"The venom of a black mamba can kill a human in four hours if, say, bitten on the ankle or the thumb. However, a bite to the face or torso can bring death from paralysis within 20 minutes. Now, you should listen to this, 'cause this concerns you. The amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan (you know, I've always liked that word... "gargantuan"... so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence). If not treated quickly with anti-venom, 10 to 15 milligrams can be fatal to human beings. However, the black mamba can deliver as much as 100 to 400 milligrams of venom from a single bite."
— Elle Driver, Kill Bill Volume 2

   
When I travel, it's often for a job that occurs at a specific time whether I am there or not. Because of this, I often fly in a day early, just in case my flight is delayed or some other problem rears its ugly head (like yesterday!). This is especially necessary in winter, when travel problems pop up all the time. The bad news is that I lose a day back home where there's tons of crap waiting to be done. The good news is that if I do make it to my destination on-time, I have a day to goof off.

Like today.

I awoke early so I could get my work done and head into the city for some much needed time off. Unfortunately, things didn't get done as quickly as I had hoped, and I couldn't leave until noon. But half-a-day in Atlanta is better than none. Except I had to go all the way up to the Lenox Mall to buy a new power adaptor for my MacBook when I discovered the one I brought had mysteriously died overnight. With delay piled on top of delay (not to mention waiting 35 minutes for a train!), I missed my opportunity to visit ICE-Atlanta, and instead decided to wander around downtown Atlanta to see if I could find something new to do.

I couldn't.

So I decided to do something I haven't done in a while... go to the top of the tallest hotel in the Western Hemisphere: The Westin Peachtree Plaza. Given my fear of heights it wasn't exactly the funnest thing for me to do, but it was a nice day and I hadn't been up it since my first trip to Atlanta ten years ago. I probably would have gone up earlier, but was scared away by all the scaffolding as they replaced windows that were damaged by the tornado that hit Atlanta in 2008.

Anyway...

After ascending the 73 stories, this is what I saw...

That turquoise-looking dome is the top of the Hard Rock Cafe

   
After wandering around adding stamps to my Gowalla collection, it was time for pumpkin beer at 5 Seasons Brewing Co. with The Muskrat, Whipstitch, and Geeky Tai Tai and friends!

Which is really the best reason to come to Atlanta.

And now it's off to work...

I hate... HATE... Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

And this is coming from somebody who lives according to a belief system that advocates not "hating" anything. But SeaTac brings it out of me almost every single time I pass through. Which is a lot, as you might imagine, given the amount of travel I have to endure.

Before I get into today's edition of Yet Another Reason I Hate Seattle Tacoma International Airport, a warning...

Given that this is SeaTac we're talking about, I fully plan on cursing like a drunken sailor. Heck, the situation practically demands near continuous use of the word "fuck" in new and creative ways. If something like that offends you, then you should probably not read the rest of the entry.

Instead, look at the picture of this cute kitten and I'll see you tomorrow...

For the rest of you brave souls, this nonsense continue in an extended entry...

Today was a whirlwind of pain and suffering.

Okay, not really... but it was a very difficult day. After a night of absolutely no sleep, I had to be ready for a trip to Seattle at 6:00am. Fortunately, I wasn't driving, so at least the danger of me passing out and causing a twenty-car pileup on the highway was lessened by 74%. The drive over the mountain passes was mostly uneventful. A lot of rain, but clear sailing from start to finish.

After nine hours of work, it was time to turn around and go back home.

To say road conditions had changed would be a massive understatement.

The snow was dropping so heavily that you could barely see the road. Let alone the cars in front of you...

Despite chains or all-wheel drive being required, I counted two semi-trucks skidded into the ditch, a half-dozen accidents, and police cars everywhere. As we got across the pass, we saw that the East-bound lanes had all been closed...

Since it's kind of hard to tell what's going on in that photo... it's a police car closing the road with miles and miles of traffic stacked behind him. Since there's no way to turn around and go back, all the people in that line would just have to sit there until the pass re-opens, which was probably hours.

Anyway...

Made it home safely, where I promptly took some sleeping pills and climbed into bed.

Then remembered I hadn't blogged, so I climbed back out of bed and wrote this. You are welcome!

I both love and hate shopping for groceries at late hours during weeknights. On one hand, there's very few people and you're pretty much left alone to shop in peace. On the other hand, the people that you DO run into are... errr... "colorful" to say the least.

Tonight I drove into Wenatchee for a late-supper blogger meet with Brandon, Eclectic, and Matt. Since "eating" is a highly-specialized activity for me now that I'm trying to recover from side-effects of Getting Healthy, I had to eat my salad and beer bread at super-human speeds so that I could finish before my food deadline. I don't think I injured anybody, but it sure made trying to hold a conversation interesting.

After dinner (and an obligatory stop for drinks) I decided to make my afore-mentioned trip to the grocery store. Albertsons was, as expected, mostly empty at 10:45pm.

Except for the hipster rejects, gangsta posers, redneck zombies, drugged-out hippies, whack-job crazies, Jersey Shore wannabes (WTF? How is this a fashion trend?)... and me. Oddly enough, I fit right in. Society's outcasts have nothing on me.

And now I'm home and reading about the whole "We Won't Fly" movement, where people are protesting the new airport "scanners" (which I wrote about two days ago) by refusing to fly. There's even a website about it where they are advocating a "No Fly Day" boycott on November 24th. "Hit the airlines in the pocketbook until the scanners and gropers are gone. Make the airlines work for us."

What a crock of horse shit.

If I wasn't already flying on November 24th, I would actually change my travel plans to fly on that day.

What the fuck do the airlines have to do with airport security? Nothing. That's what. Airlines operate at the pleasure and direction of the Transportation Security Administration. They aren't in a position to dictate shit. Sure they can protest that the new security measures are harming their business and hope that the TSA comes up with a better plan than these pricey scanners (which many claim won't make us any safer and may actually be dangerous to human health), but that's about it. They don't make the decisions as to what the TSA implements for airport security. Punishing them as if they do is just stupid.

It's like boycotting McDonalds because they don't have cocaine on the menu. Boycotts against persons, businesses, or organizations for things which are outside of their control doesn't make any sense to me. Sure, go ahead and boycott McDonalds because they won't put fried pies back on the menu, or boycott the airlines because they force you to sit in seats with no leg-room and pay extra to check a bag... those are decisions they made. But boycotting them for decisions and rules they have to follow which other people made? WTF?.

Now that we have "No Fly Day" I'm going to reiterate the same request I made for "Shutdown Day" back in 2007...

Look, I fully admit that I'm opposed to the new scanners and support a person's right to opt-out of having to use them. I know that the TSA claims that these devices are no more dangerous than mobile phones (mobile phones are safe, right? RIGHT?). I understand the images are not saved. I appreciate that the person viewing the scanner images can't make out who is in the machine, nor can they look out and see the person being scanned. I concede that the TSA has rules in place which would prevent scanner operators from recording what they see. Blah... blah... blah... I just don't care. Experts have said that these scanners can be fooled, and so the invasion of my privacy and possible health risk just aren't worth it. Nor is the enormous cost, which we will all have to pay for. Because if there is a way to fool the scanners, terrorists will find out about it, and then where will we be?

Showing our junk at the airport for no good reason.

And for people who feel the same as I do, they can opt out of the scanner and get groped by a TSA agent instead. Yes, that's not much of an alternative. And, no, I don't like it. That's why I will be writing my senator (which is apparently Patty Murray again), calling my Representative, and blogging about it. Hopefully continuing action AGAINST THOSE ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE will be enough to eventually let sanity prevail. But, in the meanwhile, I have to fly and this is the price I pay for it. And I'm not going to punish the airlines because they want to keep operating and have to play by the rules and conditions they're given by the TSA to do so.

And in happier news...

The incomparable Betty White is now an honorary forest ranger!

Photo by Morigi/WireImage, from NY Daily News.

She has done so much to support and advocate for animals and their habitats that this is a well-deserved honor.

It's nice to end the day with some good news for a change.

Why me?

Last night I worked until 12:30am only to be rudely awakened at 4:30am by my hotel neighbors. Today I had to switch hotels, because when you book separate dates using a "blind bid" site like Priceline.com you never know where you'll end up. This time I ended up at The Westin, which is my second-favorite hotel in Seattle (after the W)... you just can't beat those Heavenly Beds! Not only that, but the location is killer and, most importantly, it's pretty quiet for a downtown city hotel...

Except if you end up staying here on the night of midterm political elections.

Especially if the incumbent candidate for State Senator has her election night HQ here.

Particularly if you have her supporters staying on your floor.

And very likely if they are staying in the room next door.

And most definitely if she ends up winning the election.

   
I am.

She is.

There are.

They are.

She did. Apparently. I guess. Or is going to. Or something good. I don't know, because I don't give a crap. But there's music blasting outside and yelling in the hallway. Maybe she punched somebody in the face then took a shit on their head, and that's why people are going nuts. Given the nasty, reprehensible, disgusting campaign that both she and her opponent ran, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

But whatever. I honestly don't know what's going on.

All I do know is that I won't be getting much sleep tonight. Again.

THANKS A LOT, PRICELINE NEGOTIATOR!

I've been making twice-weekly trips over to Seattle for entirely too long and it's starting to wear on me. Especially now that the weather is getting all nasty and the deer are running. Today's trip found me with such poor visibility that I wasn't able to see the road much of the time. This was made worse when I very nearly plowed into some deer that ran onto the highway in front of me. The drive would have made for some cool photos, but the window-mount I constructed so I can shoot hands-free iPhone photos didn't seem to want to stick to the window, so I didn't get many shots at all. This one was taken at 1:30 in the afternoon before things got really bad...

Seattle was equally miserable, with rain pouring down on me as I attempted to run errands downtown. At one point I was forced to navigate a lake which had formed in the crosswalk, and ended up with soaking wet feet on top of everything else. Fortunately, I had a warm and comfy hotel room waiting for me...

Complete with my new Black Bear Sleepytime Pal...

And a nice view as well. Look at those awesome trees...

I have everything except a glass. Or a cup. Or a mug. Or anything that lets me get a drink of water without sticking my head under the faucet. At least without having to buy a bottle of water for $5.50. Kind of douchey for a hotel that I enjoy quite a lot otherwise.

Now my challenge will be trying to get a few hours of work done before that big comfy bed makes me fall asleep. I fully expect to fail.

But I think I can live with that.

Washington State votes by mail, so I've already taken care of business. But since most everybody else votes tomorrow, I thought I would post this amusing cartoon that's been working its way through the interwebs over the past week. Much of it is rather obtuse in the way it presents Tea Party positions on the issues... but I do like the way it hammers home how most Tea Partiers seem to have no fucking clue what they're talking about. Every single interview I've ever seen with a Tea Partier has been chocked full of such blinding ignorance that I'm left speechless. All these people know how to do is parrot the crap they've been conditioned to believe, and not bother actually thinking or researching anything for themselves. It's all at once mind-bogglingly sad and so fucking typical...

Interestingly enough, some of the Tea Party's core beliefs for accountability in government spending and limitations of government intrusion into our lives actually sound like a good thing to me. The problem is that Tea-Partiers seem to pick-and-choose how these concepts are applied. On one hand they don't want the government telling us how to live our lives, but then turn around and say that the government should pass laws preventing two people of the same sex from getting married. On one hand they don't want the government to be in the health-care business, but then turn around and say that the government should be forbidden from making any changes to Medicare. These seemingly endless contradictions make little or no sense. And when you add in the many lies and distortions that Tea-Partiers seem so fond of propagating, I am left scared as hell as to what might happen if these people actually start getting into office.

Sadly, it looks as though we might be finding out very soon.

I really should have flown back last night. My friends had gone home in the afternoon, I'd seen the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Albuquerque, and I had to be to work today. But when I made my reservations, I thought it would be nice to have a full day in-between flights so, instead of traveling last night, I took the first flight I could get this morning. Which meant waking up at 3:30am. And as I sit here bleary-eyed at the airport wanting to sleep, I'm feeling pretty stupid about the whole ordeal. NOTE TO SELF: Never book an early flight unless you absolutely have to.

Despite the short length of this trip, I got to see some wacky wonderful things. I was reflecting on them as I rode the shuttle to the airport, and this is what I came up with...

   
• Rock You Queen Video Slot Machine. Arguably the most amazing slots game I've ever seen, Rock You Queen Slots is so entertaining that you don't even care that it's taking all your money. I hit the Bonus Round on my fourth or fifth spin, then spent all my winnings PLUS $20 trying to hit it again because it was so awesome. I never saw it again, but fortunately, somebody put it on YouTube...

What you are not seeing here is that ABOVE the play screen there's a video screen with the "Radio Ga Ga" video playing and lights going off. Truly impressive!

   
• A woman playing slots while wearing oxygen... and smoking. I can only hope that the oxygen was turned off at the time. I would have told her that oxygen is extremely flammable, and her face could explode, but instead got my ass as far away from her as possible.

   
• A man crying after (apparently) losing his last dollar at video poker. Ordinarily, I'd find this sad, as he obviously has a problem. But Culture Club's rediculously happy song "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" was blasting through the casino, which just made the situation funny as hell. I had to stifle a guffaw and run away so I didn't end up laughing in the poor guy's face.

   
• A woman punching a Kitty Glitter slot machine. In yet another senseless slots-related tragedy, one of my friends was playing "Maltese Puppy Slots" next to a woman who was playing "Kitty Glitter Slots" who all of a sudden screamed "I HAD THAT! I HAD THAT!" and started punching the video kitties. The three of us just kind of scooted away and waited for security to show up, but the crazy woman ran off still screaming "I HAD THAT!" before anybody could get there. Something tells me she really didn't have that.

   
• Cougarlicious Slots. Need I say more?

   
• The Ladies of Hard Rock. There's a section of table games called "Baby Dolls" where brutally hot women dressed in pink corsets and fishnet stockings deal cards to hopelessly distracted guys wanting more for their entertainment dollar than you can get from Blackjack alone. I mentioned this yesterday, but didn't mention the uniforms for the waitresses at Lucha's where I had dinner last night... a black bustier, black short skirt, black fishnet stalkings, and... wait for it... fur-topped Ugg boots! Also brutally hot, but in a much weirder way. Say what you like about the place, but you never get tired of the scenery.

   
• HDR Pro App for iPhone. Apple may have introduced "High Dynamic Range imaging" as a standard feature for their built-in camera, but the stuff I get out of the HDR Pro App is in a league all its own. And sometimes not because of the reason you'd expect. I keep getting happy accidents and funky surprises that make me never want to shoot with any other camera app...

   
• Airport Crazy. What's the first thing I see as I exit the Hard Rock Shuttle at Albuquerque International this morning? A crazy woman in the no-parking zone picking a fight with airport security! At least I'm assuming she's wacked out of her gourd... who in there right mind would mix it up with airport security now-a-days? My problem is that I can't be content with such simple amusements. My first instinct is always to "improve" the situation. Do you know how badly I wanted to scream "SHE'S GOT A GUN!" or even offer helpful advice like "I think you should cuff her, officer!"?? Fortunately, I was the model of restraint. I didn't even make goofy faces at the crazy lady as I passed. I wish I knew why I feel the need to be an unbelievable bastard all the time. Either I truly am evil to the core, or I just can't resist a good laugh. Problem is, I'm usually the only one who finds it funny.

   
• Unhappy Kitteh. A woman in a wheelchair pushing a cart was just pushed by me. On top of the cart is a kitty carrier with a very unhappy cat inside. Very. It's screeching "MEOW" every three seconds. This is surprising, because I always assumed that animals are drugged before flying. I rarely see people with pets going nuts like this, and have always wondered why kids can't be tranquilized too. Well, kids and old people who like to complain a lot. And loud talkers. And people who pull on your seat-back every ten minutes. And people with Windows laptops who have the volume on full so you get blasted with that hideous fucking Windows startup sound. And idiots who annoy me. Which is pretty much everybody. Heck, let's just tranquilize the entire plane. Including me. The cats can meow all they like.

   
And my laptop battery is dying. I guess my time to reflect is over, and I should publish this thing already.

Who knows what new amazing things will happen on the way home?

HOW YOU DOIN' ALBUQUERQUE?!

It's a special HARD ROCK Edition of Bullet Sunday, LIVE from the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Albuquerque! For those of you who don't care about my Hard Rock obsession, you might want to skip this entry.

About the only Hard Rock logo you'll see outside of their gift shop.

   
• HARD? Kinda. Like the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tulsa, the Albuquerque property wasn't built as a Hard Rock. It's a tribal casino which has been retrofitted with Hard Rock theming in the public areas. They sprinkled cabinets of rock memorabilia around the place, added a trademark Hard Rock center bar to the casino floor, painted some classic rock lyrics on the walls, hung up some guitars, and changed the door-handles. As with Tulsa, the result is kinda half-baked. It looks like a Hard Rock property in places, but doesn't give you that overall "feel" you get from an "authentic" Hard Rock.
HARD ROCK GRADE: C

Apparently, this was the best they could do for a sign. How embarrassing.

You could slap this crap signage on a Motel 6, it doesn't make it a Hard Rock.

Sammy Hagar suit display case. THIS is Hard Rock.

Jonas Brothers guitar display. I have no idea what the fuck this is.

Nice. Guitar-shaped door handles. We need MORE of this kind of stuff here.

   
• ROCK? Not so much. The property is what it is, but... if you are a Hard Rock fanatic like me, that's not the problem. Once again, my Pin Collector's Card is worthless. No discount. No visitation credit. When I showed my card to the cashier, she literally said "We don't take that. We're not affiliated with the Hard Rock Cafe"... I shit you not. I responded "No... you just brand your hotel with their logo, sell tons of their logo merchandise, and create pins and shot glasses specifically for Hard Rock collectors. You're not affiliated at all!" Then I laughed it off as a joke, but I wasn't joking. Again, if you are licensing the Hard Rock brand and passing yourself off as a Hard Rock property, then BE A FUCKING HARD ROCK PROPERTY! When HRC Corporate licenses out their brand, one of the conditions should be that licensees are required to honor their club cards. Otherwise, you're just going to piss off your most diehard fans and customers. At least they had a good selection of merchandise and people who understood it (unlike the dismal merch shop in Tulsa).
HARD ROCK COLLECTOR GRADE: D+

Never mind the tons of Hard Rock logo merch... they're not affiliated with the Hard Rock!

   
• CASINO? Nice. While not seeming very "Hard Rock" to me, I must admit that my friends and I had a blast at the casino. Biggest plus is the gorgeous lady dealers at the table games dressed in corsets and stockings! Brutally hot (if only they allowed photos in casinos). You could lose every penny you had and just not care! They also have lots of modern slots (including a small non-smoking area), free coffee & Coke refreshment centers, and a snack bar (with the worst $4.95 nachos I've ever eaten... the "cheese" tasted like motor oil). All in all, it's a classy casino with a great staff which has a nice layout and offers a "full" casino experience (including a Bingo room, table games, and poker parlor). There's a "Rockstar" rewards club for the frequent gambler.
HARD ROCK CASINO GRADE: C • CASINO GRADE: A-

   
• HOTEL? Boring. The hotel rooms are pretty basic as there is no Hard Rock theming of any kind. With the exception of the hotel services book and the soaps which say "Hard Rock Hotel," you'd never know that this is a Hard Rock at all. The Native American prints on the walls are nice, but not Hard Rock. Even putting all that aside, there are still problems. The clock was not set to the correct time. The room smells funky (like burnt hair?). The wall television didn't work and had a giant annoying glowing light on the bottom that I had to cover so I could sleep. And I had to keep the bathroom door closed because the toilet would start running at random. Ultimately, my $170 "DELUXE" room doesn't seem very "deluxe" and my promised "view" isn't that great. About the only positive I can offer is that it was clean.
HARD ROCK HOTEL GRADE: F • HOTEL GRADE: C

Not bad... but not very Hard Rock either.

See that tiny leather binder and notepad on the desk? The only thing Hard Rock in this entire photo.

   
• NOISE? FAIL! This hotel is noisy as hell. Rude people are screaming down the hallways at all hours of the day and night. Doors are slamming constantly. Hotel staff are walking around 24-7 screaming into their radios which are blaring at full volume. And you hear everything. Absolutely no effort was made to soundproof anything. Thus I can sum up the relaxation level of my room as "miserable." If you have any aspirations of getting even a little sleep... best bring earplugs. You'll need them.
ROOM NOISE GRADE: D

   
• FOOD? Okay to Great. In addition to the truly awful "food" being sold at the casino snack bar, there's other dining options available... EAGLE'S NEST BUFFET: While modest by Vegas standards, the buffet still looked decent. I took a pass, because vegetarians will never get their $13.95 worth. LUCHA: A nice Mexican restaurant by day which transforms into a Tequila bar at night. I had dinner here and really enjoyed it. Everything was fresh and flavorful, and the guacamole was fantastic. 505 FUSION: A very nice, upscale nightclub, we had drinks here last night. Pizza and appetizers were okay, but nothing special. The menu looked decent, but none of us were hungry enough to order late supper. CHILL: Great-tasting quality ice cream parlor. TIWA: An upscale cafe, but the menu was definitely meat-oriented, so I took a pass. THE DELI: I had a cheap, bland grilled-cheese sandwich with undercooked, waggy fries that had me chained to the toilet an hour after eating here (thank heavens for Imodium!).
DINING GRADE: C- (LUCHA DINING GRADE: B+) (505 FUSION DINING GRADE: B-)

   
• SERVICES & SHOPS? Good! Much to my total shock and surprise, there's a free round-the-clock shuttle to the airport for registered hotel guests! They will also take you to the Isleta Pueblo station so you can catch the $2 RailRunner train into town (which is nice, because a taxi would be $35+).

There's a nice pool and an interesting spa...

The pool continues under the glass to the inside, which is cool.

Inside the spa's hot tub pavilion at night. Nifty.

As I mentioned above, there's a Hard Rock Shop filled to the rafters with Hard Rock merchandise (though your Hard Rock All-Access Pass and Pin Club Card are useless here). There's also a very cool tattoo and body modification shop called "The Vault"...

Green tattooed woman mannequin sold separately.

There's also golfing nearby at the Isleta Eagle Golf Club, and camping nearby at the Isleta Lakes Recreation Area. Lastly, there's the "Fun Connection" spot with bowling, laser tag, and an arcade (or so I'm told... I never saw it).
SERVICES GRADE: B

   
• PROBLEMS? Yes. In order to use the hotel elevator, you have to swipe your room key before the buttons will work. Unfortunately, the card reader in the elevator is shitty. More than once I was riding the damn thing up and down while trying to get my card to work so it would stop on my floor. Several times I'd enter the elevator only to find somebody else has been riding up and down trying to get their card to work as well. This is an obvious and highly frustrating problem, and it's just plain stupid that the hotel doesn't do something about it.

   
• CONCLUSION: Ultimately, I'd have to give the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Albuquerque a pass. The hotel doesn't impress me much, and there's nothing "Hard Rock" enough about the resort to make it destination-worthy for fans. If you're in the area, it might be fun to gamble in their nice casino, but I wouldn't stay or eat here again (except perhaps dinner at Lucha).

   
Anyway... it was nice to meet up with my friends, I had a lot of fun, and I can't complain about the cheap-ass ticket price I paid to get here ($168 round-trip!), so overall this weekender goes in the WIN column. I just wish that these new additions to the Hard Rock family would be worth the effort on their own. They have to be, because otherwise they're just diluting the Hard Rock brand and giving people a mediocre impression of what a Hard Rock property can be when some effort goes into creating them.

This morning as I awoke from my drug-induced coma in a drug-induced haze, the first thing I noticed was that my wrist hurt. This was unusual since I don't remember it being injured yesterday WHEN I WAS RAN DOWN IN THE FUCKING CROSSWALK. Luckily, I'm right-handed and it's my left wrist that aches, so it won't interfere with any important business that needs to be done today.

And by "important business" I do not mean "masturbation" (pervert!)... I mean "shifting gears while driving solo".*

Since I was well enough to drive, I rolled out of bed.

Then promptly fell on the floor because I forgot my ankle was messed up.

As fun as it was to roll around on the carpet moaning "WAAAAAH! IT HURTS SO BAD!!" I had a plane to catch, so I reluctantly crawled to the shower and flopped around in the tub like a beached salmon for a few minutes while water sprayed down on me. Since that's not nearly as much fun as it sounds, I gave up on getting clean and decided to eat breakfast instead. Usually my breakfast would consist of four shots of Jägermeister after BEING HIT BY A FUCKING CAR the previous day... but I was driving. So I had a banana instead.

Drunk on a banana-fueled high, I threw a suitcase in the trunk of my car and then drove the 2-1/2 hours to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Which was boat-loads of fun, I'm sure, but I honestly don't remember any of it (what in the hell was in that banana?). All I know is that it was raining, so it probably wasn't as pretty a trip as I had earlier this week...

From there it was a hellaciously rough two hour flight to Salt Lake City. Seriously, I haven't had a flight this nasty in a long time. It was so bad that I very nearly chucked my banana.** Once at SLC, I had a generous 35 minute layover. Or would have had 35 minutes but, since we were late getting out of Seattle, it was more like 20 minutes. And, of course, my connecting flight was clear across the frickin' airport. So I had to run to my gate with my twisted ankle screaming all the way (I've had worse). But, lucky me, I made it with time to spare. Which is good, because the flights are packed and I probably couldn't get another one until tomorrow. This would be bad, because I was meeting friends who were driving five hours down from Pueblo (that's in Colorado, y'all).

And so here I am in Albuquerque again, after a year-and-a-half absence.

My friends made sure that I (finally) got my four shots of Jägermeister, bless them.

   
   
*Also not a reference to masturbation.

**Still not a reference to masturbation.

I could pretend to know where I am and how I got here and what I'm doing, but I really can't say for sure. It's been a long day and I've had a lot to drink. I'm almost positive that I'm in the wilds of rural Wisconsin.

Not because I'm looking at my iPhone GPS (since I don't even know how to get that working properly right now) but because there's a lot of subtle clues around. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know where you are when the signs all around you are pointing the way...

I'm pretty sure that when it comes to Wisconsin, beer is what's for lunch as well... beer and cheese with bacon wrapped around it. Other than that, it's certainly pretty enough to be Wisconsin in the Fall...

And the Jägermeister Pumpkins are in bloom...

That's definitely Wisconsin right there.

Doing the math... Dave2 + Wisconsin + Jägermeister + Ke$ha...

"Throw your hands up! Throw your hands up!"

Jenny + Wisconsin + Beer + Ke$ha...

"Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack..."

Ha! I totally lie. Jenny wouldn't be caught dead singing Ke$ha no matter how much beer she's had! I'm pretty sure that's the Pussycat Dolls right there.

Technically, I shouldn't be drunk though.

Looking back, I totally took precautions. I ate plenty of bread with butter. Salad with butter. Bruschetta with butter. And, of course, this is Wisconsin so I had fries with butter...

And a little carb-on-carb action with a Cheese-And-Butter-Risotto-Sandwich-On-Buttered-Rye-Bread-With-Butter...

Which was followed by Buttered Butternut Squash Ravioli in Brown-Sugar-Butter Sauce with Walnuts and Butter.

But, in the end, the Jägermeister cannot be denied...

Especially when you have five of them preceded by three Super Big Gulp glasses of wine...

Jägermeister cuts through a stomach butter-shield like a hot knife through...uhhh... butter.

WITH BUTTER ON TOP!

Tomorrow morning should be fun.

Assuming I don't have a butter-induced heart attack in the middle of the night.