lamest person ever born

Hi. I'm the aforementioned l.p.e.b. God. I've been planning to go to Chicago tomorrow to see the Waco Brothers as part of Sydney's birthday event, finally see Chris's new house, and probably eat some good things, but as usual I've been all "La, la, la..." about it. La, la, la, eventually I'll get a train ticket so as not to have to worry about the weather this time. Tra la la... Amtrak is certainly anticipating my needs and saving a special seat just for me! MEEEE! Who the hell else takes the train, really, besides Pam and the terrible dude who sat next to her last week?

And who hasn't sat next to a terrible dude on an Amtrak train, anyway? Not to negate Pam's story, but god. I have a bunch of stories, too. The relative comfort of your trip is set in the first few seconds, when you decide if you should react in friendly way to the person who sits down next to you. If it's the wrong person, and you give any hint of encouragement, you are opening yourself up to a very long trip. Like the guy who was really into gummy candy in all its forms, and also had plenty of advice on desert survival. Once, though, I did have a desirable neighbor. He was a writer, and I sometimes see his travel stories in magazines these days. We talked harmoniously the whole way, and I was wearing some kind of zebra-print shirt, and I pretty much had it all worked out that I'd soon have to make some decisions like whether or not I should wear my contacts during flights to Australia, or if I should bring some of my own toilet paper to Vietnam. Obviously, it never came to that. Ours was but a romance of the rails.

Back to today, or, rather, yesterday - it turns out that Amtrak has done a bad job of anticipating my needs. Regardless of whether I leave from a station kind of close or kind of far, there are no seats. Even if I give up the Waco Brothers and settle for a day-after-Sydney's-birthday thing, there are no seats. There are seats coming home, but no seats going there.

And I want to see the Waco Brothers. I hadn't been to a show in a long time, and then Pam and Deborah and I went to the Hentchmen show, and it was really fun, and now it's what I want to do a lot. I want to go back to that for awhile, and have new rocker crushes. I just wish the smoke didn't nestle so deeply in my hair. That part's gross.