People,

So we are back from our hopefully non-annual "40 hours in a car over three days" weekend of love, where we brought the rock to the denizens of Pennsylvania and Illinois. It was a good time, but I am one tired Honky Magoo.

Highlights:

-Pete and I played 16 games of Scrabble. Coming in at about an hour per game, that's a lot of trying to figure out where to play the X. The final outcome of the series was 9-7 in Pete's favor. Bastard.

-We met a woman in Hasrrisburg who asserted that she could easily kick my and/or Pete's ass in Scrabble. She was a very nice woman who was super enthusiastic about the band so I don't want this to come out wrong, but Linzi, Pete would beat you senseless like a little seal pup in the sights of an angry polar bear. I mean, he's a nationally ranked player for Christ's sake!

-We played with this dude in Chicago named Brent Hoodenpyle. He looks like a cross between Jeff Tweedy and Johnny Cash and sings songs that sound like they were written in 1950 Nashville. Rock.

-With the exception of a few ill-timed string breaks, the shows were pretty darn good. We saw a lot of old friends and met a bunch of new cool folks.

-We drove. A lot.

-We stopped at a rest stop in Indiana that had our favorite game of all time - "Big Buck Hunter." The point of the game is to hunt from a number of different blinds in a number of different places, bagging as many bucks as you can without accidentally shooting a doe. It sounds really dumb, but it's addictive as all hell. We played for two hours. The thing that's a riot about it is the fact that we are all complete city boys. We don't hunt. But after about thirty five seconds of playing this game we were all jumping around and shouting in southern accents "Look out for the doe! Look out for the doe! Shoot that sumnabitch!"