Maine, The Pine Tree State

Well, I made it to Maine safely, and I already miss you all a lot!

Still, though, I am having a great time here in Maine with my brother and my best friend Tanner. After I finish blogging, we are all going to go to Denny's (TM) and have some great diner food. I've not been to Denny's since I visited California back in October.

Well the drive up was pretty successful. We left the 'burg at about eight o'clock and arrived at Tanner's house at 10:30pm Pretty rapid, I'd think. Incedentally, I think because we traveled on Thursday, we missed ALL traffic. We never really went slower than 40-45, except for about 5 minutes around hartford, but even then it was still 25mph. Another great thing that I learned during this trip was the Highway milage of my pickup truck (You guy's know the one--1987 Toyota Xtra Cab, rust holes and John Kerry bumper sticker.) The milage of my truck --even with a HUGE load on it was about 29mpg. That's not bad for a heavily laden 87' truck. God Bless Japanese autos. Actually, another thing I found out about during our trip was that not having A/C completely sucks when driving at highway speeds. In order to keep from suffocating and dying, we had to have the windows down, which made it so loud that we could barely talk to each other, and really couldn't listen to music. Fortunately, we were blessed with light rain and overcast all day, so we were pretty comfortable, although I do have a sunburn on my right arm from hanging it out the window.

When I parked in front of my friends house, I was told I would be fine, that I could park overnight. WRONG. This morning I had a 5.00 ticket for exceeding the parking time limit. So, I'm leaving it on the car, and parking in the exact same space for as long as possible, so I don't get another ticket, and they get screwed. HAHAHA VIGILANTE JUSTICE!

Hey Stewart, I hope you're reading, I told you to read!

Moving on about Maine, though. Maine's roadways are terrible and shabby. The enourmous amounts of snow and the frost heaves (a frost heave is when the ground gets cold and expands, and then warms up and shrinks, causing cracks, dips, bumps, and altogether crappy roads) and the snow plows tearing them up each year. Not only that, but all the streets are narrow. Each intersection is like a small puzzle, a maze that you must navigate. The population is too small to have a lot of smart, well maintained roads, so all the lights are timed (no camera's or sensors) and there are very very few designated left turn lanes. Ahh, what fun the automobile brings into out lives.

Oh, incedentaly, note to my friends in VA--Enjoy the gas prices you have!!! Here in maine they are about 1.97-2.05, where as in VA it's about 1.73--1.80. I can't believe it. Of course, Maine isn't the cheapest state or area either, I know Los Angeles is still like 2.80, but they deserve it for living in that awful place to begin with. (Just kidding)

Well, Thadius Lovejoy (Site: www.stresspool.us) invited me to get a Gmail account with google, (Take that Charles!) so now I have a whole gigabyte to store every e-mail I ever recieve should I so desire. HAHA. I realized how brilliant there plan is. By only allowing users to invite a small number or new users after they have had a n account for a while, the rate at which new accounts are created is relatively slow, allowing them to slowly build the service and maintain quality. Whereas if they just said "COME GET ONE GIG OF FREE WEB MAIL SPACE" They'd be overwhelmed and break down and suck. Google is genius. Got to hand it to those guys, they know what they are doing.

That said, I'm really excited, and I plan to start my job search tommorow. Wish me luck!

Now, forward to Denny's!!!!