Lessons Learned

Back in Southeastern Pennsylvania

*** Thanks for putting up with the short, not-especially-creative, exceptionally-shittily-spelled blog posts done from my Blackberry Whatever whilst we vacationed in sweltering bliss in Lexington, Virginia. I'm back now, in the sweltering familiarity of our 2nd floor office/craftatorium, and I hope you will find the quality back up-to-snuff. Speaking of back up-to-snuff, I seem to have gained another follower! What the fuck?! I ought to go away more often. Welcome under my apron, Kari. That's hot. ***

They say you never stop learning. Of course, they also say that you can't take it with you, and that is so not true. You totally can, especially if your trousers have cargo pockets and your rear seats fold flat.

Idiots.

Anyway, getting back to learning-- they say you never stop, even when you finish school. And that's a good thing, because I was last in a classroom in 2008, and that was grad school, and I don't think that anybody particularly learns anything in grad school. You're just there to get another essentially meaning-free degree so that you're not earning $11.00/hr so you can afford to pay back all those bum-hole-busting student loans.

(Woot?)

They're probably right about this learning shit, and I say that because I was just on vacation for a few days (as you know, because I go on and on and on about it like I was bouncing around on the goddamned lunar surface, for Christ's sake) and I sure learned a hell of a lot. Don't believe me?

Well, while in Lexington, Virginia, I learned that...

* The further South you drive, public radio starts to sound more like Christian radio.

* They still manufacture and sell C.B. radios.

* The best innkeeper in Lexington, Virginia is British. And he rarely wears shoes or socks.

* Ham, bacon, and sausage can, and should, be consumed together at breakfast in one sitting. It's the Pigfecta!

* There is a certain type of frog that makes a "BOING!" noise as it lazes around.

* We were worried that we wouldn't be able to understand any of the locals. As it turns out, none of the locals could understand my wife.

* I am physically and emotionally incapable of safely mounting a hammock.

* Cats (female ones, I'm assuming) piss in a most extraordinary way. We saw one urinating in the parking lot of an antiques mall. It just stood there, arched its back, lifted its tail straight up in the air like a flag pole and let loose an inelegant yellow fountain all over the place. My wife and I watched with our mouths agape.

* Irish Spring soap smells like farts.

* Nothing is open on Memorial Day.

* Michael Palin (whose diaries I'm reading) sometimes waxed philosophic about the state of his feces, which makes me feel strangely better about doing same.

* You're supposed to spend inordinate amounts of time making polite conversation with your innkeeper/bed-and-breakfast residents.

* When returning home on Memorial Day, don't pee at a highway rest-stop unless you're prepared to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with an Indian man and a 12-year-old boy at the urinal. I nearly died.

But I sure learned a lot.