………..just like everybody else in the world, every day brings me one day closer to death. I’ve decided that should I make it to a really old age, like 35 or something like that, I know how I want to go. Wait, did I say 35? Hmmm, that’s only a year away. Maybe 80. Let’s say 80. If I live to be 90, I’ve decided that I’m going to fly to England and be killed by Stonehenge. How can one be killed by Stonehenge you ask? Well, I’m going to push one of the rock over and then stand next to the last one and wait for the domino effect. What’s that you ask, how the hell could I be strong enough to push one of those massive stones over? Well the way I see it, I seem to be getting stronger and stronger then older I get. I mean, I’m a lot stronger than I was when I was a baby, the way i figure it at this rate by the time I’m 90, I’ll be the strongest person who ever lived, making some mere stone no match for a 90 year old brute such as myself. And what a way to go. How many people can say Stonehenge killed them? Uhhh, none! So I can be the one and only person to ever be killed by Stonghenge. And by the time I reach 90, I will be all old and frail and senile and probably weak, not to mention impotent, so I’m thinkin’ that I would have lived a long life and probably ready to go at that point. And shit, you have to go sometime, why not by some legendary, mystical think that has baffled people for thousands of years. Plus, in the process of taking myself out, I will be taking Stonehenge out. Its a win-win situation.

Speaking of death, Senator Ted Kennedy died. I haven’t heard any of the evil Republicans say anything bad about his death yet, but I’m sure if I wait long enough, somebody asshole like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck will say something stupid like Kennedy is faking his cancer and subsequent death just to prove that we need health care reform. Now I know you might be thinking that I’m being an asshole, but honestly, these are Republicans, would you put it past Ann Coulter to say something like that? Honestly, I can just picture Beck going on the air (I can picture as opposed to watch it because I would never sink so low as to actually watch Beck) to start some sort of rant about how evil Obama and his health plan is, getting so upset that he starts crying and then says that Kennedy faked the whole damn thing.

I swear, these Republicans are so fuckin evil and despicable that really really fuckin hate them. Now I know that none of them said that he faked it and I’m just makin shit up, but the mere fact that I can find it even semi plausible that those fuckers can make something like that up goes to show you how truly evil they are.

Oh, and don’t worry, I’ll have plenty to say about the Democrats. But that is a post for another day, perhaps tomorrow or Wednesday. Right now I have to work on making sure Limbaugh never makes it to Stonehenge. After all, that fat fuck could easily put down the whole thing.

This weekend I had three things I wanted to get done: renew my driver’s license, take my car for an oil change and mow my lawn. And much to my surprise, I actually had gotten all three done by 2pm on Saturday. I think its mainly because I got up at 9:30 in the am on Saturday, which for me is early on a weekend.

See the DMV is only open until noon on Saturdays, and since there is always a line that stretches to the Indiana boarder (which is about 45 miles away) that moves slower health care reform through Congress, I wanted to give myself enough time. Since I was a teen, I’ve always seemed to have battles with the DMV. I have a saying for the DMV “Its a government office and they do everything possible to inconvenience you”.  Things were so bad that it took me years to get my license the first time because of the bullshit I had to put up with. For example, one time I went there and they asked for my signature. They looked at it and compared it to my signature on my social security card which I signed when I was fuckin 12 or somewhere around then. They compared the two signature and told me they were different and they couldn’t issue me an ID or driver’s license. I was fuckin pissed. And rightfully so, after all I was an adult and like most people, my signature had changed since I was 12 years old. So that was just an example of the type of bullshit I’ve had to put  up with.

This time though, I was pleasantly surprised. They had made some great improvements and things flowed very good. I was actually in and out of there in about 20 minutes. Sure, the employees were still kinda cold, but hell it wouldn’t be a DMV if the employees were nice. I still can’t believe that I fooled the people at the Illinois state secretary of state into thinking that I’m still qualified to drive a car. If only they knew about my driving with my eyes closed, my record of going 11 years without checking my blindspot, my flipping random drivers off, my slamming on the breaks to look at weeds growing on the side of the highway, and my sniffing glue as I drive.

What a time to be alive!

Well its that time of year again in which the Little League World Series is played. I’ve written about this before and how I really am a cold, sadistic, immature bastard. You see those kids playing baseball and whenever they fuck up, they start to cry. Normal people of the human being variety feel sorry for the kid and are empathetic or sympathetic with the crying 12 year old. Not me though. Nope. I laugh. I can’t help but find it funny. I don’t know why I find it funny, I just do. I’ve never been a good athlete in the least; in fact, I can relate to those kids because I have fucked up so many times in every sport I’ve ever played. But, I’ve also always been an emotionless robot, so therefore, I’ve never cried when I fucked up, even as a boy, not that I played a lot of sports growing up. Now it if isn’t bad enough and embarrassing enough for the kid to fuck up and then to cry, ESPN compounds the matter by focusing on the kid. The camera seems to show the kid for what seems like an eternity either on the field or in the dugout crying. Hell, I thought I was an asshole for laughing, but I’m not nearly as bad as the ESPN director of the televised games who says “Camera 4, stay with the kid. Wait for the tears. Now zoom in. Nice and close. Keep going towards the kid’s face. We are going to show this for such a long time that it will make the kid’s life a veritable hell once he returns to school from summer break. We can do this though. We are ESPN!” Meanwhile, the kids back home are just sitting back waiting for the crying kid to get back home so they can really let him have it. And yet we wonder why so many kids are depressed or in therapy.

I was thinking about it though and kids play with toys until they are about 12 or 13 years old. They spend their whole lives wanting the newest and best toys. For the first 8 or 9 years, they beg Santa to bring them the toys. Then they find out that their parents have been lying to them and there is no Santa. So, they start bugging their parents for the toys. The toys cost money and a lot of time break really easily. And how many times do you spend tons of money to buy a kid a fuckin toy and they play with it for a week and then they are pretty much done with it and it goes by the wayside, never to be played again. And then finally, boys turn about 12 or 13. Its right about then when they discover the greatest toy ever. A toy that will be more fun and bring them more joy and pleasure than all the other toys combined. And what’s funny is that it didn’t cost anything and it turns out that the damn thing has been dangling between his legs his entire life. I speak of the cock! They discover the cock and what they can do with the cock and how it totally blows everything else away. And they can’t get enough of the damn thing. They are always playing with it, every chance they get. All of a sudden, none of the other toys matter anymore. Its like the boy says “Fuck you G.I. Joe, I don’t need you anymore, I’ve got my penis to provide me with all the entertainment I could ever need!” But, like anything, sooner or later, they have to take it to the next level. They become so amazed and so obsessed with this new toy that they need to start sharing it with others. After a couple of years, they start actively and constantly seeking out others to play with it for them. They want others to see how much joy and fun the toy has brought to their lives. They want others to experience the joy. And that is when the great obsession begins to find a companion piece to their toy.

This my friends is pretty much the story of every guy’s life, doesn’t matter if he is gay or straight, he spends the first 12 years playing with toys that are just a warm up for the real thing and then spends the rest of his life trying to find others to play with. See its really kind of the opposite in a weird way. When you are a boy, you want as many toys as you can get. And you don’t want to share them with anybody. You want them all to yourself, fuck everybody else. And you want to keep on getting more and more and bigger and better. When you grow up, you want to share your toy with everybody. And you don’t care who plays with it, as long as its being used. But, the more things change the more they stay the same, because you still want it to keep getting bigger and better! Until finally it stops working and you wind up humiliated and crying in front of people because you played with it so much that you broke it. And those same kids who laughed at you when you cried on national tv during the Little League World Series are laughing at you yet again. Jeez, no wonder why so many adults are depressed and in therapy.

Just one last post about my road trip. Here are some facts about my road trip:

• I drove 2565.1 miles from Saturday to Friday. Although it sounds like a lot, that’s an average of 427.51 per day. Or a little more than 7 hours of driving each day. Actually come to think of it, it is a lot of fuckin miles!
• I drove through parts of 10 states, IL, IN, MI, OH, KY, WV, PA, MD, VA and WI. I should point out, however, that I only drove briefly through Kentucky and Virginia because I was lost.
  
• Despite going through 10 states, I only drove through 2 state capitals, Madison, WI and Columbus, OH. And Madison wasn’t even part of the original main trip and had the Cleveland Indians played in Cleveland on Sunday, I wouldn’t have driven through Columbus at all. On last year’s trip I drove through 8 states and only 1 state capital.
  
• Bags of Rold Gold pretzel rods I ate: 1 1/2. Sure, that might not sound like much. But, keep in mind that I was the only person eating them. And it wasn’t one of those small vending machine bags, this was the normal sized bag with the long rods. Heh, heh, heh, I said long rods!
• Number of baseball parks I made it to: 4, Detroit, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Pittsburgh. It should have been 5.
  
• Total number of tickets sold to the games I was at: 86,396 (Detroit 37,276, Cincinnati 18,030, Baltimore 18,460, Pittsburgh 12,630). I was hoping to hit the 100,000 mark, which I would have hit had I made it to the Washington Nationals game. Still, it was an average of 21,599 at each park, which was not all that bad when you consider how bad the home teams were, as they are a combined 221wins and 274 losses on the season. And 3 of the teams are last place teams (to be fair though the Reds and Pirates are tied for last with each other).
• Total number of times I ate fast food: 0. I did eat at Quizno’s which some people consider fast food, but because it took longer for me to get my food then it would have at a normal sit down place, there is no way I can consider that fast food.
• Total number of pictures I took: 180, as opposed to last year when I took 0. I will attempt to post some of those pics now. Wish me luck. Or not. I guess it doesn’t matter because any luck you wish would be after the fact.

Ok, this really fuckin sucks. I switched from Mozilla to Explorer in the hopes that Explorer would allow me to add the pics. Nope!

I woke up Tuesday morning with a goal of being at the National Mall by 10am. I got up and stole the room service from the people in the room next to me. It was ok because they were loudly having sex. I also may or may not have joined them during the sex session. Or like much of the other shit in yesterday’s post and today’s post, I may have made it up.

The hotel had a free shuttle to the Metro, which is D.C.’s wonderful transit system, in this case a train that goes into the city. Although I didn’t make it to the Mall by 10am, it was very close, like about 10:05 or 10:10. I walked out of the Metro station turned left and was greeted with this view:

Right now, Xanga sucks at uploading pictures. But picture this, a long, hard, erect picture of a white monument that stands tall overlooking………wait, I need to stop, I’m turning myself on.

I walked up to the Washington Monument and asked for a ticket. At first the lady said that she had nothing available until 5:30pm. But, I flashed her a little cleavage and she gave me a ticket for the 2:30 trip to the top. That gave me over 4 hours to kill. I knew I wanted to go to the National Archives to see the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Independence and the script for Howard the Duck, all documents in a lightly lit area under half inch thick glass. There was also a copy of the Magna Carta that was from the year 1297, which really looked good for something that was almost as old as John McCain. The documents were all amazing and worth the price of admission, which was $0. Still even if they did charge, it would be worth it.

Next I went to the Capital for lunch. If you think the Capital building is big on tv, its even bigger in person. I walked in and went straight for the cafeteria which served foods from all over the country. I got some bbq pork with mashed potatoes and cornbread. It was damn good, I think I want to get elected to Congress just for the lunch. As for the rest of the Capital, well you need a pass from your Congressperson just to see the rotunda or the chamber where congressional debates put people to sleep. I did not have a pass. But rest assured, someday I will go back to Washington D.C. and will have a pass.

After lunch, I went over the beautiful Supreme Court building, determined to find out why Sonia Sotomayor was chosen as a Justice instead of me. Turns out they were avoiding me as they weren’t even in session. So I walked over to the Lincoln Memorial, which in the 95 degree heat with no respite from the sun, was a long walk. I made it over there in just enough time to take a picture of good ol’ Linc before hustling over to the Washington Monument. I went up inside for what was an amazing, yet kinda scary view of the city. It is taking forever to load pics, so please just use your imagination.

By the time I got out, it was about 3 in the pm. I wanted to be back at my hotel by 5pm so that I could make it to the Washington Nationals game by 7pm. I also wanted to stop off at Dupont Circle which is the gayborhood in D.C. The circle was only 2 stops away off the Metro. I got on, went one stop before the train stopped due to some track problems and everybody had to get off the train and they said it might be an hour delay. I went outside and walked the rest of the way to Dupont Circle. It was an easy walk, they had signs pointing me exactly to where I needed to go. Although it had started to drizzle a little bit, it remained hot and very humid. I walked into a gay store to pick up some porn. Upon paying for the porn, the dude behind the counter asked how I was. Being sweaty and worn out from walking, I said “Ugggghhhh……….hot” to which he replied “I know you are.” I asked him for a bag and he said that he should say that he didn’t have one so that I would give him my number. So I had him arrested for embezzlement.

I got back on the train about 4ish. It was moving fine and we were on our way back to the burbs. With two stops to go, I called the hotel and told them to send the shuttle. I got off the train about 5:15pm. The shuttle didn’t arrive until 5:40pm. The driver told me that it would take probably an hour and a half to drive to the ballpark but that I could take the train and it would save me time. I didn’t see a stop on the train schedule, so I decided to try to make it via driving. I got back to the hotel about 5:45 and asked the lady at the front desk to print me out directions. It took her 25 minutes to do this! I’m not embellishing at all, I didn’t leave until almost 6:10. And the directions she gave me were the most detailed and ridiculous directions ever. It had 20 steps. Take this road for 2 miles. Then get on this expressway for 3 miles. Get off. Go .83 miles. Turn here. Go .75 miles. Get onto another expressway for half a mile. Get off. Go 1 1/4 miles. Get on another expressway. Fuck your mother. Now fuck my mother. Now after .69 miles go here. On and on it went. As luck would have it, one of the many roads they had me going to was closed. That really fucked me up and threw me for a loop. Fortunately for me it was raining and I was holding out hope that there would be a rain delay. The park was not easy to find in the least. Unlike everything else in Washington, it was not on the tourist map that I was given. I was listening to the Nationals broadcast and even heard them start the game right on time, as I struggled to find the damn park.

Right here is where a picture would be if I had actually made it to the park. But I didn’t.

I drove around missing turns, pissing people off with my clueless driving and getting more and more frustrated by the minute. When I finally made it to the park, it was the 3rd inning and pointless to even try to get tickets. I was pretty pissed because it meant that I had blown my goal of 5 games in 5 cities in 5 days. I decided I would head back towards the hotel to find something to do. Of course, I got lost. Next thing I know I’m in Arlington, VA. I look to my right and said to myself “holy shit, that is a really big building!” Turned out to be the Pentagon! I still wandered around lost, trying to find my way back to my hotel for almost another two hours, growing more and more pissed and frustrated by the minute. I finally made it to a Red Lobster about a mile from my hotel shortly before 9 in the pm. Since I never had eaten at Red Lobster and I was upset, I decided to treat myself.

The next morning I woke up about 7:30 and after breakfast and showering I found a Days Inn in Pittsburgh to stay at. They said I would not be able to check in before 3pm. Being that it was only a 4 hour drive and it was not even 10am, it gave me plenty of time to get there. I decided to stop off in Somerset, PA for lunch. You should remember Somerset as the place where United 93 crashed on September 11. I wanted to visit the site but was unable to find it. Still, I felt a mix of somberness and gratitude while driving through Somerset. The fact that it took only 3 hours to drive there from Washington goes to show how close they were to actually making it to the Capital and how grateful we should that the heros on that flight gave their lives to save the lives of so many.

I got into Pittsburgh about 2:30, driving over a bridge and through a tunnel to get to my motel. They let me check in just a little bit early. My room was on the second floor. I walked outside and up the stairs to find a couple of suspicious looking guys who were pacing in front or near my room. I put my keycard in the door and walked in to find a room with a messy bed, a garbage bag with stuff in it on the floor, and something on the table. At first I thought they forgot to clean the room. Upon further review though, I saw a purse and clothes. Turns out, somebody was still checked into that room. I went downstairs and told the workers and they gave me a new room. But I was paranoid that they would do the same thing to me. The area the motel was in and the motel itself were kinda shady. Shortly after I got into the room, it started raining buckets. I was worried the game might be canceled. I watched a little bit of tv while waiting for the storm to pass. The whole time, those fuckin guys were pacing past my room. I was worried they would break in while I was at the game, assuming there was going to be a game. I even thought about just checking out and going home. But in the end, I hung the do not disturb sign on my door, left the tv and lights on to give the impression that somebody was still in the room and kicked those guys in the shin before heading to the game.

The game itself was cool. It had stopped raining and turned out to be a nice night. The park was really nice but sadly nearly empty. For the first inning and a half, it was only myself and another guy in the section that I was in. But, after another inning, a family showed up. I did actually stay for this entire game. When I got back to my room, I was relieved to find out that nobody had been in my room.

I left the next morning about 9:30am and made it home shortly after 5. It was a rather uneventful ride home. Friday my friend Danel and I went to the House on the Rock not far from Madison, WI. For those of you not familiar with it, go to their website and check it out:

http://www.thehouseontherock.com/

I’d post pics, but, well you know. There really is no way to describe this place. All I can say is the dude who built it was probably on LSD. Or maybe opium. Or both. Either way, he was not normal.  But it is a pretty damn cool place.

After the Hizzy, we went to downtown Madison before heading home.

This was a long post too. Thankfully, I’m ending it now.

Good news for me and bad news for all of you. Turns out, I some how managed to survive my trip. Because of my awful driving and my insistence on starting shit with just about every person I come across, my making it back alive in one piece is amazing. I’m going to try to remember as much as I can about my trip but also try to keep the post as brief as possible.

As you all know, the plan was to drive to Detroit, then Cleveland, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and finally Pittsburgh before heading back home on Thursday August 20. My goal was to go to baseball games in each one of those cities in 5 days and flip off as many people as humanly possible. I had not made any hotel reservations or bought tickets to any of the games. I picked up my rental car at 10am on Saturday August 15. The car wound up being a 4 door Toyota Yaris. Being a total pussy car, this required me to check my penis at the door.

I made it on the road about 11 in the am. The drive to Detroit should be about 4 hours or so, but I also lose an hour due to the time change. I arrived in Detroit shortly after and promptly got lost. I missed the exit for Comerica Park, where the Tigers play. I got back on the expressway and drove to Dearborn, MI which was about 10 minutes from Detroit. I got a room at the Comfort Inn. Or maybe it was the Days Inn. I really dunno. All I know is that in lieu of paying for the room, I instead had sex with as many of the hotel staff as I could. This didn’t take long.

I left for the ballpark about 5:30. I parked in a parking garage owned by a casino. This of course gave me a chance to hit up the casino after the game. I walked the 3 or 4 blocks to the ballpark. On the way, I came across a black guy driving an SUV and yelling out the window something about not liking white people. This was the Detroit I always feared and heard about. I think for a minute, he was yelling at me.

I arrived at the park and walked right up and bought a ticket. The seat I had was in the  upper deck and a fairly decent seat, which I guess it should be for $32. Here is a pic from my seat.

See, not bad. The only problem was that I wound up next to a lady who was annoying the shit out of me. People. I swear, sometimes I hate people, which is odd seeing as I’m in customer service. Anywho, she seemed to react to EVERY single play. Like a little short fly ball to center field and she would get excited or upset, depending on which team hit it. Finally I told her if she didn’t shut the fuck up, I would punch her in the eye. So, the next guy comes up and she starts to react until all of a sudden BAM! I hit her just below the eye. At first I thought her husband was taking offense to this, but it turned out that he was busy hitting her in the other eye. So, everybody was happy!

During the game, I was looking at the scoreboard when I realized that it turns out, I’m a dumbass: the Cleveland Indians were actually playing in fucking Minnesota and not Cleveland! This of course put a kink into my trip. How the fuck could I be so stupid; I mean I did look at their schedule before I left. As fortunes had it though, the Reds were playing the Washington Nationals in Cincinnati on Sunday. Cincy is further then Cleveland, but still within a reasonable driving distance. It would just mean I would have to get up earlier. So, I left the game after the 7th inning so that I could beat traffic and get a good nights sleep. Also, I wanted to stop off at the casino as well. As it turned out, I wound up not beating traffic at all as there was still a traffic jam on the expressway. Also, after I got off the expressway, there was an accident right at the road I needed to turn on to go to the hotel.

I was up at 6:30am the next morning and on the road by about 7:30. I made it into Cincinnati by shortly after noon for the 1:05pm game. It was blistering hot with nary a cloud in the sky, so I bought a ticket for the bleachers which offers no protection from the sun. Yeah, I’m smart like that! Here is a pick from my seat:

I wound up near a guy who was even more annoying than the lady at the Tigers game. This guy yelling and screaming shit at the top of his lungs. He wore some crazy Cincinnati shit and was just your typical obnoxious annoying motherfucker. Feeling sick from the heat, I walked up to him and threw up on him to try to get him to stop. It didn’t work.

My plan that night was to make a 7 hour drive from Cleveland to a casino in Virginia and spend the night there. Things changed though because I was coming from Cincinnati, which is over and 8 hour drive. With the heat being a bit much and a long drive on 5 hours sleep, I thought that I would someday be back to Cincy again for a Cubs series and left after the 6 inning. After briefly getting lost and driving into Kentucky, I got going the right way heading towards Virginia. The drive seemed to be forever. I got into the mountains of Maryland by sunset. The mountains were dark, with occasional patchy fog and trucks slowing down due to the slope of the mountains. Also there was a sign on the road that warned of Maryland wildlife, such as dear and bears. Yeah, that is just the sign I needed to see. Although I didn’t feel all that tired and I didn’t have all that much to go to get to the casino, it was very stressful driving, so I thought the better of it and decided to stop and get a room. The next morning I realized that I had gotten a room at a hotel that overlooked the mountain town of Frostburg, Maryland. It was a very good view overlooking the entire small town. I went into town for breakfast the next morning at a little restaurant that obviously served breakfast. I walked in and sat at a booth that had those cool little jukeboxes, this one didn’t work though. I also flipped off all the workers and everybody who came into the restaurant. In return the waitress spit in my food, so we were all good.

After breakfast I went back to the hotel, ran on a treadmill for 15 minutes before going back to my room and showering, I looked through my AAA travel book to find a hotel in the D.C. area, settling on a Sleep Inn in a town called Rockville, Maryland. I did not know this until I checked Wikipedia some 38 seconds ago, but Rockville is actually the second biggest town in Maryland after Denver. I always thought it was Baltimore, but apparently Maryland and Colorado traded towns a few years back. True story.

I left the hotel about 11:30 and headed toward Rockville. I stopped off for lunch at a place in some town that I can’t remember now. All I know is that they had a street called McCain drive. My guess is that perhaps they named the street after John McCain during the last election. Still, lunch was good. I had a sloppy Joe sandwich that was not only good, but very big and filling.

 I made it to the Sleep Inn about 3 in the pm. My plan was to check in and then maybe go to Washington before the Baltimore Orioles game, which started at 7pm. I thought about it though, and realized that by the time I took the Metro into town and then back, it would not leave me with enough time to get to the ballpark on time. So I left shortly after 3 for the nearly hour drive to Baltimore. I got there about 4.  The park was beautiful and rather huge. Being 3 hours before game time, of course it was not open yet. The birthplace of Babe Ruth along with the Babe Ruth Museum was walking distance from the park, so I hit that up for a bit. Being a big fan of the Babe, I found it very cool. Did you know that Babe Ruth faked his death and is actually still alive, working security at a Wal Mart in Phoenix, Arizona? True story.

After the museum I still had time to kill. So I killed a few bugs and maybe a cat. After the murders, I still had time to kill. So I wandered around the streets of Baltimore. I finally bought a ticket about 5:30, but still had time to kill. So I layed down in the middle of the street and got arrested for jaywalking. After being released, it was finally time for the game. Since it opened in about 1992, I have longed to go to Oriole Park at Camden Yards. It was every bit as beautiful as I thought it would be. I got bbq pork sandwich from a little stand in the park that was named for former Oriole Boog Powell. Say what you will about the man, but he makes one hell of a mean bbq sandwich.

My seat was in the upper deck. Here is where a pic would be if Xanga wasn’t being such a pain in the ass at uploading pictures.

This game had nobody that was annoying the shit out of me. So I was left to the task of annoying the shit out of myself. Because I’m really annoying, this was not very hard. With the game out of hand and the Orioles getting their asses kicked and my hour drive back to my hotel, I left after the 7th inning.

This post is getting kinda long and I’m sick of typing. Also, I still have much more about the trip to write about. So its looking like this will be a two part post. Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion!

Saturday I will be leaving on my road trip. Unfortunately, I was unable to get anybody to go with me so I will be going by myself. As I say, I would rather travel by myself then not travel at all. After much debate as to what I was going to do, I decided that I would attempt to go to 5 baseball games in 5 cities in 5 days. Here is my itinerary, assuming everything goes according to plan:

• Saturday, August 15, 2009- Detroit for the Tigers game.
• Sunday, August 16, 2009- Cleveland for the Indians game, ending the night at a casino in West Virginia.
• Monday, August 17, 2009- Washington D.C. during the day, Baltimore Orioles game at night.
• Tuesday, August 18, 2009- Washington D.C. during the day, Nationals game at night
• Wednesday, August 19, 2009- Pittsburgh for a Pirates game.
• Thursday, August 20, 2009- Heading home for, well sleep.
• Friday, August 21, 2009- Wisconsin for House On The Rock 

Wish me luck, if I never update again its because I died somewhere along the way!

With my Xangaversary on Saturday, I decided to repost a post from July 24, 2006. I consider it the best thing I’ve ever written. A lot of people have read it and they love it. Since I won’t be posting for over a week, once you are done with this, feel free to go back and read one of the other 1,269 posts.

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On my way to work today on a road you have never heard of (Weber road to be exact) just shy of I55 (a road you might have heard of) my car hit 100,000 miles. I bought my car brand new in 2001 and 8 1/2 years later, I finally made it to the magical 100,000 mile mark. Not that it was very magical. I mean its not like fairy dust got sprinkled when I hit the big 100K and no leprechauns jumped out with their pot o’ fuckin gold. This is the first car I bought brand new and all but a couple of hundred of those miles were put on with me behind the wheel. I look back at all the memories I’ve had with that car, like the time I didn’t have sex in it, or the other time I didn’t have sex in it. I’ve been thinking recently that it might be time for a new car because there have been a lot of small meaningless things that have gone on it, such as the gear shifter cover ($35) that I recently wrote about. But, the reality is that it still runs fine and I rarely have problems with it.

I was thinking about all the things that have happened both to me personally and in the world in the 5 years since I started on Xanga. Just think, 5 years ago Xanga did not have nearly as much competition. Although I think there was MySpace and FaceBook, there was no Twitter, or YouTube. Texting wasn’t that huge back then. Hell I didn’t even have a cell phone. So much has changed about the world in just 5 years.

As for me, in the past 5 years my life has had some significant changes.  I have gotten laid off and found a new job which I still have today. I’ve come out to people and started dating more. I’ve lost 15 pounds, which doesn’t sound like a lot over the course of 5 years, especially since it all came within about 2 months. But, I’ve kept it off and look thinner then I did 5 years ago. I’ve turned 30. Although I haven’t become a parent, my twin brother has become a parent to three kids, two of which are twins themselves! I’ve taken trips which have been documented here on Xanga.I helped a friend and his family through the most unthinkable and devastating tragedy. I was in Grant Park at the victory rally of America’s first black president, who by the way I nearly met in October 2004 both of which I posted about here on Xanga. I’ve reconciled with various people whom I’ve  had some pretty severe fallings out with and lived to write about it here on Xanga. Over the course of the past 5 years, Xanga has become a virtual written documentation about my life.

I’ve come across some very interesting people here on Xanga. I had the good fortune of meeting one of them, Uvon on several occasions. My most consistent reader over the course of the past 2 1/2 years has been Ed, AKA Iron Knee who always seem to offer sage advice and can be counted on for good post almost daily. There was Ashley who might be one of the funniest and most clever reads here on Xanga, but she hasn’t posted in a year. Actually, her last post was August 12, 2008. Flood her with messages until she starts posting again, as she is missed. There were several people who had profiles and for whatever reason, have deleted those profiles. There have been quite a few people who have stopped by just to comment on a post. Xanga has always been filled with people who write very well. It is, at heart, a site for those of us who love to write. You can have your Twitters and FaceBooks and MySpaces, but for me, Xanga is still the best one to write on and the best one to find good writing.

So Saturday August 15th is my 5 year Xangaversary. When I think about internet blogging or hell any type of journal, keeping at it consistently is rare. I look back at the people who have subscribed to me or people who I have subscribed to and many of them no longer blog. Or they blog so infrequently that I have forgotten about them. Or they have deleted their user name. Or they have gotten a restraining order against me. Or have threatened to kill me. Or attempted. Or came so close that it made me cry. Nevertheless, I’ve gone through more friends and readers on Xanga than Larry King has gone through wives. And that was just in the first year.

Although some people have gone back and read every single of the 1,267 posts (holy shit that’s a lot of fuckin posts!) I’ve ever written (and thank you, I’m glad somebody has read it besides me) I haven’t had anybody who has been there the whole entire time since the start. Come to think of it, I don’t have many people who read my Xanga on even a semi regular basis. Hell it even took me several months before I got my first comment. And even now, I still routinely go days without getting comments. But that’s ok. I would do it even if not a single person read it. To put it selfishly, I blog as much for me as I do for anybody else. I to write that much for 5 years, you have to not only love it, but also want to do it for yourself. From time to time I go back and reminisce on various things that have happened in my life. Its usually kinda fun to do that. I would highly recommend that everybody keep some sort of journal about their life, if only so that they can look back at their own life with wonder and amusement at various times in their life.

I’ve never been quite consistent in what I’ve written about. I’ve always been one of those annoying know it all types who have an opinion on every thing. Or nearly everything. And as we know, opinions are kinda like assholes, everybody has one and they all stink. Xanga is one place where I’ve always been able to be myself and not hold back. From time to time, I have offended people. This is always bound to happen whenever anybody with strong and passionate opinions writes something. And because I attempt (the key word being attempt) to write things that are funny, that probably adds to people being offended. But, its not often that I have offended people. If I have offended many, I’ve only heard about it a handful of times. Of course, maybe the reason why some people stopped reading is because I have offended them in some way. I’ve never been one to make some fake apology after offending somebody. Hell, if I didn’t mean what I wrote at the time, than chances are I wouldn’t have written it. I can honestly say though that I never intentionally set out to maliciously offend somebody, which is a hell of a lot more than Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter could say.

The past couple of months, I set out to try to read as many of my old posts as possible to try to not only come up with my best and worst posts, but also to see how my writing has changed over the years. I can say that I think I have gotten much better compared to the shit I used to write. Now I think I’ve upgraded from shit to crap. That’s an improvement my friends! When I first started, I didn’t have premium and therefore no spell check. I’ve never been a good speller and never been the best at typing, which made for a bad combo. I also was just generally bad at writing, even something as simple as where end and where to start paragraphs or how much space to put in between paragraphs proved to be a challenge. I’m still not all that good at that aspect of writing, but its vastly improved from how it was before. As for the quality of the writing, well, it still leaves much to be desired but has again improved over the years. There has been some stuff I’ve gone back and read and said to myself “holy shit, that was awful, what the fuck was I thinking?” and still some other stuff that I’ve arrogantly thought “that was damn good, I wish more people would have read that.” Most of the stuff has been somewhere in between.

Just a couple of things to end this post. When I looked back, I used to post much more frequently, sometimes almost 30 times a month. I’ve gotten into a routine though of around 17 posts a month. With 1,267 posts, that averages out to 21 a month or 253 a year. That means that in an average year, I go 112 days without posting. That’s a lot of time on this here site and I have no plans to ever stop.

This week I’m going to try to make several posts to celebrate this milestone. I’ve also posted a new profile picture which was taken on June 6 of this year. The other picture was 7 years old and well overdue for an update. Also, I kinda looked like a serial killer in the old pic. The new one though I kinda look like an escaped mental patient.

Shit. There I go, offending again.

I had a bit of a busy, tiring weekend which I will try to sum up briefly here. Friday night I went to see fireworks and a a band at my town’s annual fest. It was fun but honestly the night went by so fast and nothing really sticks out about it. It was a nice night, about 60-65 degrees which was jeans weather. What I found funny is that it must have got down to almost 60 Friday night and yet Saturday it was in the mid 90s, what a difference a day makes.

Yesterday we went to this indoor go cart racing place. Check out their website.

http://www.chicagoindoorracing.com/

My friends and I initially tried to plan this back in June but could not get enough people to go, as it is $700 to race and you basically need 10 people to race, which comes out to $70 a person. When we booked it last month, we had 10 people but within a day of booking it a couple of the guys backed out for various reasons. This left us to scramble to find people to go which wound up being a fairly big pain in the ass. In the end though, we had 10 guys.

We got up there about 4 in the pm. Registration was supposed to be from 4:30-5pm with a mini training session at 5pm. We were scheduled to race at 6. Well, things moved along quickly and we actually got started much sooner. We had to wear these fire suits along with head socks, helmets and neck braces. The go carts we were racing top out at 30-35 miles an hour which doesn’t seem like a lot until you are actually out there racing. I’m not so certain that fire suits are actually needed, however there was no air conditioning in there and with it being 90+ degrees outside it made it seem like you were so hot you were on fire.

Speaking of being on fire, Keith’s brother Tim was so fuckin fast that he smoked everybody in the 4 races we had. See you race three 15 lap races before finishing with a 31 lap final race. In one of the races he had the 23 car and zoomed past me a couple of times so fast that I felt like a defensive back trying to catch Devin Hester (who wears number 23 for the Chicago Bears). Before the races, I guaranteed everybody that I would finish in last. And although I was awful, I’m proud to say I never finished in last. That being said, the last race the guy that finished behind me was Tim’s friend who was also very good, but he only finished in last because he had to quit due to throwing up during the race. I think the heat combined with the sharp turns caused him to get sick.

After the races we went to a pub-grill called The Tilted Kilt, where we stood until about midnight. After that we went to Jt’s to hang out and play a little Rock Band.

Today was almost as hot as yesterday. I played baseball and went to my niece’s birthday party. Baseball kinda sucked, we only had 8 people and it really wasn’t much of a game. That being said, I still managed to get hurt. Somebody hit a fly ball to me in center field which I completely missed. Unfortunately the ball didn’t miss me! It bounced and then hit me in the shin leaving me with a bump.

That’s all you get for now.