Wisconsin Bound

Jen and I are getting ready to hit the road for another trip to Wisconsin. When she makes the trip solo, we have her fly into Chicago, but when I'm tagging along we always drive it. It's just easier with the dogs and not needing to worry about renting or borrowing a car for the week.

I always complain about the trip, but the truth is I like being on the road. Even when the drive is as uninspiring as rural Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. There's just something about the hum of the car, music on the stereo, Jen asleep in the front seat, and the dogs curled around each other in the back.

But seriously, there is nothing to look at. The sky and the ground seem to be the same shade of gray, and the trees long ago gave up their leaves. It's all wavering lines painted down the sides of the highway, and cigarettes exploding on the pavement, tossed by the cars who lead us across state lines.

She'll bitch about my music, and I about hers. We'll snack from a bag Jelly Belly jellybeans and groan every time we get stuck with one of the buttered popcorn flavored ones. We'll make as few stops as possible, but the dogs usually require a quick jog around a truck stop parking lot while we dodge piles of shit left by travelers who didn't bother cleaning up after their dogs. I'll sing to stay awake, and Jen will ask "Are you OK?" if she thinks I'm drifting. It'll be good to be moving.

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I love best of lists. While I have no plans of doing a full list of my favorite albums from 2009 I thought I would mention a record here or there. Instead of a half-assed review, I thought I'd just tack on a snippet of lyrics and leave it at that.

While I'm fickle and my opinion changes all the time, I think my favorite record of the year was "Hospice" by The Antlers.

"There's a bear inside your stomach / The cub's been kicking from within / He's loud, though without vocal chords / We'll put an end to him"

Weekend Update with Pat Robertson's Lust Puppet

Playing a bit of catch up today. The Mrs. and I traveled northward to visit some friends, do some "work", and partake of a pubcrawl through Historic Northeast Minneapolis.


It all started Thursday night with some dog walking for the good folks at CHA for a couple hours. From there we rushed home to pack, which we kind of did. Because we didn't finish, my lovely wife had me up at 3:00 AM to finish packing and get over to the airport in time to hop a 6:00ish flight to Minneapolis.

Spent the day at the office, then puttered around the city picking up groceries that we needed that don't travel well (stupid diet), and then finally setting up shop at to work from home for the rest of the afternoon. We sat out on the patio as it was a beautiful 70 something degrees and I got fried to a crisp. I had to go all the way to MN to get my first sunburn of the year. Yea.

The next day was the Crawl, and it went pretty much as you would expect it to. People came, drank, crawled, fell in and out of love, and peed on the sides of bars. Success. At the center of the party, one man stood strong. Like an experienced captain leading us into battle, he understood that we might not all make it through the night, but worked tirelessly to make sure none were thirsty and all had name tags. Some would say his early vigor was his own undoing, but not me. I was proud to be associated with the man. Here is a grainy cell phone shot of our leader enjoying what I like to think of as a rare moment of solace:

The best thing that happened, actually occurred while we were killing time on Sunday while waiting for our flight. We were talking about video games and televisions when Jen spoke up:

"You mean if you get a Playstation 3 you would be able to play games, and it has that Blueray thingie built in so you can shut up about two things at once?"

"That is correct, oh dearest love of my life. Your understanding of the situation is only exceeded by your beauty."

"Then just get it. Geez."

I already had yesterday off from work Monday, so at 8:15 am I was standing at the back of Target paying for a new Playstation 3 and a copy of Grand Theft Auto. I got home, did laundry, cleaned the house a bit and logged over eight hours on the most amazingly beautiful game ever created. This may well be the last time you hear from me as I will be squirrelled away in my den, forehead pressed to the screen, furiously rising through the ranks of the Russian mob.

I'll miss you.

Strange Days Have Found Us

Busy busy. For the most part, it's all boring day to day stuff. We go to work to make money to buy books and movies that we don't have time to watch lately because we're too busy exercising or running around. Seriously, I have a copy of "There Will Be Blood" that I bought the day it came out that I still haven't seen.

I haven't finished a book in weeks, and the pile of stuff I have to be read is starting to overflow. Recently I picked up a handful of Jack Ketchum's paperbacks (haven't read anything yet, but appears to be pretty intense horror), some healthy grilling cookbooks, and "The Raw Shark Texts" by Steven Hall. Imaginary monsters feeding on your memories? Yes, please.

I think by far the most interesting thing in our little lives came in the form of a threat posted by a sophomore high school student against the school my wife works at. Tuesday was her birthday, and I had flowers and balloons delivered to her, but found it odd by mid-afternoon when she hadn't called to say that she had received them. I called under the guise of wanting to talk about something else and I get:

"Hey. Got the flowers. They're nice. Gotta run. Love you, bye." She didn't take a breath nor did she give me a chance to say anything. Click. She hung up.

Thirty minutes later I call home to check messages and hear the Superintendent's automated message saying that students had been sent home, all evening activities had been cancelled and the following day's classes were cancelled as well due to a threat made against the school. Immediately you think it's some fucking knucklehead calling in a bomb threat or otherwise being douche, but part of you wonders. I immediately thought of the grainy black and white surveillance video from Columbine I saw, and wished she'd call to tell me what's going on.

So, it turns out (per another automated call received from the school tonight) that the kid had made the "threat" in an online forum, saying he needed grenades, but had guns already. He posted that he thought he could kill 60 people before he was taken out and that this was set to go down Thursday. The FBI tracked his IP address back to Columbus, and had a heart to heart with the boy to see exactly what the deal was.

He was just a kid being stupid. There were no guns. There was no real threat.

When things like this happen though, my imagination always gets carried away. I spend some time at the school to proctor ACT and SAT tests for extra cash, and to be honest, the place can be a bit creepy. I think maybe it's high schools in general that can be creepy when you aren't used to them. I pictured kids running down the institutional-green hallways, and the front office where my wife works under siege. I know Jen did too.

We tried not to get too carried away with the whole ordeal, but when she called me from the office to catch me up on what was going on, I could hear that she was upset. To have a place you consider yours, a safe place, be threatened and suddenly not be a place of comfort is unsettling. Even knowing the kid was just a bored punk online won't set things back to the way they were right away. This will probably be with her for a while, and I hate that for her. Hopefully it won't be too long before it's at least at the back of her mind though.

Enough of that.

This weekend I get to partake in the first adult beverage I've had in almost four months. I will be with some professional drinkers, so I will have to take my time and really pace myself, but I can't wait. More than anything it'll just be good to get away from here for a few days and hang with some good folks. Somewhere along the way I'm going to finish the fifth (sixth?) draft of a short story that I did about a man and his dog. Aw. Sounds wholesome, huh? It's not.