Turns out I only thought I was exhausted yesterday. Because today I found out exactly what "exhausted" really means.

Last night I was quick to take a nap because I knew I was going to wake up to watch the series premiere of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law that debuted on Disney+. Probably a mistake, but I didn't have to be to work until 9:00, so no big deal, right? (SPOILER ALERT: It would indeed turn out to be a big deal). I'm going to reserve comment on the show until we get past this origin episode... but my first impression was very good. I love Tatiana Maslany, and she brought everything you could hope for to the role. A guest appearance from The Hulk didn't hurt matters (where we also get a lingering question answered from the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings credits scene...

But anyway... Could not get back to sleep after hulking out, which ultimately lead to me getting a whopping three hours and twenty-eight minutes of sleep (according to Apple Watch). It didn't help that there were people in the neighboring hotel room who were making lots of noise and slamming doors until 2:30am. Thankfully work went very well, because if things went badly and a fully-functional brain was required, I would have been in deep trouble.

After work I stopped for a road pizza at David's...

And then I was on my way. Three hours of nothing but this...

Could be worse. It could have been five hours of nothing but that.

I have been a lot of places on this planet.

I have eaten a lot of pizza everywhere I go.

My favorite pizza on earth (so far) is the Da Vinci from David's Pizza in Spokane, Washington. It's red sauce, mozzarella, and feta with a swirl of pesto sauce that's topped with fresh tomatoes after baking. It is sublime. The sauce at David's has a rich and robust taste that doesn't rely on toppings to give their pizza it's flavor. The mix of feta and pesto is insanely good. It just doesn't get any better.

Which is why you can understand my utter devastation when I rolled up to David's Pizza to get a slice and was greeted by this...

The greatest pizza I have ever known was gone.

Sure David's Pizza kinda lived on inside of a bar called "Famous Ed's"... but it was never the same.

Fast forward four long years... and David's is back at a new location, and it's very nice...

The pizza profile seems closer to the original for me... but the crust is more "Famous Ed's" than "Original David's Pizza" in that it's missing a bit of the "snap" it used to have. It's slightly more chewy instead. Not necessarily a bad thing... just not as I remember it...

Still probably the best pizza on earth.

Believe it or not, the second best pizza I've ever had is 20 minutes away from me in Wenatchee at a place called "Third Generation Pizza N More." The sauce is so flavorful that just a plain cheese pizza packs plenty of delicious flavor, and their amazing crust is my favorite.

After that my pizza favorites get a bit murky. Maybe Pizano's Pizza in Chicago... could be Roberta's or Totonno’s or Grimaldi's in Brooklyn... could even be Tony's in San Francisco... the list goes on and on. And it's not limited to the US either... I may not care for Italian pizza, but I've had some pretty great pizza in several places in Europe... and even a couple spots in Japan!

Great pizza's all, but David's is on the top of my list. And I am oh so happy they're back in Spokane again.

The trip home was pretty awful, despite having a nice day for a drive...

The problem was that I was so tired by the time I got home that my brain was numb. Thanks again to Amtrak for their five hour delay that resulted in my having to make the drive in the first place.

And now... my last two slices of leftover Da Vinci are calling...

Last night was not a good night.

I decided to "play it safe" and have a veggie burger for dinner at Robin Robin instead of eating someplace more exotic. This resulted in four hours of food poisoning so bad that it had me wondering if I had contracted the ebola virus. I think my spleen liquified and blew out my butt at hour three. Not surprisingly, sleep was very tough to come by, and having to go to work in a zombie-like state was no fun at all.

Driving the three hours home in a zombie-like state was even worse.

But the trip was worth it for two reasons.

1) Yokes Grocery carries Yoo-Hoo...

Nectar of the gods!

   
2) You can still get David's DaVinci Pizza at Famous Ed's...

Best road pizza ever!

   
And then it was time to head home, though the urge to go car shopping was strong...

Hey dawg, WE FINANCE!!! Thanks, Poochie!

   
The drive home was agonizing, because I was never able to go the speed limit. There was always somebody driving slow in the passing lane who wasn't passing anybody...

I'm glad that you've found your "final answer" in Jesus... really I am... maybe if you pray hard enough,
JESUS WILL ANSWER AND TELL YOU TO STAY OUT OF THE PASSING LANE IF YOU'RE NOT PASSING SOMEBODY!

   
Then you've got trucks passing somebody, but not fast enough to keep the cars from piling up...

Can't say I blame him... the motorhome WAS GOING 52 IN A 70MPH ZONE!!!

   
Driving frustrations and ebola aside, I made it home in one piece, so I guess that's all that really matters. And now I've got leftover pizza for breakfast. Life is good.

Yesterday was not a great day.

Today wasn't much better.

Partly because once things start to go wrong, they always seem to continue to go wrong... but mostly because I had an exhausting 3-1/2 hour drive awaiting me at the end of my work day. As I have written many times before, the journey to Spokane is long, boring, and filled with mostly nothing. Which is not to say that I have anything against Spokane itself... it's actually a pleasant and interesting city... it's just not so frickin' mind-blowing that I want to spend 3-1/2 hours driving here.

But... work... and all that.

Anyway...

About 2/3 of the way to Spokane is an exit for the city of Washtucna, Washington. I have never been there. But every time I drive by the exit sign, I find myself saying "Washtucna" out loud over and over again in an attempt to find the proper pronunciation, all the while wondering what the city might be like. Today was no different...

      Wash-tuck-NAH!

      WARSH-took-neh!

      Wash-TUCK-naaaaaah!

When all of a sudden...

      BLAM!
      RATTLE! RATTLE! RATTLE! RATTLE!

Apparently my muffler and/or exhaust pipe has now come loose from the frame of my car.

As I said, once things start to go wrong, they always seem to continue to go wrong, because I had already been having problems with my piece-of-shit automobile. And now I have new ones.

So... as you can see by this map, I was not exaggerating about the vast expanse of nothing going on in the Central Washington Columbia Basin...

There was nowhere I could pull off I-90 and travel to where I could be assured of there being an auto repair shop... certainly not one that would be open at 6:00pm. All I could really do was keep going and hope my car didn't fall apart before I got to Spokane. And all the while I was having to listen to...

      RATTLE! RATTLE! RATTLE! RATTLE!

Luckily for me, my car held together.

Like the Millenium Falcon, but not really.

And so I did what any normal person would do after driving 3-1/2 hours with a car that's falling apart. PIZZA!!!

Car repairs can wait until tomorrow.

Probably.

Wash-TUCK-naaaaaah!

Today I had to make the long drive back home from Spokane.

WITH NO DAVID'S PIZZA FOR THE ROAD!

Oh how I used to love road pizza. Remember road pizza? I remember road pizza. Nothing makes a long drive fly by like road pizza. Except perhaps Jägermeister and cocaine. But Oprah says you shouldn't drive while drunk and high, so I guess that wouldn't work.

Except Oprah doesn't drive at all. She has a chauffeur drive her ass around! So who the hell is Oprah to tell me that Jägermeister and cocaine is a bad substitute for road pizza? She's probably drunk and high in the back of her stretch limo all the time! If I had Oprah-money, I know I would be.

Sigh.

I really miss road pizza...

Mmmmmm... yummy road pizza!

Don't miss Oprah though.

Last night I went to Famous Ed's, which is a sports bar run by the same people that run David's Pizza. They had my beloved "Da Vinci" pizza, so I ordered up a pie...

It looked kind of like David's. It had a taste that was reminiscent of David's, but... not so much.

For one thing, they added clove garlic to it, so the subtle flavors in the pesto were destroyed. For another thing, the feta cheese had too many crumbs, so it was also too salty. Something was off with the crust too. Not that it was a bad pizza per se, but it just wasn't David's.

Oh well. Better than nothing, I guess.

Hopefully they'll re-open at their new location soon and the universe will go back to normal.

And I can go back to having my road pizza.