Still Alive

Alright, me droogs, I think I owe you an after-action report.  Clearly, I've been off the wires for a bit, and I owe an explanation.  The epic road trip had to come to an end, because I ran out of the cash moneys, so it finished up in Indianapolis for the 4th of July weekend, with pitstops in New Albany, IN at the New Albanian Brewery and the Creation Museum on the Kentucky side of Cincinnati (which probably deserves its own entire post later).  The New Albanian Brewery had good beer, and the Creation Museum was home to the worst science I've ever seen.  I will definitely get a writeup of that together at some point.

The Fourth was pretty excellent, as it was spent with good friends, booze and explosives.  I was drinking and blowing shit up for the rest of the day after this was taken, so I have no pictures of the actual explosions, but friends do, and I may post them at a later date.  For now, enjoy the pile of explosives that was completely used that day and night.  4 cakes, 3 300-shot saturn rockets, a boatload of mortars (with custom launch rack), boxes of firecrackers, novelties, roman candles and bottle rockets.  We celebrated the fuck out of this country.

Of course, this leaves the bulk of the last week being spent back in PA unpacking and decompressing.  As of today, I'm back on Nutrisystem and prepared to begin regular blogging again.  No weigh in this morning, as I got up rather late, but I ate a Nutrisystem lunch, snack and dinner.  I've continued applying for jobs and am hopeful that someone will someday want me to engineer for them again.

I'm probably not going to weigh in for a few days, as I don't want to shock myself too much with whatever damage I've done, boozing and eating takeout for about 2 weeks, but I'm fully back on the diet, and will resume the blogging of it tomorrow.  I also intend to resume working out tomorrow or Wednesday, as it has been some time since I have, and fear the result of my laziness.

That is all!

I LIVE!

So it's been a couple of eventful, diet free days, and I've got a quick recap for you.  I drove up through Tampa Bay from Ft. Myers, FL and into Georgia, where I stopped at a Comfort Inn near the Alabama border for the evening.  I then jogged west into Alabama and Mississippi on my way to Memphis, where I intended to visit Graceland.

Upon reaching Graceland, I realized a couple of things.  First, parking was 15 bucks, and there were probably going to be more charges once I got past parking.  The area is also a complete shithole, check cashing places and pawn shops everywhere.  I also realized I don't really like Elvis all that much.  His music's great and an important part of American musical history, but I can deal without the shag carpets and purple wallpaper.

So I decided to go to the Jack Daniel's Distillery, on the east side of Tennessee.  I stayed in a nearby KOA for the night, and went to the distillery in the morning.

The tour was awesome, and there were great shops in downtown Lynchburg, all of which had the same Jack merch and gave you a free shot glass with a 10 dollar purchase.  Needless to say, I spread my shopping across all the shops.  The picture above is a bronze of Jack with the cave spring that the water comes from in the background.  While at the distillery, I bought 2 commemorative bottles of black label and a bottle of single-barrel, all of which I had signed by the "Master Taster", who happened to be in the tour area signing bottles while I was there.

I then went to the New Albanian Bank St Brewhouse [www.newalbanian.com] at the request of one of the folks I'm visiting in Indianapolis, and picked up a few growlers of beer.  He wanted the Hoptimus, and I bought the Haggis Laddie for myself (I have a weakness for the reds).

Today, I'm going to visit the Creation Museum outside of Cincinnati and then move on to Indianapolis.  I hope not to be arrested.

I've tried to get weighed at a few of the places I've stayed, but there hasn't been a decent flat surface for the purpose, so I'm probably just going to not do it again until I reach home next week.