

More later.

Last days of driving.

No near misses lately.  I've run over a couple possums.  Those were lousy days.  Now, with the onset of summer, the daylight has increased and I've only really had thunderstorms to deal with.  No ice, just good old rain.  And damn but has it been rainy.  Last year we were in a never ending heatwave and drought, this year we've made up for that.  Rain to the point of flooding.  Some of my nights have been highlighted by fantastic light shows as thunderstorms rolled across the countryside.  In the flat areas you can watch the lightning for miles coming.

I have pretty eyes.  I've had two patients insist on it in the last month.  My standard response is to awkwardly say "Why thank you!", while trying to avoid further eye contact. I'm socially retarded.  This is how I roll, especially when dealing with clients. No, that isn't true.  This response applies across the board.  Normal, crazy, female, male.  I'm sure that if Christina Hendricks said as much, I'd shit myself and feint.  If I were lucky.  But no, I don't get random compliments from intelligent and beautiful women on the street. Nope.  I draw attention from the crazies.

One of my patients insists that I should have dated the med-passer at the facility.  Though I'm not clear on the why of it beyond the fact that the med-passer is single and I have the prettiest, clearest blue eyes that she(the patient) has ever seen.  Despite the fact that my eyes aren't pure blue, and I'm not quite sure what 'clearest' means in the context of eyes.  That I don't have cataracts perhaps.  She was rather incensed that I saw flaws in her reasoning, while trying to avoid the proposition.  I really don't like it when someone approaches me and says 'you should date *blank* because you're both single and she needs a boyfriend."  You're clearly perfect for each other!

This only it gets even weirder when the insistent individual a car accident/head injury victim who is obsessed with my eyes.

We've added a new section of homes.  They're called Behavioral.  Not the name of the company, but a self-description of their service.  They house people with emotional issues. Back in the days of Yore they would have been called Ye Olde Asylums for Insane Citizens.

Visiting them makes me uncomfortable for a variety of reasons.  Just a vibe I get that makes my hackles stand.  Though most of the patients seem to be happyish.

On one recent visit, a small man approaches the doorway where I am standing. I step aside as I assume he wants to talk to the staff whom I am keeping busy. "You are a very handsome man!"  He declares.  My response is the same one mentioned above.  It has not changed, only grown more awkward.  On a scale of uncomfortable encounters this isn't as bad as the time where a customer answered the door in her underwear.  Or my run in with the belligerent Harry Potter fan.  Or the unending tirade on how Johnson and Johnson created Male Pattern Baldness by putting battery acid in their shampoos in order to drive the sales of Rogaine.

Then he turns to one of the staff, who happens to be passing by and says "Isn't he a handsome man."  Which rather ramped up the level of discomfort on my part.  Well, I do not know if the staff actually agreed with the proclamation or if he was just humoring the gentleman, and this is something which I try not to ponder. But he answered in the affirmative.  The patient smiled and left.  After which, the woman checking in the delivery told me not to worry, he said that to everyone.

Well thanks for ruining the moment.  For a moment I was primed to quit everything and search for a career in high fashion!  Sure, this move would be based on the opinion of someone who is demonstrably insane.  An opinion that is rather questionable in it's accuracy and is at best unreliable.   And… well that's it really.  I got a compliment from a crazy who gives everyone the same compliment.  Guess I shouldn't quit my job and become a male model.

Now when i see him, he demands a fist-bump.

I have taken to wearing sunglasses indoors whenever possible.

One of the regulars whom I deal with is wheelchair bound.  I assume that he was in a car accident when he sustained his brain injury as that is the type of facility.  He proudly declares to the world that he is prone to seizures.  Or maybe he's looking for sympathy.  I've become jaded by my visits to worse places to give him much heed.  Aside from the wheelchair and the seizures, he seems have retained most of his cognitive abilities as well as all of his limbs.  While avoiding having a portion of his skull caved in.  I've seen worse.

Anyhow, he insists on calling me Drug Dealer.  But damn, but he does get his panties in a twist when anyone implies that he uses drugs.  Nope, he ingests legally prescribed medications.  He is insistent on this Point, like a pit bull that has locked its jaws.  Only Legally Prescribed Drugs.  Which is what I, the drug dealer, carry.  So I call him Drug User.  It's a circular exchange and proves that I have the maturity of a 11 year old boy.  Sometimes I wonder if he is taking advantage of his condition and using it as an opportunity to dis the people around him.  Very few human beings are willing to punch a cripple in the head, no matter what sort of abuse they hurl.  I stand with the majority on this.

Most of my interactions with him have been rather amusing.  He is a character.  He'd say something and I'd respond with a one-liner.  At one point he was randomly quizzing me on the state capitals.  I'd like to say that I passed with flying colors.  But it has been years since I last studied that in high school, and as such the rather less important information has leaked from my ears as I slept.   I failed dramatically.  Much to Wheels' amusement.

Then came the following exchange.  "You know, you should be on SNL, your voice is weird."  Have I mentioned that he's gotten really nasty lately?  I've heard my voice and it's not fantastic.  Sure, Urkle I ain't, nor do I hold a candle to the likes of Gilbert Godfried.  My voice isn't irritating, that I can tell.  I just don't cause panties to drop whenever I bust a verse and quote Star Wars.  Go figure.

You should be on SNL, your voice is weird.  I responded "I'd feel hurt, if I wasn't so certain that it was the drugs talking now."

Alas, I'll be changing jobs soon to something severely boring, but better paying and safer, so I doubt I'll have a steady stream of wacky adventures with the insane in the future.

Reflections from Walden Pond

To future adventures.

I've not gone out for much excitement(for what approaches excitement in my life) lately, instead it has had to come to me.  As much as the temporary jolts of adrenaline can be considered an adventure.  But driving the equivalent of New York to LA and back every month rather quiets any desire I might have to travel in the short term on my days off.  Besides that, many of my friends are busy in their own lives, so travel companions are difficult to find.  Already drive alone five nights a week, and have no desire to do so on the weekends as well.

For the last several months of my resumed employment, I have been listening to audio books during my long car rides to fill some of the emptiness. Well at least on the way out.  Often on the way back I listen to music or just sit in the silence and let my mind grind away on the question of the day.  When the drudgery is neither dangerous and depressing it descends into a deep dull.  How's that for alliteration?  But I've complained about it enough about it in the past.

So far since January my listening list is as follows:  The Wheel of Time, all 13 books.  Then some of Mark Twain's travel journals.  Caesar's Legion.  I made a vain attempt at Descartes' Dissertation on Reason(this did not go well as most of it seemed to be the author talking about himself.  More than that, at least one of the readers sounded terrible).  Now I'm returning again to Walden.  The mood struck me so.

Walden.  My English teacher in my Junior year of high school was obsessed with the book and its author.  We spent an eternity wrapped up in four or five weeks working through the rambling work of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emmerson.  I hated it, as my love of reading involved mostly science fiction and fantasy novels.

Many years, and one boring job that I hated later, and I decided to give Walden another chance.  This time though, I would go with the audio version as I worked that boring job that I so hated.  Have you heard of librivox?  Got to Librivox, they are awesome.

That was in 2009.  The first half of the book tickled me greatly and I revered the man's words.  The last half, well he just wanders about in no particular direction.  Some of his stops are interesting, whilst the rest I could easily skip.

For those of you who have never heard of the book, it consists of the naturalist Henry David Thoreau's rambling narrative about his two years of experience in the woods.  Back in the 1840s he built a small shack on the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts and lived a rather care-free life.

Were he alive today, Walden would effectively be HDT's blog, as he writes about everything that crosses his mind.  From his observations of the natural world down to his views and thoughts about the nature of what the nature is of living a good life.  Some of his thoughts and words resonate deeply with me, while others are just nattering opinions. Still, you take what you wish from the giant soup of human thought as you mix together your own sustenance and leave the rest to burn or rot.

I wonder if this blog will be my Walden.  I suppose I could work to make it so.  If I manage some deeper thoughts.  But how has HDT affected my own thinking.  How have his thoughts struck me?  Here are a few quotes that I quite enjoy.

1) As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

*To my thinking, this is a reminded of how much time we spend waiting for life.  I don't know if that was what he had intended with the statement as this brilliant line jumped out at me as the surrounding context faded back into the bushes.  I answer with “I do not wish to kill time, but embrace her.  Alas she slips away so quickly.”

I try to fill my days with as much meaningful work as possible.  Usually I fail as I am tempted away by funny cat videos.  It has been a week or more since I last picked up my zombie novel, or any other story.  As it is, I am squandering my existence with the struggle to survive.

2) Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something

3) I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude.

* As an introvert and a hermit, this one rings very true for me.  I spend about 22 in every 24 hours in a given work day in near complete solitude.  But there's a difference.  I have a phone and the internet.  If I wish to connect with someone I always can.  Loneliness is easy enough to stave off in that fashion.  What I wish is for more meaningful human contact.  As it is many of my good and interesting friends are far off.  As an introvert with a touch of social anxiety, it is difficult(read this as near-impossible) to refill those ranks, leaving a hole in my life. It does not help that I am very picky in the people with whom I wish to associate.

Glorious solitude though, and the bent of freedom that in bestows.  My thoughts are my own as is how I spend my time.  HDT also has a quote on that thought that I shall do my best to paraphrase:  A man who travels with a companion must wait for the companion before he may leave.  A man who travels alone is his own master.

Regardless, we all need companions, even a hermit.

4) Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, aye, to life itself than this incessant business

5) The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it

*This quote is ingrained in my bones, and has been for a number of years.  I often ask myself whether the object or experience is worth the hours of labor that it took me to get that money to pay for it.  Often the answer is no and I rightly move on.  Others, the answer is still no, but I ignore my gut and fork over a piece of my life for that shiny whistle(to mix analogies and bring Ben Franklin into the conversation).

The man is quotable and he gifted humanity with hundreds of such nuggets of gold.

I've so far in my life been content to be a grunt and work for my daily bread.  No thinking in my job, just simple monkey work.  My jobs are usually just a series of tasks, where I have few responsibilities.  This is really all I trust myself to do.  I fear the possibility that I'll be given a task that I am not equal to and be overwhelmed.  Call this an insecurity in my own skills.  I little understand the big picture in many endeavors of business or finance and the like.

I really hate the idea of being forced to focus on a task that doesn't really interest me.  I just wish to explore the world at my own rate and pick my own direction.  As Tolkien said, Not all who wander are lost.  Is this laziness?  I've completed some seven novels, two dozen short stories and a play.  They are not brilliant masterworks that will inspire future generations for centuries to come.  But they were fun and they are mine and I trust myself to accomplish that much.

Previously I was not bothered much by doing grunt work in low end jobs.  They allowed me my free time.  But then my co-worker has been talking about his life.  He lives in a trailer with his wife and three kids and has worked odd jobs all his life.  He seems happy enough and content, but I don't feel that I wish to follow that route.  But at the same time, I really don't have a mind for business.

Should I like to have a wife and kids?  I think that would be an excellent adventure in itself.  Life would be interesting.  Or maybe the wife and freedom from the duties of offspring.  Whichever.  Both seem to me fascinating possibilities.  After all, I've already experienced being alone.  Let's see what the universe brings.

There is another failing, waiting on the universe and fate.  It is half of why I play the lotto on occasion.  Waiting for Fortuna's kiss.  But the bitch ain't a'comin.

For now, I have simple dreams that seem to be out of my reach.

To be continued.

More Dull Tales of Driving

I've been quiet for a while. But life has fallen into a pattern largely devoid of much new and exciting B quality adventures. The last two weeks have been free from jolts of adrenaline and I wonder what sort of karmatic buggery is building. I hope it isn't worse than dealing with the insurance company. Actually, so far that hasn't been too terrible, aside from me feeling out of my element with this new and bizarre experience. Insurance company did I say? Yes indeed. The last two weeks have been slow. The week prior was quite full and lively. I shall begin. I'm still a delivery driver and I work second shift. By in large I like second shift. I enjoy the fact that I have the morning and afternoon to devote to my interests then I goto work and when I get home I goto bed. I am able to get my daily walk(about 4 or 5 miles, it takes a little over an hour) and after that I can spend time weaving chain working on this story or that novel. That of course is only when my discipline slips and I don't get stuck in a loop of checking websites on the net. There are some days where I circle through facebook, gmail, and then to my sales page at amazon(that rarely changes). Over and over. In fact, I expect that I'll run the circuit at least once or twice as I write this. It's a sad existence. See how that works? I was telling a story and got distracted. Happens every day. Anyhow, I still drive evenings and nights, about 250 miles a day, which gets me back in town around 11pm. Worse since It is construction season in my current home state. But we've had a mild winter with clear roads. So, in that much I have been largely fortunate. I am in effect getting paid to listen to audiobooks(The Wheel of Time has taken around six months at my slowish pace but I take breaks from the listening). I've had several rather unpleasant blips during my tenure as a driver. My new worst happened a few weeks back after my deliveries had been made and on the return trip. Full dark had come. I don't mind driving in full dark, as much as I enjoy seeing the scenery, as I get to pretend that I'm in some exotic place. Easy enough to do when the trees create a tunnel of blackness through which you only see the highway. What you might see is further eroded by that steady stream of traffic flowing at you with headlights glaring. I have perhaps a seventy-five foot bubble of clear vision ahead of me. And in this I fly through every night at 70mph. What was that Kenny G? I have been on the Highway through the Danger Zone. It's the Detroit to Saginaw(including Flint) corridor on 75. Headlights come right at you, which is tiring. Even the 4 foot tall concrete wall that separates the two opposing lanes of traffic does little to the strain. I sit surrounded by light but unable to see. What dickery. I had just come out of a construction zone, and up ahead of me a semi-swerved to the right onto the shoulder of the road. Well, this happens. Sometimes drivers get distracted and drift. Sometimes they just decide to pull over for a rest or due to mechanical problems. I noticed the strange occurrence but thought little of it. Until I got to that point myself and found that the driver had changed course to avoid that box-spring that was lying flush in the middle of the lane. Now I don't know why it was there, but I've imagined the scenario and most involve an idiot, twine and highway speeds. The semi driver had pulled right. I opted for the center lane instead. I slowed slightly and swerved out of the way. Really, the crappy aveo I often drive is quite nimble and it got me over no problem. Cool. Wait. Twenty feet further on another shape appeared. The mattress. Well that makes sense. Who would carry a box-spring without the mattress after all? More breaks! More swerving! Highway Slalom! Back into the outside lane! The Aveo did not like this. I don't know if it was the swerving or my application of the breaks, but the car decided that it wasn't done with the dance. Maybe it felt the need to spin about in a piroutte in celebration of such a grand feat of agility. Who knows, I turned the wheel against the spinout. In the next heartbeat the aveo tried to throw itself into that aforementioned wall. I fought that. Maybe I over compensated. The aveo decided to try to make a break and leap over the edge of the highway. I've decided that the car is EMO and wants to kill itself. My thoughts were: “Eat a bowl of fuck, I am going to crash! This is really going to suck!” Followed by “I really don't want to crash, I shall keep fighting until I do.” I did not crash. Nor did I shit myself. In no particular order of importance I'm proud of these accomplishments. Before you ask, I didn't pull over and drag the set off the road my own self. I was several miles further on before that course of action even occurred to me. I'm slow to react and some things take a long time to percolate as I worry them over. Just how my brain works(or doesn't). Looking back, I did notice a car and a couple people on the road-side. Maybe they were the bastards who inadvertently laid this trap. Event two. Less than one week later. Tucker and Dale vrs my HHR. The HHR is the new car that the company purchased to replace one of the older aveos(we had 2). By new, I mean it was a 2008 model with 55,000 miles. But newer than the 2006 aveo with 140,000 miles. I add around 1250 – 1500 miles a week. One of our salesmen also uses the company cars. I don't know how much he drives. Have you seen Tucker and Dale vrs Evil? If not, you should. Rent it, buy it, watch it on netflix. What-ever. The move is a delight. But I mention this because I got to meet the title characters, or their real-world avatars. It was not as awesome an experience as I would have expected. Sure, they were nice enough all things considered. But more jaded and not as lovable. Neither of them liked visiting the city, that was apparent by their tone and words. They were country boys through and through. I was making a local run in town driving along one of our main thoroughfares. This day, I was driving our newish HHR. I rather like the HHR, especially when compared to the Aveo. It's spacious, is easy on gas and rather comfortable to ride in. The extra added bonus is that it doesn't get thrown around in high winds like the Aveo. Driving an Aveo in storms is like riding a bucking bronco. The traffic was moderately heavy, being mid-afternoon and I was following along with the flow. The car in front of me slowed. So I slowed. Tucker and Dale did not. I heard a screech of tires behind me. I looked into the sideview to see where it was coming from when I was surprised by a loud crash and my vehicle being launched forward rather violently. I can recall hitting the seatbelt. Kids wear your seatbelt – I can't stress this enough, as every night I visit facilities which deal with auto-accident and head-injury patients. I've said it before and will repeat it, new drivers need to take a tour to these places as a part of their training. I pulled over. Tucker and Dale did too. They were driving an aged jeep with a heavy steel push bar on the front end. The bar had heavy black rings to attach chains or cables. Here is a practical demonstration why maces and hammers are more effective than words against plate armor. All of that force and power directed onto a single point. The vehicle needs some several thousand dollars in repairs, starting with a new hatch door. The car has since developed issues with starting up. I was standing on the side of the road and I must say that being in an accident is a new experience for me. I called my co-worker for advice. Dale was a bit upset and wanted to know if we'd have to contact the insurance company. Yes, we would. Judging by the huge dent in the back of the car. Dale was trying to access his insurance info with his blackberry. I made two points, get Dale's insurance info, and copy down the license plate number. Tucker in the mean time was going on a rant. I didn't catch much of it as the noises of traffic was too loud. What I did catch was “Not that I was talking about you!” I hope they got out of town without any more incidents, because this all happened on one of the college campuses in town. I'm pretty sure that Tucker was complaining some about college kids. Watch the movie. I drove the HHR to finish the run I had begun. Cause the meds must go through. Rain, sleet, tornadoes or hillbillies. Not only that, but I took it with me on the nightly run across state. Not bad engineering Chevy. The starting issues actually began the next day. Yay! New car is already borked! So, part two. I got to visit the police station and file an accident report. This was how I spent part of the following Saturday morning, filling out the report in four part harmony. Down to drawing a picture of the scene of the accident. At last, I get to put my art degree to good use. Not really, it was a crappy picture, but I wanted to get out of there and get on with my weekend. Finally I got to call the insurance company. Rather, I got to find the insurance company's phone number online, as that was not listed on my proof of insurance. I got through and the local monkey gave me a phone-number for an agent with Hartford. They were just a shell company it seemed. Great. Well, I called the agent, and got it all worked out sort of. She would send an adjuster soon. Soon of course is relative, it took a week for her to call back, and more than that to get the adjuster. This job is going to kill me. Worse, the weather has really take a turn towards the summer's heat. So. I am unhappy with my situation and I don't see how to improve it. I have no momentum and need to find something to get my boulderesque rolling again. I can think of a few reasons but still I hesitate as I ponder and dither. And now I bitch about my own stupid self. Really, I stand in a box of my own making, a wet cardboard box that I could easily punch through and step out of. But before I jump I want to see where I might land. Lately I've been looking at the Pacific North West as a place to jump. I have an urge to go. But these could all be a fantasies set up in my own head. Next time, I'll tell you about my heroic battle with shin splints.

Rider in the Storm

Fortune smile upon me, for the boatman Charon makes no change.

I don't care for driving at night. Oncoming headlights are wearing on the eyes. There is always that stream of bright lights that washes out the rest of the world. Two or three hours of that, makes for a poor evening. What you can see comes from that small bubble of light racing in front of you to illuminate the road. Just the road ahead, no further. So the scenery is usually lighted buildings and billboards. Oh how well I know the billboards that run the length of my route.

Finally there are the unseen dangers. In this part of the world at least, there are a lot of critters waiting in the wings to suicide by throwing themselves at your vehicle. Critters be dumb and numerous. I've not yet hit anything, luckily, but that's not for the lack of suicide squads what have tried. So far my nearest miss involved 3 feet of empty air between my fender and a bounding deer. Louis, you want to talk about deer again?

You know what makes driving at night better? A snow storm. Snow began falling early afternoon, and temperatures began to fall before night. The snow began to stick, the wet stuff. Slick. Ice. The snow wasn't too heavy, but it did diminish visibility some. There was one point in the afternoon as I drove into the storm when I thought my vision had suddenly begun to dim. It was like the house lights in a theater as a movie starts. I nearly panicked.

Wind too is usually a part of a storm. Driving in the wind? That also sucks. It doesn't seem to matter if the vehicle is large or small, a powerful gust can throw you around the road. I think wind is almost as dangerous as slippery roads, especially when driving at highway speeds. At least you can see the snow on the ground. There was wind that night too.

Compound all of that with a large cargo van with rear-wheel drive. So much more surface area for the wind to catch hold of. And poor traction to push the vehicle forward. I've only ever been in a single car accident, it involved riding in a van through poor weather at night. Said van spun out and then rolled over the edge. That was nearly a decade ago. Have you no idea what I'm talking about?

Though my knowledge of the universe is imperfect and I can only make deductions at any given time by my experience, I shall still try and explain:

Rear-wheel drive vehicles are when the engine is used to power the rear wheels (actually usually just one rear wheel as I understand it – my information might be obsolete or incorrect though.). I believe the problem here is the lack of weight over those wheels and the difficulty for the tires to get proper traction on the surface, especially when the roads are slick with ice. Thus, when you stop at an intersection, lo and behold when you go to accelerate, the wheels just spin unhappily.

This, I believe is the problem. And it leads to the wheels spinning, which can result in fish-tailing. Fish-tailing is when the rear of the vehicle swerves back and forth of its own volition. Not a pleasant experience when you're traveling anything above 20. Much less so when you're out on the highway at any speed. I imagine that this loss of grip was what sent so many of my fellow fools off into the ditch.

If I'm wrong, feel free to pipe up.

Every day I pass at least 4 billboards advertising the lotto. You know, at 11 at night, when headlights are blaring in your face, with the knowledge that you're going to have to do this again tomorrow and every night five nights a week for the foreseeable future, well those 1 in 100,000,000 odds seem like a good bet. Maybe that's their plan. This week the jackpot was 350,000,000. The mind moves quick to ponder what being rich would be like. What one would do with a few(or a great many) million dollars. Think those happy thoughts. Hope is what gets we the fools through the day.

I was an hour late to start on my route. Cycle(the monthly supply medications) was due for one of the larger clients and my company had recently divested itself of the truck that was used to haul larger deliveries(rather, this one delivery monthly). We instead started a new practice of renting a van once a month for that particular delivery(or maybe they're buying a van). But it is a new process and there was confusion – primarily that U-haul charges for mileage, where as their competitor Enterprise doesn't. After I picked up the van, I pointed this fact out – about a half hour before go time, right at the height of rush hour. We got rid of the first van and rented a second – $.59 a mile over the course of a 300 mile round trip is some heavy cash. Not exactly a conducive to good business.

We ordered a second van. I got to do the old switcheroo. Picking up the second van involved trudging through rush-hour traffic at the city's most busy intersection. I won't make that mistake again. The agent at Enterprise was delighted that we shared the same first name, and he mixed small talk with business as most reasonable people do. I lack the skill/ability/talent/inclination to make small talk. Just cannot do it, or make myself interested. Questions, those wonderful things that get the ball rolling, just do not occur to me. I am quite content to remain silent and think about candy. I can however engage in conversation when someone goads me along, I can answer questions and even show some whit. I just cannot make myself engage with a stranger.

Much to my disappointment, though not surprise, I found that neither of the cargo vans had a decent sound system. I don't expect top of the line speakers or whatever. But a line-in or cd player seems to be about standard. I was left with a radio for the duration. 8 hours is a long ass time to listen to NPR. Yes, I am a pretentious prick who listens to NPR. Normally I listen to music or Audio books when working. They both help the hours pass.

So, I got a late start. This isn't too terrible, if you believe in the theory that the rush-hour will pass you by, or at least thin out. It usually does during my normal route. Traffic starts slightly heavy, though flowing constantly, and then lessens as the evening grows. Usually. In ideal conditions. Or even less than ideal conditions. But it had been snowing for the last several hours and the highways hadn't been plowed completely clean. Most folks were careful. And the dumb ones were in the ditch. I swear, I saw more cars off the road that night than on all of my other trips combined. The wreckers must have made a killing and the highway patrol was kept busy all through the evening.

I have driven through worse weather. Twice I drove through a blizzard But that was when I was still profoundly stupid. Now I'm just moderately stupid. But

This night, there was a stream of slow moving traffic extending from both of my bumpers, kind of like a giant millipede that was just sputtering along. For a few short minutes I briefly hit my top speed of around 45MPH. Which then dropped down to around 10, with the average running around 35. Most nights I can happily cruise along at 70. Faster even, if I feel rushed. But I usually don't and feel that abiding by the limits are fair enough. 2 or 5 extra miles per hour won't make much difference in the course of a night as to when my route ends.

I ran into a strange effect of the conditions. There were times where I couldn't seem to make myself go over a certain speed. I spent the night with my foot on the accelerator pedal – where usually I opt to use cruise control. I often find myself getting swept up and following the flow of traffic whenever I have to feed the engine manually. Cruise control helps keep this impulse at bay, while freeing me up from keeping an eye on the speedometer. A feature that came in quite handy when I was young and just getting the hang of driving.

Now, mind, had I been in a smaller and more manageable car I would have gone a bit faster I think. No where near highway speeds, but I imagine that I would have been willing to broach 50 on some parts of the trip out. Though I still would have kept the cruise off. No point in tempting Fate further and being struck down like those other fools. A man cannot spin fantasies about wealth or romance if he's dead. Or worse, in one of the facilities my company services. Some of them deal with auto accident victims.

Needless to say though, it took twice as long as usual to arrive at my first stop. Really – that is the general theme of the night. I usually get back home around 11pm, and this time it was 3.30 AM. Just a recurring theme of the night.

I was met with an avalanche of Pity from the people I encountered at my final stop. Given, usually I get there around 8.30, and it was now fast approaching midnight. They make you go out in that? One asked me. While another said that she had been wrong before in thinking that her job sucked – not when she saw what was expected of me. Maybe they were wondering if I would be remanded into their care before the end of the night.

I hope not. Not that. Not ever. Though the irony makes me laugh now. I think I would weep later.

Anyhow, that last stop went rather smoothly, cold as it was. And soon I was on my way back home. Another long drive was ahead. This time I managed to get all the way up to 50 MPH at a few points. That is, until those heart jolting shots of adrenaline kicked in when suddenly the rear of the van would begin pulling to one side or another.

I'm not a coffee drinker and the headlights were grinding away at my eyes like sandpaper by the end. I was happy to be back in town safe. All that remained was to gas up and drop off the van before going home and finding my blankets. Sadly, I lost my credit card. I have a habit of placing important objects such as my glasses and keys into the same place. That way I never lose them. Same goes with the cards and their place in my wallet.

I must say that I was surprised to find out that the card wasn't in the proper place. Very surprised. I practiced some of my vocabulary of harsh language and jumped back into the van to head back home. The rest could wait until morning. (I found the card, it WAS in my wallet, but in a different slot. I blame a combination of the long night and general stupidity on the part of the user).

I would say that overall, the experience has driven me to think deeply about what I want out of life. This is not the case though. Generally I know what I want out of life. I just don't know how to go about making those dreams come true. My imagination doesn't extend to finding that necessary path. Some seem well out of my reach as I keep treading water. I feel like that stupid van, my tires are spinning while I sit still. I hate it. This leaves me feeling unfulfilled. Ennui is a close friend.

Big Doings on the Road

Well, the wonderful week of clear and warmish weather has passed. And in proper fashion too, with a snow storm. Well, first there was rain, and then dropping temperatures brought snow. And wind. Can't forget that. As winter storms go, this one wasn't terrible. Driving in a snow/rain mix sucks, and some(most) people refuse to slow down. Still, I didn't see any accidents on the highway on the way out, and only one in town.

The way back, that was worse. The snow had fallen, temps dropped and it had begun to stick.. More was coming. The plows were out. I dropped my speed to around 40-50 when I came through a heavy band that was about 50 miles across. Even the Truck drivers were going slow in places. I was following a convoy that was at least eight trucks long at one point.

A few of the fools who didn't slow down ended up turned around, flipped over and in the ditch. At one point in the night I could see a car up about a half-mile ahead of me flashing bright yellow lights on the roof. Turned out to be a cop car who was looking for one of those fools who didn't have the sense to lighten up on the gas.

So, Thursday night was long. But the weather was only part of it.

Now onto griping about people.

Every month Cycle is delivered to the facilities. That is all of the medications needed for each of the patients for the entire month. For some of the facilities, this means a truck full of medications all in their little bubble cards. This leads to some problems, as the pharmacy might run out of a specific drug – so whatever was missed has to go over the next few days.

Wednesday was cycle. Thursday, the day of the storm was catching up and filling in the gaps. Guess which was more annoying?

One faculty member has the job of going over the medication delivery. Cycle as a whole is to be taken directly to that member's office during the day hours when that member is working. Cycle largely went smoothly. We had to change offices because the Nurse on hand didn't have a key to the elevator and she didn't want me to haul the endless totes downstairs by hand. Doing so wouldn't have bothered me, I was on the clock and I was willing to get the exercise.

Cycle+1. 20 more individual packages, plus several more cases. The little Aveo I drive across state through the storms was packed full. Cycle Proper is delivered to the office. After Cycle things change. At night all of the packages for that administrator are to be brought to another building, one that is directly across the parking lot. Easy enough, I've done it before, and know what to do. Take it in and give it to the med passer and she signs off on it and saves it for said administrator.

Problem. She was indignant at being responsible for the Administrator's packages. Why should she have to do this? She asked. The administrator is in another building completely. I shrug my shoulders – Delivery Monkey knows not the answers. Delivery Monkey follows instructions. Instructions are, deliver large pile of packages here and a have staff sign paperwork and stash them away for administrator. Delivery Monkey thanks you and leaves, basking in a job well done.

Bing, bang boom. Just like they were last night, and the night before. Staff grabs the poor counterpart who works in the Administrator's building, and sees about having him sign for the packages. No dice – he ain't allowed. Rules is rules and all that guv. I get frustrated, she's 'sposed to sign, she won't sign. I call our rep/salesman/troubleshooter – as these are my instructions for when I run into snags, figuring that he could bludgeon this through.

He calls administrator. She calls the building and talks to staff. Staff then hands the phone to me and I am informed something along the lines of 'it is very easy, why are you making it difficult?'

Right. Why am I at all. I'm such a dick.

Papers are signed. Offerings of a pleasant evening are given. I leave the facility and stew about being bitched out for someone else's douchery. Administrator will be woven into the Pharmacy novel – someway or somehow.

Encounter 2.

The facility seems to have cut down on staff. Their medication passers – not nurses, just college aged kids whom they hire to pop pills and give them to the patients – now seem to divide their time between multiple halls. Said staff are sometimes difficult to locate and waiting is often involved as they finish up tasks and are summoned by the orderly on site.

As I was awaiting the arrival of the staff one of the residents approached my little corner. He was chattering a little in a friendly manner.

Then the staff member arrived. Resident in question declares that he knew that the med passer would be along. Which led to the revelation, that he had psychic powers. I was willing the staff to hurry up and get his checks done and sign off on the delivery.

If nothing else this dude looked the part. Now, after years of watching movies, reading books and comics, I have been presented with a definite idea of what a mutant with psychic powers should look like. If Hollywood were casting him in a movie, he'd be a dead-shot for Psionic Wasteland Hobo. Or perhaps an oldtimey prospector long living in the mountains away from civilization. A man who has been used hard by life.

Then he started talking more, about said powers. I think. I didn't catch everything he said. There were several layers of conversations about the room and the radio was on. But he was talking about being pyschic, which then morphed somehow into him telling me about a space microbe that was scooped up by a satellite and returned to earth. The microbe made an entire town disappear. Was it a conspiracy theory or a vision of the future? I've met some folks who believe in conspiracy theories on that campus.

But I'm not sure. What I do know is that he was talking about the plot to the movie the Andromeda strain. Maybe that was the conspiracy, it actually happened and the government covered it up. Or maybe he just switched gears and decided to tell me about his favorite movie. I merely agreed with him that it was a good movie and held off until my transaction was finished and I could finally show my back to that place.

I'm told that I need to make ten goals for myself for the job. Goal three through ten are all Not get myself killed by those various means so casually available to me. Seven involves brain melting by psychic hobos.

I'm a driver, I'm a winner. Again.

I cannot say for sure if the Universe loves me or hates me. I think that my being inspires some sort of twisted passive aggressive love-hate mania in whatever cosmic force that drives reality. Last march, my job disappeared and I found myself rather suddenly unemployed. This happened about a month after I first bought into the brand new Health Insurance plan. I was insured for a whole month!

There was of course the downside of things. No income. I did happen to receive unemployment benefits for a few weeks. I live in Michigan and the economy here has been in the hole for as long as I've been alive. I actually was employed on the strength of my sister's performance. She's intelligent and hard working and they decided to hire me as well. I'm a bit dimmer but driven to keep busy, and I took on every task that was thrown my way. I've written about the experience previously.

But they were re-organizing and my position disappeared. So it goes. The only thing that burned me was that the company kept a sleazy, unreliable... I have more

I took the time to read and write and work on other projects. I revised novels 5 and 6 and then wrote and revised novel 7, along with a double-handful of short stories. There were also loads of books and regular exercise. I re-discovered the joys of the local library. I built up my post apocalyptic survival library. All while looking for work elsewhere in the country. It felt great to be productive again. I was living on natural time, life was mostly good, if a bit uncertain.

My co-worker calls this delightful state of being “Pretirement” as she postulates that we'll never actually be able to retire so we might as well take advantage of our brief periods of unemployment whilst we're young. I do not disagree with this supposition, though I'm optimistic that one day I'll at least be able to get my writing career going to the point where I can support myself doing something I love. Still, I embrace my unemployment with glee, even as I try to avoid it.

Sometimes it feels as if the universe is giving me a taste of what life could be like. Like an extremely subtle demonic temptation. Sell your meager soul and live the dream of the hack novelist!

So we come back to the original statement in this post. I was offered a job as a driver full time running a route that I had occasionally covered during my last stint in their service. They hired me back. More pay. Different hours. No data-entry. I get to drive a car with a manual transmission – another topic previously hit upon, a skill that I picked up while working for this company.

Sweet! How fortunate!

I mean, I've already got some fun anecdotes. One dude in a wheelchair said that he loves me. I thanked him for that. I mean, there are other sources(beautiful women) whom I'd rather hear that declaration from - who hearing utter it might make my decade. But you take it where you can get it, so I thanked him and moved on.

But here we go. I do live in the state of Michigan. The weather is cold and we tend to get a lot of precipitation due to the fact that we're surrounded by lakes. In the winter we see this in the form of snow, sleet and freezing rain. I've come to realize a new functioning law in the universe. If I'm driving and there is a chance that it will snow or rain that night, it will snow or rain that night. Of the less than 10 days that I've been working, the weather conditions have been adverse for at least 80% of the time. But, Michigan, winter. Blah blah blah. This is all expected. A given. A fact of life to be complained about despite all the rest.

There were a couple incidents last night that really made me wonder if I offended creation by turning down some pact that I was just unaware of.

So far in Driving I've nearly been creamed by a cop car and have had a couple other close encounters to brag about. Part of the risk of driving at night. But yesterday, the universe re-introduced the ever looming threat of Deer to be the bane of my existence.

Deer. Louis CK is quite explicit about his feelings for them – and I feel that he has some valid points.

Last night, after leaving my third stop, I came across a herd of five does(a deer, a female deer) off to the side of the road. They were blocked by a tall fence that hemmed them out of some person's property and they see my car flying down the road in their general direction. As usual, they decided to break and run, right in front of my car, at the last second. - this is after long hesitation that allows me to come closer and closer. The company car that I drive is a Chevy Aveo. A Kleenex box on wheels. I don't need deer to throw themselves at me and crumple my ride. I missed the dumbest member of the herd by about three feet as it waited until the very last second to run across my path.

Luckily, I saw them early and was able to slow down. Fucking stupid deer. We need to breed wolves that can only digest white-tail deer flesh and set them loose on the herd.

Now for the figurative deer encounter. Same night maybe 4 hours later. My run was over and I had punched out and was driving home for the night while I was driving along in my own sweet ride – a white 96 Chevy Lumina that is somehow still able to start and drive, though a growing percentage of mass is represented by Iron Oxide. It's a round-town car, as it tends to vibrate uncomfortably whenever is passes the threshold of 60mph. I call it the Drift, and it gets mention in my Pharmacy novel.

Back to deer encounter 2. I was rolling along homebound on one of the main streets around 11pm and thinking about climbing into bed and going to sleep. Suddenly a car darted out of the cross street right in front of me. And then the driver stopped dead and froze, creating an impromptu roadblock and an excellent implement for an action movie chase scene.

Luckily my breaks still work, which surprises me, or I'm sure that Drift would have dissolved and burst into a ball of fire.

The silver lining? I wouldn't have to worry about paying my student loans back. Well, back to another evening of living dangerously.

In Greece, people use large wooden horse to get into Troy. In Michigan they use horse to get out.

The world of Detroit is akin to a planetary nebula. That's where a star about the size of our sun goes through its final death throws, expands to the size of a red giant, kicks off a ring of gas and dust and then finally collapses into its final form, a white dwarf. White dwarfs are cold and dim(relatively) remnants of extremely dense matter (they're the size of the earth with the mass of the sun) that no longer work as nuclear furnace. For all intents and purposes they're corpses that have retained some body heat. Detroit is like this. I think. Detroit, burned bright for most of the last century and now it's a remnant. While the suburbs seem to expand outwards forever. But it all looks about the same. Cookie cutter extruded mass of suburbia. It is a strange thing, we in America consider ours to be a melting pot culture. We are a microcosm of humanity. But when you get down to it, any city built in the last fifty years looks exactly the same as all of the others. Block after block, this maze runs. If you were to fall asleep in one of the suburbs of Detroit and awake in the outskirts of Indianapolis, I doubt that you would notice. We are diverse homogeneity, and I hate it. Our cities tend to grow more and more uninteresting with each passing decade. What brings this on? I got to spend the weekend in Troy Michigan, doing Data Entry for a pharmacy that was switching software. I spent 17 hours transferring patient records by hand from the old system to the new. Then afterwards I got to see a little of Troy. Worst Vacation Ever. The Onion has a wonderful story titled something like 'College Senior hopes she can turn love of Data Entry into Career in Data Entry.' Wonderful Satire. But for anyone who doesn't know, data entry is simply taking information from one source and inputing it into a computer database. It can be described in a word, Tedious. If I had to look forward to a future of Data Entry, I think I would open my own veins. If I had to The pharmacy was an interesting place, as these things go. They seem to have moved recently and were in a rather disorganized state. Fine, that makes the environs that much more interesting. A bit of clutter is nice and homey. Even if such isn't the ideal way to run a business. But as the weekend passed, the crew got things slowly squared away. It is a strange thing to drive two hundred miles and find things are similar to my own corner of the state. The Pharmacy in Troy seems to use the same distributor as does the two I've worked at here in town. So they have the same stickers on the same medication bottles. The drugs arrive from the distributor in the same dark blue, light blue, green and grey bins. One difference was somewhat cultural. On the west side of the state, it's a haven for Conservative Religious folk endemic in our nation. Christians mostly. Where they have religion at all, most are protestant. Black, white and brown seem to be the most prominent groups. The Troy Pharmacy was mostly, as was implied earlier, of folks who hailed form the Mid East. English and Arabic seemed to flow together, just like with Spanglish. Evil made the statement that it is disconcerting to hear a sentence almost entirely of one language that seems to flow around a single word from the other. They are like tantalizing scraps for an outsider to try to piece together the conversation from the bits and pieces that you understand. But anyone has heard Spanglish is familiar with the concept. Fascinating how two languages seem to inhabit the mind together. As someone who is unilingual, I wonder how multi-lingual folk engaged in the exchange decide when to flit back and forth. When do you decide that the German word for Panties isn't good enough, so you have to drudge up the Swahili equivalent? I would love to know how these choices are made and how conscious they are. But as someone who absolutely sucks at memorizing (I'm lazy and a language is made up of tons of sounds and their meanings that need to be memorized), I doubt I shall ever have the experience myself. Back to the office. It was a basement, a dungeon. Large and spacious, but lacking windows. I do love having natural light, it makes me feel human. I was lead to a cubical, mostly empty except for a chair and a computer. With a brief description of what I needed to do, I was left alone with a stack of papers. Behind me was a fellow who was listening to what seemed to be a religious broadcast. About Jesus and Islam. I'm not sure if it was pro-Christian, or trying to get Christians and Muslims to work together. From what I heard, it sounded like a little of A, while maybe trying to convert Muslims. The Preacher was performing a monologue about how important the prophet Jesus is to Islam, and how many Muslim kids are named after him, and maybe how the grass is greener over in Christianity. Has anyone else had an experience like this? Luckily I had my iPod. Oh iPod, you are one of the greatest inventions that humanity has yet devised! So, Data entry is how I spent my days in Troy. With a bit of religiosity and Metallica smattered within. How about the evening? We had a fine dinner of Olive Garden. I forswore the never ending pasta bowl, or whatever they call it. The food is of course tasty. But you can get it anywhere. According to Google there are at least three in the city where I reside. It'd be like visiting New York and patronizing Pizza Hut. Just get out, walk down the block, and find a good local restaurant! Though, I have no clue what sort of food Troy/Detroit might be famous for. There are a lot of Middle-Eastern folk, so Mediterranean food and Indian are my best guesses. - In our defense though, We're cheap and we had a gift card for Olive Garden. Free food isn't something Evil or I often turn down. Evil and I stayed at a place called the Candlewood Suites. Which was both awesome and lame. It's a hotel aimed at long term guests, and comes with a full kitchen, living area, and bedroom in each suite. Pretty damn cool, if somewhat old. Our suite had an aged television and a video-dvd player, which I expect is about par for the course. The kitchen is fully stocked with utensils and the inn offers a washing service gratis, as well as the free video lending library. But at the same time they seem to be rather laid back. Kind of how I would imagine a youth Hostel to be. I visited the video library, an eclectic collection of dvds and vhs tapes. I don't know who put it together, but they REALLY liked Steven Seagal. Vern has nothing on these folks, Though mostly it was Golden Era Steven Seagal. And I had already seen all the movies. Then there were the mysterious Bollywood tapes. They were encased in a plain white cardboard slip-case and had equally plain text on some tape denoting the name of the film and the major players. Tempting as these mysteries were to explore, I ended up folding to my inner historian and choosing The Assassination of Jesse James ETCETERA, a historical docudrama about said man and event. Three hours long it was, so I never got to the part about the assassination. Only that James and the people around him were fucking dicks. That was enough for me to hope that the Yankees would come back through and put a torch to that part of Missouri. Sunday saw more data entry – followed by pay and release. Freedom to leave Detroit. Judging by the traffic flowing out from the city, I am not alone in that sentiment. Most people were flying out of the city, like it was infested with zombies and on fire to boot. 80MPH+. Swerving like mad. One fellow we saw barely slowed down when they got off the highway and onto a ramp. It was good to be free of the city and on our way back home. Next week, Travers City Michigan.

The hardcore life of a drug mule.

I got to do some drug-muling this week. Boy was it fun.

Wait, that sounds like an actual adventure, and not a twisted half-mirror image of one. I work for a pharmacy that specializes In supplying long term care facilities. Most facilities are on a 30 day cycle for their medications, meaning that they generally get one large shipment every 30 days. With exceptions being made for emergencies and new prescriptions. But all in all days are spent packing tens of thousands of dollars of medication for one delivery. All your eggs in one basket indeed.

Let me explain something about the facility in question. First, it is a depressing place to visit as they take care of and house car accident victims. I don't mean people who broke an arm in a car crash, I mean the folks who have come away permanently changed. Or just aren't there any more. One of the most depressing set of instructions ever seen on a script is probably "Apply to stumps." Really, when it comes to a place like this, those what die are the lucky ones. The rest are just vegetables and shells. Which is why, that if I get into an accident, I hope to buy the farm immediately.

I think that 16 year old kids, and people on DUI charges should be forced to visit... no, work at a place like the Facility. Videos and brochures and slogans are all nice, but you need to be able to experience in all visceral sensual detail what their decisions could lead to, either for themselves or for others. Let them apply ointments to the stumps of a vegetable for a few weeks. Let them interact with the brain-scrambled denizens that poke and prod and generally go on crazy.

And if they fail to learn the lesson, shoot them, as anyone that thick shouldn't be allowed to breed.

In seven months, this is the third time I've taken cycle to the Facility. The first time was because our driver decided to take a day off right as cycle was due. This was about two weeks after I started. I got to drive across the state and deliver the cycle. Which is for our little company a very big deal. Almost like, oh I don't know, some asshole captain of an oil tanker in say Alaska skiving off to get drunk and handing the job over to the peon who washes dishes. Except that I avoided grounding on any reefs.

This is all just to say, muling isn't my usual job, I just step in when needed.

Our driver promoted himself to the head of the delivery department. This happened when one of our competitors imploded and our business quadrupled in like a week. So they brought in a ton of new people and a half-dozen new drivers. Here's where my confusion begins, they have a load of drivers who are fully capable of taking an object from point a and leaving it at point b and then returning home. They have one woman who is dedicated to this route. Plus the self-styled manager of the delivery department carried cycle to this very Facility at least ten times in the past year, plus near daily visits in between.

When he stepped up, he gave his job to an older woman. One who has yet to win the confidence of some of management in her ability to take an object from point a and point b and then return. She's pissed off the goblin that works at the Facility, who just happens unpleasant creature who doesn't seem to like anyone or anything. So I was asked to go along to make things smoother.

Which brings me back...

It turns out that I wasn't just along as extra muscle, I was the actual driver and delivery monkey. This is a one person job, and I would have preferred to do it alone. Or better have our main driver take over.

If one of his hand picked followers is incapable of doing the job, shouldn't the head of the shipping department be the one who steps in? It's not like the man is busy, his days are spent chatting on the phone and taking two hour lunch breaks at Hooters. Yeah, this is great. I'm doing his job. I hope I get paid extra for it. I would like to be the head driver for a day. Hang out at Hooters. Wreck the company bathroom. Take an hour to fill one car up with gas. Creep out the female members of the staff and get away with it.

The drive over went quietly and smooth. How I like it.

There was yelling when we arrived, or so I heard tell of later. The warthog wasn't too pleased to see my copilot. She came out of the South Building and yelled "Don't you know where South is?" I pointed at the building and responded "Yeah, It's right there!" Had I wanted to see a real explosion, I could have said "Do you need directions?" But I like having my testicles whole and attached to my person, so I kept my mouth shut.

Beyond this, the delivery went rather smoothly. Dropped off meds, saw pretty girls. That's the one reason for a Facility visit for me, they have a lot of pretty girls working there. My company is sadly lacking on that front. Gotta go out and visit other companies to see natural beauties in their wild habitats. With luck, maybe I'll bring one home one day.

During the second to the last stop, one of the more mobile patients approached my copilot and asked a simple question "Did it hurt?" Now there are two possible reasons that I can think of for this question, and sadly he didn't opt for the first and instead finished with one of the classic pick-up lines. Only to immediately dive into a second, followed by a third. My copilot giggled the whole time. We don't think she usually gets that sort of attention.

A second high-point, if it can be considered so, involved an idiot man-child. Now, when you stand in the center of a group of angry women, and then make what can be considered sexist statements to them, you should expect to get a beating. He didn't seem to make that connection as they slapped him. He even asked why I didn't man up and help him. I called him a moron. That got a laugh.

Then the return trip. The trip out was quiet, the one back not so much so. I got to hear about the yelling, and autistic grand children and about a dozen other topics of less interest. I thought about the pretty girls.

My favorite quote from the entire experience was "Animals are alive." This wasn't from a head-paitent or a random crazy hobo, but my copilot just after we narrowly missed turning a living breathing turkey into something that could be squeezed through a feeding tube. I don't know what she meant by it - I think that this was my "If it weren't for my horse" moment. I've tried to dissect the statement, and the best I can come up with was that it was a philosophical observation about the changing of the weather and how animals seem to just re-appear again.

Or maybe she's just dumb.