I'm not dead yet.

Well, it's probably just a matter of time, but as of yet, the death in me is decidedly minimal. As many of you may not be aware, and as many more of you may not care, I'm now posting from the small out of the way state of New York in some tiny, almost forgotten town, also ironically called New York. I flew in on the red eye flight Thursday night and arrived Friday mourning. I did not sleep on the plane. I have never been able to sleep on planes. Consequently, I found my self awake for a good 40+ hour stretch off of a nice little 5 hour nap that I had taken Wednesday night between the ours of 1:30 am and 6:30 am. I was completely un-caffeinated during that entire time. And yes, un-caffeinated is not a word according to several accredited dictionaries. I'm still going to use it though because one of the major benefits of being a self proclaimed English major is that I now have the license to add words to the English language whenever and where ever I see fit.

The frequency with which I post and comment is going to be lower than you have come to expect. For this I apologize, but hey, I'm on vacation. We'll see how you do when you're on vacation. Just a few thoughts as I began my vacation that I wanted to share. These are probably going to be some of the most insightful things you'll ever read, so I imagine you'll want to commit them to memory or at the very least, have them tattooed in an easily accessed/viewed area on your body. Please take a second to clear your mind of other useless details like your social security number, your drivers license number, your birthday and anything else that will pale in importance to the following few paragraphs.

I had some time to kill at the airport while waiting for my flight. (I spent the first half hour trying to convince them to just take off now because I was already there so why not get a jump on the schedule? My logic was so sound and practical I still haven't been able to figure out why I was refused. Never the less, I was refused, thus I had said time to kill.) I went into one of the many gift shops located inside the airport. Mostly they were filled with overpriced items you could buy to prove to people that you had actually visited LA. I needed no such proof for this journey, so I spent little time perusing the selection of shot glasses and bottle openers. (What exactly is the implication with that? When you remember this place you visited once, you are immediately going to want a drink? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?) No, instead my attention was diverted over to the magazines and newspapers. I thought I might like some light reading for the plane ride. This is where I was thrown off a little. Across the top row of magazines, there was an unusually large and diverse selection of porn to choose from. "Yup... got a long flight ahead of me... just thought I'd catch up on all my porn..." I was brought up in a Christian home and at a Christian school that taught me to have tremendous shame and guilt involving anything of a sexual nature so I don't really see myself ever purchasing said porn and certainly not at the airport. I wonder about the kind of person that wouldn't have a problem making such a purchase. I think I would be slightly uncomfortable sitting next to them on the plane. (when I said slightly, I was exaggerating in the negative, which I believe they call understating.)

At this same airport, I found a similarly baffling item up for sale: Luggage. I claim to be one of the biggest, if not The biggest, procrastinator out there and even I don't come to the airport with just an armful of clothes and hope in my heart that they'll have some suitcases for me to buy. I see them a lot at airports though and it kind of makes me sad that there is a market for it and that the market is doing well enough to justify the sale of luggage in almost every major airport. You want to know what's wrong with this country? People are buying luggage at airports, that's what's wrong with this country. Well, that and tanning salons... (sorry to get all political on you like that, I usually try to stay away from politics in general, but this one really hits close to my heart.)

I have also decided that any time you sit next to a person on a plane that is filled with questions about you, but refuses to answer any similar questions in return is highly suspect. It's not often you meet someone that is so willing to talk about your life and so completely unwilling to talk about their own. Here's what I know about the kid that sat next to me, he's not from New York, but he lives there right now. He's only staying for a few days on this trip though and after that he's going somewhere. That's it. That's all I could get out of him. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I did try flicking his ear until he answered my questions, I'm telling you, this kid was up to something. He clearly had training. At this point, I'm not even willing to rule out the fact that he may have been trained by ninjas. He was that good. I don't often say stuff like that, so you know that has to mean something coming from me.

I suppose there are a few other things to tell about my trip so far, but lets face it, I don't have much quality posting ability, so I'd better stretch this out for as long as I can. When it's over, I will have been in NY for 10 days, but when I'm done posting about it, hopefully it will seem more like 10 weeks. Until next time, my happy thought is the Aquabats performing "Super Rad" live and in concert... good times... good times indeed...