What now? More Polotical News, that's what now.

I was under some sort of impression that once a new President had been elected that the process of hanging on the candidates every word and action would cease. I completely forgot that there's this whole process of choosing whose going to do what and questions about what the next oval office will look like and all that. Really, there's no end in sight.
Am I exhausted? Well no, because sitting still and watching the TV or listening to talk radio isn't very taxing, caloricly speaking. However mentally I am somewhat overwhelmed with the enormity of what's happening. I don't feel overwhelmed, but I recognize that I should be really thinking about the impact of everything, from the first non-crusty-old-white-guy president elect, to the terrifying economic crisis. And that's about the time that my brain just stops. Just kind of putters out, and then I see something shiny, and I'm totaly distracted.
Okay, it may not be that bad, but none of this has really sunk in. We're going to have a Democrat in the White house whose father was Kenyan. That's different. Many years ago, I was having a drink in the Intercontinental Hotel in Washington DC, and was asked for my ID by a very large black bartender. This guy was as skinny as a rail, and had to be nearly 7 feet tall. When he looked at my ID and noticed that I was from the great state of Illinois, he immideatly asked, "Are you going to vote for Obama?". I shrugged and said I didn't know. He went on to explain that he was from Kenya, and that Obama was Kenyan. I thought that that didn't quite sound right, but nodded anyway as he poured my beer. He was very emphatic that I vote, even calling over the other bartender (who was also a very skinny, extroidinarily tall black man from Kenya) to tell him he'd located an Illinoisan who was undecided on his choice of state senators. I thought it odd, even then, that people from another nation would care as to what state senator I voted for. More later!

My Feet Hurt

WHOA! Skipped a week there. I blame, as always, the weather. Good lord it's been cold - and my skin! Oh, it's been so dry! Just awful.
Well I did some walking today. I'm going to name this walk Michael's Idiotic Journey around Oklahoma City OR Michael Accidentally Walks more Miles then he has Fingers on his Left Hand. Okay, not really, but almost. As you just guessed, the walk itself took place in Oklahoma City (check out our previous post's for details on how spread-out this place is), and covered over 8 miles of bad directions, poor planning, and male stubbornness. I had a map in my head, which was not only the wrong size, but was apparently blank in many crucial way's... More later! Gusser's is going to pick me up ANY MINUTE, so I've got to jet.
Back at home, much later this evening. My feet were in such bad shape I had to wash them in the tub. Anyway - the walk. You might be asking yourself; Michael, just where the hell were you going? Well let me assure you that *
"What are you doing?"
Oh, hey baby. I'm writing in our blog about my day. This morning I *
"Shh, I'm reading."
"Oh my God, you walked 8 miles today?"
Yeah, it was stupid. See I was trying to get to the comic book store, because it's Wednesday, and it also happens to be payday, so I thought *
"Why didn't you just call me?"
You were working, and I was pretty sure I knew how to get where I was going. See, there was this map in my head that was too small! And apparently it left some things out as *
"Just call me next time, okay? Seriously that's stupid that you didn't call."
I know, but I like to get around on my own.
"What-ever."
Bye hon! Okay, that just about wraps it up! I took what I thought would be a 3 mile roundtrip walk, which turned out to be a 5 mile roundtrip walk, and by walking all the way around a golf course not once, but twice, turned it into an 8 + mile walk! If I had been in charge of the Oregon trail, everyone would have had to eat one another by the time we reached Missouri.
By the time I write up another post, we'll have a shiny new president. By the way, I watched Obama's half-hour commercial this evening, and was disturbed to find that there's a very faint line that circles the base of his neck. Gussie explained that this may have been a makeup line, or perpahs even a visual artifact from our cheap hotel television, but I know the truth. The real Barack Obama is... Al Gore! Till next week!

The USNAPC Home Stretch

Has it almost been 18 month's already? When Gusser's and I began this long, strange journey, the United States of North American Presidential Candidacy Marathon (USNAPC - pronounced yoos-nuh-pak) had just begun. Back then the field was wide open - I mean even Fred Thompson was in there, months after everyone else threw in their hats, and he was being touted as the "clear frontrunner" for weeks! And that seem's like a year ago (actualy it was only 8.5 month's ago, I just really really miss the guy).
But now, we're a few short weeks away from picking a new POTUS. Many people will welcome this change - I for instance, do not know anyone who is currently pushing for the reapeal of the 22nd amendment to the constitution (that's the XXII amendment for the Roman's among us), though that might change if the next guy can perform some serious miracles on the economy. And I mean miracles - like finding a colony of drunken lepricans and sending in the Navy Seals to liberate their hoards of fairy-treasure. That kind of miracle. Short of that I think we're in for a wild ride over the next few years. How am I qualified to even comment on the subject? Well I have an art degree, that's how.
Speaking of the economy; I worked for a video game company for awhile, and the game I participated in developing has finaly been published! How's that for fancy? Saint's Row 2 is getting some decent reviews, which I'm pretty happy about. The thing is I don't have my XBox360 with me right now (just lugging around the PS2 at the moment) and therefore can't play the damn thing. This is most likely for the best, becasue I have some other things I need to be concentrating on right now, but It's a damn shame anyway. Damn shame...

As I'm sure you're all aware; I hate cold weather. I bring this up because I'm just now, a week into October, getting my first taste of chillier temperatures. It's bringing back all sorts of memories; most involve me being cold and wining. Those in Illinois will agree that the lower 60's aren't even worth bringing up; after all it's probably snowing back in the Land of Lincoln. But here we've had great weather, which while not making up for the general boringness of this place, has made me feel like it's not fall yet.
So nothing much to report this week - Gussers and I watched the second presidential debate last night, and were surprised to find out that everyone thinks John McCain 'doesn't like' Barock Obama. This is gleamed from their exchanges during the debate, and a derailed attempt on somebody's part to initiate a hand-shake. NPR even gave the hand-shake-debacle a full 15 seconds of Airtime this morning. It was thrilling journalism.

Come ON Oklahoma!

Whoo, this place is kind of a snoozefest. Oklahoma City is rumored to be THE city to visit if you enjoy sprawl - the 'city' itself stretches over a whopping 600 square miles. They've taken the sprawl concept to an insane degree - it's as if the businesses immideatly outside of the city all decided to be a half-a-block away from one another. Not having an automobile, I'm a walk around type of guy, and let me tell you; the greater Oklahoma City area is not foot-friendly.
Well the economy's getting scary. I'm in the middle of a job search, so I'm particularly freaked out by the tide of crap-news that has been rolling in for the past week or two. Call me craxy, but living in fear is not something I particularly enjoy. I like it better when the economy is awesome, and people wake up inspired to hire a guy they don't know named Michael. We'll have to see how everything shakes out.
Gussers and myself will be watching the VP debate this evening! Since I don't have a real good idea of what he vice president does (beyond being a 'warm spare' for the president), I'm not really sure in what context they'll be discussing the issues of the day. However I do feel strongly about one thing; the candidates ability to make a thumbs up. Now THAT is a crucial element.

Two or Three Months later...

Welll, it's sure been awhile - nearly 3 months. Why haven't we updated our blog? Well because we're bums, that's why. Gussie did a bunch of work in the sunshine state while I dug a hole in my folks basement (sump-pump-pit).
We're back on the road now, and enjoying the sunshiny weather dished out daily by the great state of Oklahoma. I was recently told by a friend that every state has a state song, but not every state's song was written by Mr.'s Rodgers and Hammerstein. Yes, nearly 65 years ago those two fine gentleman penned Oklahoma, which as far as I can tell is a play about the state in which I currently sit. I've even heard the song once on local radio; it was strung together with what I'm guessing were college-football songs and a bunch of whoops and hollars. Very festive. It was apparently being played in celebration of the end of the work week.
Either way, I've learned a thing or two about Okla-homey's. They like neck tatoo's, for instance. Or at least they do in the local Wal Mart's. They love strip mall's. They value AAA baseball, and while they shun pornography establishments in the area we're staying (Oklahoma City), they have a boatload of stripclubs. This place is THICK with stripclubs. So now you're in the 'know'. Everybody have a great weekend! We'll see you 'sooner' then later (oklahoma joke). Keep your chin up United States of America! We'll publish more next week!

1200 Miles later!

3 states in one weekend! To the left you can see our weekend drive - we had a great 4th.
But hey, we skipped a week there. Wyoming was stunningly empty. I shouldn't be surprised - it's entire population could fit in one of Chicago's smaller suburbs, but that doesn't mean it didn't have it's charms. I saw at least a thousand miles of snow fence, which are huge wooden structures which have been placed at crazy angles to the interstate (depending on where the wind pushes the winter snows). That's novel, right? Gussie thought the landscape was gorgeous. I pointed out that it was very dry. She pointed out that I wasn't allowed to talk when sitting in the back seat.
Most shockingly, the JC Penny's "mother store" is located in Kemmerer Wyoming. If you were to see Kemmerer, you would be as shocked as I was. The Internet says the town has a population of 2,651, and sits on 7.5 square miles of dry, hilly land.
When Gussie and I first drove through town, we were charmed to the teeth. The place has dubbed itself "the fossil fish capital of the world" on account of the zillions of fossilized fish in the sourounding countryside (additionally there's Fossil Butte National Monument about 15 miles away) and had all the accompanying touristy fossil and bone shops you could want. Plus there were cafe's, coffee shops, all the cutesy yuppie stuff we like. However, when we actually got out and walked the town, we found most stores were either closed (I had to do without coffee for an hour), or staffed by the most horrifically rude people I've encountered. Now if you're from Kemmerer, I apologize. I'm basing my experience on only two direct encounters with two different shop-keep's. The fact that they were separated by 2 blocks may only be a coincidence (creepy).
Anyway, the JC Penny's mother store was funny in that it was extremely tiny, yet carried a small portion of the "typical" JC Penny's inventory. As an example, they had 4 t-shirt options for young adults. I think that was their entire t-shirt section. Having grown up being driven to JC Penny's every school year, I've walked into their stores and been absolutely devastated by the sheer number of choices for everything; 32 flavors of shirts, pants, swimming trunks, jock straps... It was almost refreshing to look at a Penny's, and in under a minute determine "there's absolutely nothing I want here". Easy.
We spent the 4th in Colorado and had a smashing time. Now we're back in Utah, in a town called St George. My brother commented (and I agreed) that he had no idea there was a St George, which shows what he and I know about churchy stuff. The internet says he was murdered (or martyred if you prefer) by a Roman Emperor named Diocletian for being Christian in the 3rd Century. If you ever see a biblical figure fighting a dragon on the back of a horse, it's probably him.
That's it for this week. As I haven't had much of a chance to check out the town I can't in good faith report on anything about it, other then the fact that it's extraordinarily hot (108F) and has at least one excellent sushi/thai restaurant (Benja Thai and Sushi).

Wyoming? Just becuase.

Currently Gusser's and I are still in Layton UT. But if you were to look for us in Layton, let's say... tomorrow? You would find NO TRACE OF US. Like smoke-pellet throwing ninja's, we'll be absolutely GONE from not only the town of Layton, but Davis County, and in fact the entire state of Utah! Screw it! We're heading for Wyoming!
That's not to say we haven't enjoyed our time here. We went camping at the North Fork Campground last weekend (in the Wasatch Mountains), and it was fantastic. Zero pictures were taken, which as time goes on will only allow the memories to ferment, and grow stronger. Bolder. It was like a beer commercial; our site had a mountain fed stream which kept our water and beer ice cold, we had waterfall-laden hiking, and we had roaring camp-fires. And almost no bugs, which was cool.
But I'm reminiscing. Tomorrow we head to Wyoming, which Gussie and I have never ever been to. Do they wear cowboy hats there? Do they eat with their feet? Who knows. Probably no one. We'll find out tomorrow, and you'll find out next week!

Action Packed Weekend

Gusser's and I witnessed several disturbing events this weekend; as my personal anti-favorite I'll pick on man's closest genetic relative - the monkey. We went to the Hogle Zoo and saw a lot of animals doing animal stuff. Giraffe's using their silly purple tongues to get hay (or something) out of troughs, black bears shadow boxing each other, and a white-alligator just sitting around like it's dead (which is what every alligator I've ever seen in my life has been doing - just sitting there waiting for a baby to stroll by then BAM!). But then we saw a Mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) doing something not as much funny as it was absolutely disgusting. And you guessed it; it involved poop.
Do I even need to say more? When people think monkeys, their very next thought often includes "poop". Like, "Uh-oh, is there any poop flying through the air?" or "Is that poop I smell?". Now I think that this is because humans are genetically wired to fear poop-tossing monkeys. Luckily for Gussie and I, this Mandrill was behind a thick pane of glass. But that also meant that we had a unobstructed view of this particular Mandrill, who appeared to be attempting to write a message in his own feces. Then, almost as an afterthought chose to... I can't say it. It was gross though, real gross. We walked away and focused our attention on the 3-toed sloth, who was peacefully sleeping in a sling. Much cooler.

Seamonkey Lake City

Okay, we all know that the United States if full of mysteries. Sometimes you'll do some traveling, and those mysterious aren't so mysterious any more. You're all like, "Ooooh, I get it. That's how they make paper!" or "So that's where babies come from!" and you're a better informed, more well-rounded individual. But sometimes, you learn something, and it makes you wish you were born with no brain...
As happened to Gussie and myself this week. As we're staying about 20 minutes away from the "great" salt lake, we figures we would go and check out this sweet island that they've turned into a sweet state park. There's a road extending from the lake's edge to the island itself, and after paying the crazy-high fee to get in, we were hit my a magnificent sight; the lake's humongous, and the water is very still... the mountains are cleanly reflected in the lake, and where the lake meets the sky on the horizon, you can't see where one stops and the other begins. In short, it's a magnificent sight to behold... and then the smell hits you. "Oooh Lord, what is that stink?" we asked ourselves, only slightly distracted from the view. The offending odor soon faded, and we happily made our way to the visitor center. It was there that the horrific learning took place. But before the horrific learning was some normal learning. Turns out that the reason the greater Salt Lake City area is constantly pestered by Seagulls (feel free to take a moment to look at a map of where Salt Lake City is as compared to any ocean or sea - the nearest as far as I can tell is about 590 miles away in the LA area) is that a huge percentage of the US bird population hangs out at the "great" salt lake on their trip's north and south every year. "Why do they do that?" I wondered. "Isn't it all salty? They don't have fish in there, do they?" Well it turns out that no, they don't. What they do have, what does grow in the lake, is sea monkeys. God awful amounts of sea monkeys. And when Gussie and I kicked off our shoes and approached the surface of the water, we had to step over hundreds of thousands of washed up and stinking sea monkeys. And when we did wade into the water, we were abruptly stopped by a reddish, rolling and impenetrable mass of disgusting, exposed-ribcage-looking sea monkeys. So that's what the stink on our drive in was; a billion dead sea monkeys. I... I can't write any more right now...*sniff*... more next week...

Spring camping

I grew up in Illinois, and I'm no spring chicken. I have no right to be surprised by what the weather happens to be doing within the confines of my home state. So while I'm not exactly shocked by the amount of rain and lightening I've seen since returning to Illinois on May 24th, I'm certainly impressed.
Now I may have been influenced by the fact that since returning home, every night there has been a thunderstorm Gussie and I weren't sleeping in a "fortified environment" or "house". We were tent camping the first weekend back, and this most recent week we were staying in my folks RV. This has highlighted for me a very important principle of camping in the spring; take an RV. See, on two occasions this year we've been tent camping and found ourselves nearly floating away! In this most recent go-round, we could actually press down on the floor of the tent and displace inches of water! Inches I tell you, not centimeters but inches! It was amazing.
Gusser's is already in Salt Lake, and described a stormy land with snow-capped mountains. I'm looking forward to it, but sad that I'll be leaving behind the humidity and heat of Illinois. But what the hell are you going to do? The high desert is calling.

Beautiful day!

Seeing the family - done. It was a short visit but we had a great time. My Aunt, Uncle and their families couldn't have been nicer. And I ate one of the best barbecue pork-chops of my entire life. No joke - it's seriously changed what I consider to be "good" when it comes to a BBQ pork-chop. Now those things that I make on my grill are "bad" instead of "awesome". And that's what family is for.
I'm going to take a bus downtown today! We'll be leaving town soon enough and it's my last chance to see a bit more of Raleigh, or as I call it, The Jewel of the West-Central North Carolina.
This holiday weekend will involve a whole helluva lotta driving, and hopefully some camping. I will most likely skin my knee or something.

On the Edge of my Seat

Soon, VERY soon, we'll be living in Salt Lake City. Well that's actually a bit of an exaggeration. We'll be landing in Salt Lake City, and promptly driving 45 minutes north to Ogden Utah. Now I don't know much about Ogden, but looking up their top 10 nightspots online, I found that they had only listed 6. That could be taken as a reflection of their very high standards when it comes to describing the "top" spots for evening entertainment, or they might only have a few places to go. At the very least I'm guessing they won't be as neat as, let's say... Raleigh NC.
I feel that Raleigh has been good to us, though I can't place my finger on why I feel that way, exactly. We havn't had a fantastic experience at any of the restaurants, grocery stores, boutique's, comic book stores, or public restroom's we've used. In fact we sat a very nice restaurant last night for 20 minutes before we decided we didn't want to wait for water and a menu anymore. But I like the town anyway. It's familiar in a not-creepy way, and similarly different. Okay, truth be told it's awfully familiar, but I like the tree's, the weather's been great and our hotel is nice. Is that enough to always remember Raleigh North Carolina as a "heck of a town"? Time will tell.
Gussie and I will be visiting some of my relatives this weekend, which means this job has allowed us to collectively visit 5 people we're related to which we would otherwise not have seen for many, many years. Thank you Nielsen Media Company.

13 hours in a car? Please.

Not only have many months passed since last we updated this here blog, but additionally we've relocated ourselves from the greater Nash-Vegas area to the shining city on the hill that is Raleigh/Durham North Carolina.
On our journey from Champaign to Raleigh yesterday we passed through 7 of the finest states in the Union. And here they are with descriptive adjectives thrown in;

Illinois - Awesome
Indiana - Sweet
Ohio - Amazing
Kentucky - Fantastic
West Virginia - Stupendous
Virginia - Stellar
North Carolina - Unbelievable

This past Saturday was my 27th birthday, for which I must thank my friends and family who made the entire weekend fantastic. There was food, drinking, and to the great relief of everyone involved, ZERO dancing. If that's not a great way to start what may be the most important year of my entire life, then I don't know what is.

Shazam! Birthday magic!

It's a scant 5 days until Gusser's birthday! I'm excited - there's likely to be Indian food thrown into the procession someplace, and I'm a big fan of it. What will we do? Where will we go? I'm going to take a look in a few moments and see if I can't find the coolest place ever. Red Robin. A fantastic chain restaurant that serves both beer and burgers...
Alright, she would kill me, so I'll be avoiding Red Robin and try and find a nice place to have a steak. One year the restaurant we were in lost power, and all our meals were free. That was the best Gussers birthday ever...
Michael out

Two thousand what?

What a beautiful season... the sky is steel gray, the ground a sandy brown. Everywhere we look there are Wafflehouse restaurants and high-rise hotels. That's right, we're in Nashville TN. By an airport.
When I look at a map of the United States I often assume that there is a linear range of temperature from North to South. Using that skewed logic one could guess that if it's 80 degrees in Florida, and 30 degrees in Wisconsin, then Illinois should be in the 40's, Kentucky in the 50's, Tennessee in the 60's, Georgia in the 70's ect. Dumb weather pattern notions aside, I was shocked to have driven 7 and a half hours south and found it to be just as cold here as it was in Chicago.
I'm attempting to get back into the wide world of oil painting! I got a travel easel for Christmas, and have it all set up. I've even got a canvas primed and ready to go. Now I've got to figure out what to paint...