(Phaysis)

(Written Saturday, August 30, 2008, 9:30pm)

Ah, yes. Texarkana. IHOP.

So I’m sitting here wondering why I’m sitting here. I think I missed what I was supposed to do. Like I stayed at the house too long. Like I was supposed to call old friends and visit. But why visit? No news to report! That’s a lie; there is. There’s always news. But trying to reopen the dialog is a lot of work and a ton of bother. To what benefit? Affiliation. Affinity. But why? Why do I have friends? Why do I have to be with them? On the corollary, why do I not want to be with them? Why do I want to be alone? Why do I come to anonymous places like IHOP and sit in a faceless crowd? I’ll keep asking until I die.

I come to places like this instead of friends’ houses because…

• My own terms: I can come and go as I please with no protracted bowing out
• It’s quick, clean: the only relationship is “What would you like?” “Coffee, please.” It’s short, clean, efficient. The waiter / barrista / hostess doesn’t need to know my backstory. I don’t have to catch up to theirs.
• I spend nothing but a few bucks, and I get what I pay for
• The sound of voices is a placebo for social interaction

Actually, I’m scared of the baggage and bother involved in opening myself up to long-time friends / practical strangers. “So, what’s new in your life?” “Well, not much. I’m decaying. You?” “…decaying?”

I’m listening to people talk. Table of four. They’re all talking…at the same time. Is that the secret of happy society? Constantly talking in full duplex? I’ve had the understanding — it’s my programming — that polite society is simplex: one person talks, the rest listen and wait their turn. That sounds great. Sounds wonderful. But it’s not real. Anyone who carries on in that fashion will constantly get trampled on. His words will either fall on deaf ears or he will wait forever for his turn to speak, meanwhile the topic shifts and his unspoken words expire, never to be born. The dead words rot and leave the taste of lowered status on the tongue.

I pity the poor soul who acts in that way. He certainly leads the unfulfilled life. More accurately, I say he follows the unfulfilled life. Waiting your turn is no way to lead. Sure, it’s polite, but it’s soft, mooshy, flacid. The poor bastard can’t summon the moxie to get it up for those in his conversation to witness. Poor bastard.

Fuck that guy. Yeah.

We’re gonna grill out tomorrow. Pork chops on the grill. Apparently my sister will be cooking. I’m not sure who’s showing up; mom threatened to contact all my cousins. I have no idea if she did. As far as I know, my immediate family are the only people who know I’m in town. It’d be nice to see cousins. Can shoot the shit. Guess that’s what family’s good for. Maybe I’ll call my old down friends afterwards, see who has decayed more than me. I also need to fill up some family gas tanks and do some other charitable works while I’m around.

I feel like I’m failing on some duty to support my family or be there when they need it. I dunno. We don’t have a connection. Haven’t in a long while.

So, here I am. I still feel like I missed a step. Like I’m at the end and I’m scrambling to throw on as much support, love, and friendship I can at the end of my visit. Like I’m trying to make up for years of neglect with a rush of charity. I feel like an absentee father who swings through town bearing truckstop gifts for his children. Well-meaning, but thoughtless and cheap; his actions are more a self-defensive maneuver to save face, but his actions are counterproductive. His children thank him with disbelief and his ex-wife looks on with disdain. The whole affair is cheap and the gifts are worthless tokens.

You cannot give a thing that is worth more than your time. Money is free. Time is the one thing doled out unevenly to everyone and in limited supply. That flow will run out, and our lives will become forfeit. Don’t let them be bankrupt before their time.

And so here I am at IHOP. Not talking with anybody, not poking at the logs and stoking the fires of my relationships. I’m sitting with cold coals. This is no way to be.

Why do I do this?

I just ordered tickets to Texarkana aboard Amtrak. This is a first for me, the riding Amtrak thing. Leaving Saturday morning at 9:30, arriving at 9pm. Coming back 5:30am a week later on Sunday to arrive home at 7pm. After being a rail afficionado for a lifetime, I finally have the opportunity to ride the rails. I’ve heard it’s classier and more comfortable than Greyhound; I can leave my seat and walk around, and there’s food available onboard. It’s just that in this part of the country, it takes forever to get anywhere.

Amtrak, in Texas, has to share the rails with freight trains, which get priority; Amtrak just leases time and space. So the trips promise to take longer than marked on the schedules. And god help us if there’s a train breakdown somewhere on the tracks, or a train hits a car; that’s at least a 3-hour stop. And nobody can leave the train except at the rail stations. Good thing I don’t smoke anymore.

So I’ll be staying at my cousin’s place, on the couch. Her housemates are night-owls. There’s pets and smoking and alcohol and cold conditions. My mother, who lives in the apartment out back, has promised to let me use her car when necessary; hopefully there won’t be too much inconvenience on either part. This’ll be my first time in Texarkana without the available use of my own car since I moved back from North Carolina in ’98. I’m not used to that level of living, coordinating with others to get around instead of hopping into my car at-will. Get settled in my ways, y’know?

Also, this’ll be the first time I’ve spent a whole week in Texarkana since I moved to Austin. Usually I’m ready to return to the comfort of my own bed after four days, so it’ll be a stretch. I may hate life after the week is over, I may find myself, I may cancel the train reservation and hitchhike back home. I don’t know. Hopefully it’ll go well.

So this is a warning to those of you in Texarkana who are my friends and family (and who still bother to regularly read my mostly-dead journal): I’m coming to Texarkana for the Thanksgiving holiday. Prepare your tables.

(written on Thursday, 11/24/2005 23:58:55. Thanksgiving day.)

So of course the high that I’ve been experiencing the whole week would end like a car crash this morning. I got the sleep I’ve been missing, but due to the cold, the uncomfortable “bed”, and my nieces, nephew, and sister, the sleep I got wasn’t worth much, so I slept for ten, maybe eleven hours. The moment I open my eyes, glance at the blinds, and look up to the ceiling, I started seeing spots. Thanks to a casual glance while waking up, I got a migraine, first thing in my morning. On thanksgiving. So I took some acetaminophen and hoped for the best. The kids were no help, but I hung on long enough to take a shower after they left. By then, the spots were gone and the migraine was a dull throb. Picked up my mother and we headed off to my aunt Janet’s sister’s house for dinner.

Dinner was good, of course. Ate a plateful, had some dessert. Played quiet, didn’t have much to say because the migraine recovery. Some time later we all left, and I dropped my mother off back at her home and I drove on. Went to Liz and Laura’s house, hung out with them for a while. The girls went to deliver a plate to their spry 92-year-old great aunt, so I chatted with Doug, Liz’s husband, for a good hour or so. Longest chat I’ve had with him. Had a good time shooting the shit. The girls came back, Jon woke up from his nap, and we had a few laughs on the back porch. Came back inside, chatted some more, and then the television got turned on and we somehow stopped talking. Funny when that happens.

After some hour or so of my second helping of the “That 70′s Show” marathon today, I decided to head on. Went driving around, decided to plug up my laptop, get some GPS data, do a little bit of wardriving, and now I’m here again, IHOP, tapping away on my laptop again. The cashier/hostess remembered me from last night and recommended the waiter to seat me somewhere near a power outlet, just like I requested last night. Yeah, she remembered. Someone should give her a raise.

The problem I have with my time is knowing how to spend it. When I’m home for long stretches of days, my time is spent sleeping short hours, watching television, doing a whole bunch of nothing, making no plans, seeing the few friends I have, and leaving their houses so late that I really don’t want to drive around to check things out. The problem is filling my time in a memorable, quality fashion. I think, now that the holiday and my day at OBU are out of the way, that I should follow up on some plans I made, y’know, some ideas. I would like to track down my friends Eddie and Michelle. It’s been over 5 years since I last saw them, and I hear they keep asking about me. It will be really good to see them again. Also, if things get too slow, I’ll grab some of my friends and go to an empty parking lot somewhere to do the burning mushrooms floating newspaper thing I saw my Austin friends doing behind Mojo’s some years ago. There’s things to do, y’know? Hell, I could show pictures to my family. I think I’ll do that tomorrow.

Ah, yeah. Texarkana life. Some drunk dude just came up to me, asked me if I was lookin’ at Playboy on this thing. You could smell it on his breath. Heh. And…I just saw some other dude walking around with a UT Longhorns ball camp on. I just can’t escape that, not even for one weekend. And, AND, just to show how connected this town is to the pulse of the fashion nation (MTV), last night I saw some real emo kids, the kind that look EXACTLY LIKE some emo kids I saw back at Spiderhouse. It…was…creepy. Seriously, same look.

Liek omg this is so going in my eljay.

(written on Wednesday, 11/23/2005 10:33:39 PM)

Whirlwind. Past 24 hours. Past week. It’s Thanksgiving holiday, my first trip home since Easter, and I’ve been going and going. Since my convalescence this past weekend, I’ve been running on some kind of edge. I’ve noticed it. Alertness. Awakeness, even in the lack of sleep. It’s all the preparations for the trip. The getting the car ready, the packing, the attention to making things happen. In the course of 2 days I hacked up a script to log what it reads from a borrowed GPS receiver. The logs from my drives are beautiful. Pages of useful data of just me…driving to Texarkana last night and, today, Ouachita.

Yeah, I went. Since I was in the neighborhood, loosely speaking, I took the hour-long trip up to Arkadelphia to see my alma mater. This December will mark my ten years since I was a student there; December 14, 1995 was my last day of enrollment. And though I’ve been back to OBU two or three times since in 1996 and 1999, this time around had an extra impact, a certain amount of poignance. It’s weird. It’s good to see the places I still sometimes happily, sometimes ashamedly, sometimes frightfully dream about and remember. And it’s creepy to see the changes, to see which buildings are torn down, which are brand new, and which are still around in all their mid-90′s glory. I’ve been away from OBU for long enough that the act of looking at the campus inspired few heavy emotional responses, and the memories that arrived on first trigger were cold, matter-of-fact memories; place names, hidden areas, geographic layout, things no longer there. But the fallout, the memories that return to me after I saw those places, those memories are at once both warm like fire and cold like an Arkadelphia winter, and they’ve sparked tonight’s firestorm of emotions.

It’s a mouthful, and I’m still trying to ruminate and digest today’s trip.

I shot around 2 1/2 rolls of film, just buildings, spaces, surroundings. No people. The fact that the campus was quiet, that school was out the day before the holiday (I had thought they’d be open), made things empty and solitary, but after my 4 summers spent on campus, the experience of the silent emptiness there wasn’t so alien to me. I did drive up there hoping to visit with old staff and faculty still there and to do some business with my school records, which didn’t happen, but just the experience of being back was enough to justify everything.

In some sense it was the Ouachita that I remembered, and in another sense it was like I was a floating intruder surveying a foreign place, an interloper in a forbidden zone checking up on its changed, hidden secrets. If there had been students there today, if there had been faculty and staff, it would have felt like being a welcomed stranger, like how I feel when I’m walking around Renfest on a late Sunday afternoon near sunset: everything is quieting down, everyone is folding up, the parking lot is decompressing, and I’m walking around between the booths where my few Rennie friends do their business. Yeah, just like that.

But today everything was just empty. The only human noise was from the construction crews, the few stragglers walking around campus, the campus security truck tooling around, and the ever-present Arkadelphia autumn breeze knocking around the leaves. I took the occasion to walk down the hillside beneath the student center to the Ouachita River, to the river bottoms where I spent so much of my time. They’d done some work there, made a walking trail, built steps and platforms down the hillside, thinned out a lot of the trees to open up the space to the campus uphill. The pavillion is still there, and so is the picnic table where my first girlfriend and I ground into each other in the heat of early summer. The odor, the smell down there on the river bottoms, the damp soil, the volumes of still water, the smell of river rot…that smell became my friend, my elixir, my aphrodisiac. I smell it and I am at peace. And today I took it in by the lungfulls. It’s still in my soul. THAT is the Ouachita that I miss.

The people I knew there were good people; not to gloss over everything with a rose-colored sheen, but they were my friends. They were the fire that kept me warm, the spark that burned new experiences into my memories. They were there with me…ten years ago. Not today. I think that was part of what is so surreal about today’s visit, and so saddening and angering. We’ve moved on, they’ve moved on; there were no familiar faces there today to share in today’s experience. I think that’s the hardest part.

It’s heavy, these floods, these torrents of memories and emotions that’re filling my head right now. Just looking around and seeing everything has brought them forward after so many years of not being triggered. There are the big picture memories that’ve always been there, but today brought back the tiny memories, the things that’ve been taken for granted, the decorations on someone’s house on the edge of campus, the fact that the ground near the theater is covered not with grass but with clover, the angled plaques mounted on a courtyard…those memories have come back.

The side trip to Lake DeGray, where I loved going, didn’t help much with the flooding. Went to the Highway 7 beach because it was the closest of the places I used to haunt, and it had the expected late-November empty beach hauntedness. The breeze was a wind over the lake, chopping up little waves in my direction as I stood on the point looking over the lake at the waning sunset. The parking lot was empty. The water was low. And everything had a heavy, heavy poetic air. This is the sunset. I cannot go back. No more dawns. The music playing on my laptop’s jukebox affirmed it, hammered it home:

“The paths that I once tred
Have all but gone
Only embers now smoulder
Where bridges once burned
I feel alive and yet I fear
What may happen now
I know,
I can’t return
…
Can I start again?
Erase this pain
By casting doubts into the waters
Asking judgment of the sea
Though Fortune may guide the fools
I have no wish to be free
Until I am gone.”

-VNV Nation “Distant (Rubicon II)”

In the past week I’ve been ill, I’ve been hyper, I’ve been clicking through the to-do list, I’ve been awake. I even finally and officially met this girl I’ve been exchanging glances with at Mojo’s for the past 3 months. And I’ve been driving, enjoyably and alertly driving. Sightseeing. And now I’m feeling, feeling things I can’t explain without metaphors; I know the words, but I can’t put them together, can’t craft what is necessary to communicate these things. That is my state. I’m still digesting.

Our Traveller writes from the road:

Thursday, 11/25/04 Thanksgiving Day
So, in a nutshell, I’ve been in Texarkana for a day. I arrived around 6pm wednesday after driving for 6 1/2 hours. Traffic was fair, but the wind was rough; my car was being thrown around until I was almost to Henderson, TX, which is my 2/3 mark for the drive. I spent some of the evening with my sister and her kids, which was a loud, chaotic treat. Then around 9 I went to visit my mother at her place; we chatted and watched some TV, y’know, the warm family stuff. Heh. I left around 11 to get some food to settle my road-weary stomach. The Denny’s here, where I had spent several years of my life, has apparently gone downhill quite quickly. So sad. I left around midnight and got back to my sister’s house to settle my stomach and get some much needed up-since-7-am shuteye.

This morning, I had some fitful sleep as the kids were up and at ‘em. Woke up a few times from noise, some times from having a cold head or soreness from sleeping on a child’s bed. Finally got up rested around 10am. Chatted with the kids for a while; seems they’re incredibly happy to have Uncle Shawn around for a visit, and they’re eager to get my attention. Heh. Around noon I had the opportunity to get away and take a shower, get myself ready for the world. We all left the apartment at 1:30pm to go to have Thanksgiving feast with my brother-in-law’s family. Spent quite some time there tonight; ate my fill (of course), snoozed, and watched some TV, y’know, the whole “football and muscle cars” thing. I left around 9:30 to go visit with some of my Texarkana friends, but I decided that it was a little late in the evening to be “dropping in to say Hi”. It’d be kind of rude of me, so I just drove around town. Tried the new highway loop that was finished this year; now I can drive completely around town without leaving a controlled-access thoroughfare. Kinda neat, I guess. But, as a testament of how small this town is, it took me, driving completely at speed limit, only 21 minutes to do the loop.

I’m currently at the IHOP where my mother and cousin work. Neither of them are on shift. Just sitting here having some coffee and typing this journal. Texarkana is so different than Austin water, because the coffee at both Denny’s and IHOP has a dusty rubbing alcohol taste. It’s so weird. I’ve gotten so accustomed to the water back home (whichever town I’m in, the other town is “back home”).

This town is growing, still. It’s becoming more like Round Rock and Cedar Park; highways, SUV’s, and “big box” chain stores as far as the eye can see. More churches, too. And bank locations. As folks here say, “Texarkana is just ‘building up’.” I haven’t really cruised the downtown area, or gone much down Stateline Ave, or gone to see my friends at Moderne Primitives, but something tells me that downtown is still lying in decay and falling apart, a scene so ghostly not even the homeless will set up camp.

Oh. Those of you in Austin may wish to take note: there’s a BOB FM in Texarkana as well: 101.7MHz. So our BOB FM phenomenon is NOT unique. Sorry to break the news to you. Try looking it up.

I haven’t gotten online since I arrived, which is against my normal modus operandi. There’s no land phone service at my sister’s house, so I can’t do dialup there, and I haven’t gone wardriving yet. Something tells me I should be successful in finding some good open signals out there. And it has recently dawned on me that I might find wireless at the Schlotzskey’s franchise here, but that’s iffy. I really don’t want to go back to Sacred Grounds to deal with, and give my money to, those rabid christians in return for their high-minded crappy coffee and wireless access. But if it comes down to it….

Regardless of my close interaction and high exposure to a ton of cats and dogs here, my allergies have been nice to me. Even my chest is getting some needed rest; the constriction and congestion has taken a holiday it seems. If things go south when I go back to Austin, I Will Know something is up. It has to be the mold there; I wouldn’t doubt that there’s some hidden somewhere in my apartment’s outside walls. Undergoing allergy shot treatments might be a smart option; otherwise, it’s either live on allergy drugs and keep coughing or move away from central Texas.

I’m watching my laptop batteries drain as I write and sip my dusty coffee. It’s reminding me that my batteries are getting old; I need to look into replacing them soon. It also reminds me that my laptop system itself is getting old; it’s about to turn 4 this January. My desktop, too, is about to turn 4. I’m considering upgrades; I can either maintain with what I have, and keep fixing, or upgrade to something new. This is similar to my own life. I’m in a pattern of just holding on to what I have and patching it, making do; things after a while become stretched, threadbare, patchwork. This is fine if a person is completely frugal and handy, and does not mind the frugal and handy image. I do, but to a point. After that point, the appearance is that of “barely making do” in my job and lifestyle. That doesn’t win friends. That doesn’t keep the bed warm with bodies. It’s a sad fact of life, but a component of attractiveness is the ability to spend, to purchase, and display new possessions, new clothing, new style. In the past few years I have been pretty slack in buying new clothes; most people buy clothes all the time; some buy clothing in bulk at the end of every summer. Me, I buy a t-shirt here, a pair of jeans there. My casual clothes have become my work clothes, and they too are becoming threadbare and worn through. It is time to upgrade myself.

One of my recent music purchases, and now my recent fascination, is a band named Seabound. I picked up their sophomore album, “Beyond Flatline”; it is currently in high rotation on my mp3 playlist and in my car cd player. Their sound is heavily electronic and industrial, with dark-hearted sound with a touch of introspective defeat musically and lyrically. Very similar to VNV Nation and some songs by VAST and Covenant. I’ve gained a fascination with dark bands with a singular “me to the world” vision. They answer something in me, they touch a chord, and I can’t turn it away. It’s so weird. Hard to explain. I need to start writing poetry again (relax, people, you don’t have to read it. damn). If you get a chance, look up Metropolis Records and check out Seabound. I’m happy with the happenstance purchase.

There’s someone here I think I recognize from when I lived here. I should probably go ask if she is who I think she is. She’s here with her husband; they both look familiar. Heh. Well wouldn’t you know it, I know these people; they are some people I knew from a few years before I left for Austin. Totally cool people. Some chatting with them, some catching up, and I learn they are now living not in Texarkana but in Conway, Arkansas, and doing much, much better. They Got Out. I could not be happier for them.

Heh. It’s nice running into old friends at random.

Friday, November 26, 2004:
Today I did a whole lot of absolutely nothing useful. I hate days like this. I stayed up a little later last night than necessary and got some not-so-good sleep this morning (I really must discuss the freezing conditions in that bedroom with my sister). I woke up around 11, groggy as hell. Had a warm breakfast compliments of my sister, then I lazed around the apartment hanging out with the kids and watching stuff on Comedy Central. They all left around 1pm to go watch the Arkansas vs LSU game, and I had some time to go shave, shit, and shower. Left the apartment around 2:30, and drove to Schlotzskeys to see if they had CoolCloud wireless — if they did, I couldn’t pick it up because my wireless card driver did nothing but completely crash my system; the dreaded NTKernel dump. Infuriated, I gave up on the quest, shoved my laptop back in my bag and drove on.

Went to visit Phil and Bob at Moderne Primitives; visited for several hours. My visits usually are intended for just a few minutes, like 15, 20 minutes, and end up being 2 hours or so. It’s good to chat, but after being there standing around for some time I was feeling really peckish and had no choice but to leave and get some food. So here I am, IHOP again. Had a big meat-and-potatos meal. Waiting on it to sink in and recharge me; it was like I was having a sugar crash or something. So weird.

My plans for today were to go visit my core group of friends while the sun was still up and see what plans were for tonight. I have also been thinking about taking the hour-long drive up to Arkadelphia for a photo safari to take pictures of the college I attended and see what’s changed in the past 6 years since my last visit. That obviously fell through. It’s still an option for tomorrow. I could also look up my old college friends Eddie and Michelle; I understand they have their own house and are working on a family; I haven’t really communicated with them in 4 years. Would be nice to see them.

What I would like to do is spend some more time with my mother and hang out, go grab something to eat. I miss being up here for when she needs help, and these days she’s needing more than usual. It’s tough to be so far away. She still has pictures of her Red Cross volunteer trip to Florida to show me.

Tonight, it’s still early enough to comfortably visit my group of friends. Not even 8:30 yet. But it’s pushing it. I’m so distant from them as well. On my last visit the thought occurred to me that it’s not always cool to drop in unannounced at any time and just crash parties. They ribbed me about it, but it was still jovial. But the idea remains; even though I’m a friend of theirs from years back, I should make moves early enough to be more than welcome for a visit. Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest. And I don’t like being that kind of agreeable.

Damn, I’m sleepy. Time to go make some visits, else I won’t hear the end of it.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

What happened today? Well, not much of that “grab life by the horns” stuff, that is for sure. Most of the daylight was spent resting, sleeping, and napping. The time I’ve spent in this household with my nieces and nephew (and the pets) has been tenuously blessed; these kids are sharp as whips, but just you try keeping them quiet and well behaved. Heh. So the rest, any rest, is welcomed. My mother came to visit today and hang out with us as my sister got her house redecorated for christmas. Helped out with fetching some supplies for dinner, which I enjoyed with my family.

I made scarce of myself around 8pm and visited my friends over at “The Block,” as I call it. The birthday party for David was underway, and most everyone, even a few people I hadn’t met, was there. Mark, who lives in Japan, was present via teleconference on the big screen in the living room. David’s brother in law was also celebrating his birthday, so he came over to exchange gifts and say hello; brought his kids who spent most of their time there running and roughhousing. Once the kids discovered the webcam and that their mugs were on TV, their energy multiplied three-fold as they hammed it up with Mark. Lots of fun, lemmetellya. After experiencing my own family’s kids for a few days, the noise of three more kids was too much and I stepped out to the porch for a while. Played with David and Angie’s dog, a basset hound which, after hearing my friends’ tales of that dog jumping or hitting them where it counts the most, I lovingly called “The Crotch Torpedo”.

The evening over there wound down early, and some of us migrated to Liz and Doug’s house for coffee and chatter. I found out some more details about various drama circles, caught up on what’s been going on with so-and-so and what’s-her-face. Chatted about gypsies and movies, and renfest, and scarborough faire, and so on. The usual stuff. Feeling the fatigue headache and the early stages of a sugar crash (thanks to the cola and pixie stick I had earlier), I left around 1:15am. Got something to eat and headed back to the apartment. And now, here I am, in my sweats, socks, and a t-shirt hoping I don’t (but knowing I will) freeze my ass off tonight in bed.

It is not in my idiom to flaunt my nose at charity. To be honest, these accomodations at my sister’s apartment have been some of the best accomodations I’ve had in Texarkana in the ages since my mother had her own house. But after the chaos and caucophany of three kids, the cold, hard, creaking bed, and my days-long exposure to the allergy-enticing pets, I will be very glad to be driving back home tomorrow. I love my family, I miss them. I wish I could take them with me to what I think is a better town, but it’s nice knowing I have my own place to go to.

I plan to spend the latter hours of my time here with my mother, to catch up, talk, go have some dinner. She still has pictures from Florida to show me. I’d like to see about helping her out a little bit financially since she’s been out of work for a few weeks; her return to work doesn’t seem eminent at all. And this worries me to no end; it bothers me that I can’t be here, in the same town, to offer help and care to my mother. It seems that job is resting on the shoulders of my sister, and that’s just not completely fair. All I can do is call more often and send money.

Optimally, I’d like to be back in Austin before midnight which means I should leave and be rolling no later than 5pm. I keep hearing rumors of a chance for rain on my drive back. That’ll add to the travel time for sure, but I’m no stranger to rain suddenly appearing for my return to Austin. The rain will fall lightly as I leave, then come down hard at sunset, usually 10 minutes after my departure, and stay with me until Henderson, TX. Seems to be the usual story. I’d like one good, clear, decent drive home. The drive up here, though it was windy, was smooth and pleasant. I’d like the drive home to be just as blessed.

My eyes are heavy from sleep, my ass is hurting from sitting on the floor with the laptop, and Chicane is playing on the Winamp. I listened to him back when I moved to Austin, and his music was my copilot on a lot of my driving back and forth from Texarkana and from Renfest back in 2000; it’s good driving music, and it only whets my mood to hit the road. So I bid you g’nite. G’nite.