That Sir... Is A Nickle.

what i'm listening to right now: Three Little Babies- Joanna Newsom

One of the benefits of when I fall asleep way before Amanda does is when she hits her blog with her drunken late night verbosity. As is evidenced by her account of our trip to Ohio/Indiana. Pretty much rendering anything that I was planning to write about the trip dwarfish in comparison. We had an amazing time, drunkenly connecting on deep levels with her uncles, aunts, and cousins. I was planning on writing an introductory apology, about how this is probably not interesting. Then I thought that maybe I do that too much, and if I continue to do that, then maybe you won't read this blog anymore. So, here, read on, I'm not apologizing. This is my blog, and I'll do as I please.

We set out on the trip at 11:30 pm on Thursday. Arriving at 8:30 am on Friday. I did most of the driving, seeing the sun come up behind the clouds on a country road in West Virginia. It was beautiful, farm fields framed by mountain ranges on either side, a pink-grey sky dissipating the early morning fog. Antonymic to the wide open fields of Indiana, with it's bright blue skies that went on forever.

We ended up getting pretty punchy around 4, just outside of Charleston, after the last stop on the West Virginia Turnpike. We encountered an extremely gregarious Toll Booth Willy. When we handed him the cash, it was off by twenty cents. "Whoa, whoa! That sir... is a nickle." WE gave him the correct change, and went along on our way. A good fifteen minutes of silence went on from there, the new Spoon album bubbling in the background, when I repeated "That sir... is a nickle." Amanda and I laughed for ten minutes straight. We woke up her brother, Chris, who was asleep in the back seat. The laughing would end only to be restarted by a little snort or chuckle at the ridiculousness, either of that huge pause between "sir" and "is" or at the joy of unhinged laughter. How I was able to get another four and half hours of driving accomplished without any Fear And Loathing in Ohio hallucinating was amazing.

After a really long and fairly silent breakfast at Denny's in Dayton, we decided to go to our hotel. If they wouldn't let us check in, maybe we'd just sleep in the lobby. It was too much. The thought of waiting around Dayton, Ohio for another four hours until the standard check in time, was repulsive. Luckily for them, they let us in our rooms extra early, which was great. I was asleep within minutes, on what was the most luxurious bed I have ever slept on. This was an incredibly nice hotel room. The nicest I've ever stayed in, and relatively cheap. Considering it was Dayton, and not, say New York City, we could swing this room. It was on the top floor on the corner, with a fantastic view.

Shortly after waking up, drunkenness ensued, and really didn't take too much of a break. Outside of a walk around the Oregon District, which was the kind of place that a town that's in the dumps like Dayton gives over to the creative types, in hopes that it'll become "hot" and they can flatten it all and make it into overexpensive condos. Is that a little backhanded anger at Raleigh for condo-izing the cool parts of town? Maybe. Anyway, that was cool, had a great sandwich at this weird deli there. The cashier lady wouldn't take the money out of my hand or put my change back in it. That was weird. I'm about to eat, lady, you think my hands are dirty? Or maybe she had TB. If that was the case, I'm glad she didn't touch my hands.

So for the period after the sandwich, we can sum it up in a fragmentary sense. Drink, drink, cousins, aunts, uncles, judges, strangers, drink, drink, bad food, drink, drink, drink, drink, sleep, wedding, drink, driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink, dance, drink, "modern politics is about fear" (as if it was ever about anything else), drink, drink, sing-along, White Stripes, sing-along, 9 card, drink, pass out. To expound on the couple of subjects that weren't "drink, drink", I had a great talk with Janey, who is Amanda's cousin Little Joe's girlfriend. We talked about politics, and fear, and well, those would be the two subjects from that talk I remember the most. Janey's really great, we've had a lot of fun together the past (and only) two times we've hung out. (Both at weddings, the two of them are coming up to Raleigh sometime soon.) Then there was the sing along. Back at the hotel, after a mad search for a surprise birthday cake for Anna, that took us out of Dayton and into Kettering, Steven and I returned in time for their Cousin Tony to pull out his guitar and lead all of us in song, doing everything from Tom Petty to Flaming Lips to White Stripes. Which was incredibly fun. Tony and I rhapsodized about the glory of Jack White, and I tried to sell him on the Rosebuds. Shortly thereafter, the crowd thinned out and I did the same. Amanda soldiered on with a couple of strangers and Steven 'till 5:30, (Steven went the distance, watching the sun come up, calling to change his 10 o'clock flight at 6 am).

Amanda really summed up the Indiana part of the trip, so I'll stop here. I had a great time. One of the undercurrents of conversation at the wedding was which of the three couples will get married next, Tony and Auleen, Joe and Janey, or Amanda and myself? We came in a distant third in the consensus, but I'm pretty sure that we'll slip in early, the dark horses, like George Mason if they didn't go out once they got in the Final Four.