June 9
From my brain
Contents |
2009
Me 13:00, 9 June 2009 (EDT)
If I have the nerve to do it, I'm going to do something I really don't want to do tonight: I'm going to ask MIL and FIL if they'll cosign on my student loan. Wifey is out of town on a Tastefully Simple party at her cousins, and today is orientation day for culinary school for me, so TheBoy and Princess are at their house for the day. Tonight TheBoy is going to stay overnight there (to make up for some of the time [[Princess] has been able to stay overnight during his school year), but I have go back to pick up [[Princess].
I really don't want to do this. Wifey's ex-husband milked a lot of money out of them. There were times where they needed a loan and he just automatically expected them to cosign, like it was some part of them saying, "Yeah, OK, you can marry our daughter." I on the other hand debate with them whenever they pick up the tab at dinner (less so lately with our finances), and cringe every time they accompany Wifey or myself to the grocery store because FIL often tries to pick up the bill.
I don't like doing it, but at this point, I'm out of legitimate options. If I don't do this, unless some miracle falls out of the sky, the only other option is having the school offer me their own private loan that I have to pay back during school at around $100 per month. At that point, we'd probably still have to go to MIL and FIL for help anyway.
Time to head off for orientation now though. Hopefully the excitement of that keeps me from thinking of how the hell we're going to pay for all this...
2008
Me 08:30, 9 June 2008 (EDT)
Yup, I screwed up my back. There is a slim chance that helping relieve my mother of her pack-rat ways did me in, but it's more likely that the last few weeks of climbing into the car through the passenger door did it.
I took three Aleve last night before bed. I put Princess down, and then just crawled into bed. Wifey thought I was just laying there, but soon realized I was actually trying to sleep. She was going to go downstairs but I told her never mind, I'd be fine...and soon passed the hell out.
It was barely 9:30.
This morning, I woke, took two more Aleve and the rest of my pills, and went downstairs to do some dailies. The hard-backed chair at my desk seemed to help for awhile, and I could kinda feel the Aleve kicking in by the time I was done. After going upstairs and having to deal with our stupid easily-clogged toilets, my back felt just lovely after some plunger work. It felt so lovely, the shower did next to nothing when I put hot water on it.
By the time the shower was up, I said screw it...there was no way I could make it in. Crawling into the car with my back completely shot is just not an option, no matter what liniment we put on my lower back. I still have FIL's truck, but with diesel at $4.65/gal, and the fact that it bounces like a trampoline, that's out too. The kids are going to get their hair cut, and so I couldn't stiff Wifey on the van either.
Home I stay. WoW I play (well, for a bit anyway).
2007
Me 10:21, 14 June 2007 (EDT)
I got a much later start than I had intended. I had wanted to leave shortly after breakfast, but with all that we had done on Friday, we still had to pack the van.
Actually, it was more than that. Since I had the van, everyone had to pile up into FIL's truck. Yeah it has a back seat, but it's not the roomiest. So, I had unpack everything from the van (to make sure nothing got missed) which included the kid's car seats. After that, we tried to make sure everyone was gonna fit. They did (barely), and so I began loading up the rest of the crap into van.
It was miserable-hot. After loading the van, I went down to the showers. By the time I got back, the heat and humidity had me sweating so already that I had to wait to cool down and dry off before I could put my medicine on.
By the time I did all this, sat around a bit, double and triple checked what I needed to take and what needed to be left behind for them, I didn't get out of there until after 1pm. Hugs, kisses, a quick butt squeeze of the wife, and I was off for a drive that shoulda been 10 hours. I had to promise that I would stop for the night and not drive flat out. I was already quasi-tired, and I knew that after 5-6 hrs in the car, I'd be needing a bed to make the rest of the trip.
I had covered the drive back with FIL, but whereas he would have gone back the way we had come (Columbia, SC, through Ashville, NC into Tennessee, taking a turn in Knoxville to head back north through Lexington, KY), my plan was to take a straight shot north along 77 from Columbia through Charlotte, western Virginia, and into Charleston, WV (where I'd be having lunch with Callistana and kin).
The macro route I was fine with. The getting back to I-95 (to go to Columbia) was gonna be the weirdest part of the trip.
- "I take 544 to 501, then 501 to 301, and 301 to 38. Then 38 will take me back to 95. Then I just follow 95 back to Columbia right?
- Yeah, that's it.
The problem: That wasn't the way we had come in to the Myrtle Beach area. That was the original way I had looked at the map from Google's directions. In looking back at the maps (and seeing the exit as I got onto 95 coming back), it runs out FIL actually got off at Rt 327's exit, not 38's.
I've found my way around and felt more comfortable in a sporting goods store. Roads twisted, turned, and having only been on them once, I got lost a couple times. The worst of it: I injured a tire...again.
I wasn't even a half hour away from the campsite, and I hit a curb. I knew I hit it hard, having just hit another curb that hard only a couple weeks before. I pulled over, and sure enough, there was a knot on the tire. It was a Saturday. I wasn't going to find someplace to inexpensively fix it, and for whatever reason I decided to just drive on it.
For the remainder of this trip let me just state: The fear of having your rear right tire explode on you and have you careen of the road is an amazing motivation to keep you energized and awake for a drive.
The rest of the drive was mostly uneventful.
- Reached I-95 around 3pm
- Reached Columbia around 4pm
- Reached Rock Hill, SC around 6pm (Stopped and had my first Jack-in-the-Box burger...omg! tasty!)
I reached about half way through NC around 7pm and decided that I was going to check out what a Holiday Inn Express would be like (both cost-wise and the stay itself). I figured that I would seek out a HIE first, taking the first one I saw at an exit after 8pm. If I didn't find one by 8:15, I'd take the first exit with a large number of hotels to pick from (competition usually equals better prices).
The drive from then out (once I got into VA especially) was gorgeous. Barely three miles into VA, you start a serious ascent into the Blue Ridge Mountains. It's a solid incline that goes on for the better part of 10 miles. I really wished I wasn't driving, because the really great view was over my right shoulder and behind me. WOW!
Eight o'clock rolled around, and I started looking. In the end, a little town WAAAAAAAY up in the mountains called Hillsville. There were six or eight hotels in the area, and I drove around and got the prices for them all. Wifey had me under orders to get a bed and a shower and that's about it. All of these places were $75 and up, so I didn't think they counted.
The very last place I stopped at to check was the Super 8. Cost? $55. Sold!
- And now I shall take you back a bit on the trip. If you recall, I had been taking a double dose of my Testim for several days in the week. The night before, I ceased this as I needed to get back down to normal in order to get a good result on the impending blood work to be done.
- The problem with a double dose? I got hornier than a jackrabbit. I'm on vacation with my wife, she's smelling like sun and cocoa butter, and I wanna do all sorts of dirty things to her. Unfortunately, also on vacation is my six and three year old children on the floor beside us, and my in-laws another dozen yards in the top of the camper. At one point on Friday evening, I even went into a spiel about how they must have had to do it in the olden days when they were in close quarters...I was that horny.
- So now, here I am, driving around...solo. The sun is coming straight through the windows as I drive mostly west, and the light (and warmth) is keeping stuff warm. Add that to my libido, and I start fantasizing like a 13 year old. I start having thoughts about adultery in ways that -- both then and now -- I found horrible.
- I contemplated hitting on a hotel clerk. I contemplated hitting on another hotel patron. I considered stopping (and this was way back in SC) at this "oriental massage" place for maybe the chance of a "happy ending". At the dead-very-least I figured I'd get one of those four or six our blocks of porn from the hotel TV and spank off all night. What the hell kind of were-beast was I turning into???
- I was still on this high as I got into Hillsvale. I checked out each hotel and evaluated them on price, knowledge of their hotel quality, and also on how hot the clerk might have been. My brain (and pants) cooled a bit with a nice grandmotherly lady at the first stop, but the next one was kinda cute, but the Holiday In Express was $119! Uh, no!
- Stop after stop I checked, but the price was starting to take over me, and then I got to the Hampton Inn. The price was the lowest of all ($75), and I knew they'd have porn from times staying there before. Apparently though, this town hadn't had their hotel updated cuz all they had was normal cable, and on top of it, there were only smoking rooms available. I passed.
- Then, I get to the Super 8. First of all, the guy a the counter, was overweight (making my manboobs look small), had a lisp, and giggled (in that small town, I can only imagine the comments). When he said the price though, I paid and stayed.
Back to reality now. So I go to my room. It's hot. Actually, the hallway itself was hot (I guess they save money by not cooling the halls), but in the room it was almost worse. Turning on the TV, I check, and...no porn. Damn it. I turned on the AC and went back for my stuff from the car.
I stayed up and watched some TV, bounced around to a few more channels, and finally resigned myself to sleep and cranking one off the old fashioned way (no porn, no hot hotel clerk, just imagination...sigh), and then lay down for sleep.
Or, at least I thought it was going to be sleep.
2006
Me 14:08, 09, June 2006 (EDT)
Help has arrived!
2005
Me 00:36, 09, June 2005 (EDT)
Trouble thinking up that next birthday present?
Well, I know what I'm getting Wifey this month for hers.
WHOLLY NORMAN BATES BATMAN!
(Personally, I really want a gryphon.)
