We got a laptop!  How we got it, is embedded in the following spew – so if you care – read on.  If not hit delete and have a great day – it was good hearing from us.  You ever watch a dog throw up?  There’s a process to it… a ritual.  First there’s the realization that something is amiss in the lower regions of the body.  Either it starts making funny gurgling sounds or maybe it just doesn’t feel right.  The obligatory sniff and examination of the belly yeilds no clue and the feeling’s gettin’ worse.  Now Rover’s given a look – it’s time to get up and start panting because something isn’t right and this could end bad!!!  Time to go and find a human.  On the way to the human – druel starts – along with frantic tongue licking and swallowing. BUT swallowing seems to trigger a REEEAAL bad thing.  Now comes the inchworm thing – back to front – undulating like trying to squeeze toothpaste out of a tube.  Here comes that darned human…  yelling "NO, NO, NOT ON THE CARPET – get outside!!!"  Eyes bugging, every muscle sqeezing the inchworm crawl, and frantic licking and swallowing the dog just stands in front of you until… BBLLLCCHHH…there it is.  Now, there stands Fido over the remains of what he probably shouldn’t have eaten awhile back… and there’s the look… "Boss something real wrong just happened and I’m sorry…"  Hanging his head and does one of the grossest things we can think of " Here boss I’ll clean it up…"  NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!  
 
So what in the hell does this have to do with this laptop?  Well my head is full of stuff.  Kind of like a dog’s stomach.  I collect lots of stuff – not always stuff that means anything or has any relevance.  And sometimes I have to purge – sometimes that stuff rolls around in my head like rancid milk.  Up until now I had to go find a computer – not always practical or readily available.  I could store it – but that isn’t practical because sometimes my thoughts are like big ugly bugs the dog ate.  They need to get OUT!!!  So often I’m left talking to myself and spilling thoughts randomly as the mood strikes – a little strange by some people’s measure.  NOW I have an outlet!!!  There’s NO limits to where I can write from… which has Sparky a bit concerned.
 
BUT from you’re perspective – I could be that inchworming, lapping, licking, swallowing dog and you’re yelling "NO GET OUTSIDE!!!"  BLCH!!!….Well here it is.  There’s a delete button up there somewhere – just use it if you need.
 
TRAVELOGUE: KEY WEST to NOLA
 
Left Key West Friday early afternoon after the all hands award ceremony at work.  OK OK – that’s not true – the PLAN was to leave Friday after the awards ceremony – BUT – the awards ceremony was Thursday and I wasn’t done getting my crap together until around 5PM Friday (who made that plan anyway?).  So instead we left before dawn on Saturday morning to head up the Keys and watch the sunrise.  OK – that isn’t how it happened either.  The sun was well up by the time we started the crawl up the Keys and we were late enough to have lunch in Key something.  The trip was slow and reverent as we tried to break free of the gravity of Key West.   I also was kind of worn down from having 5 going away parties, drinking a years worth of Landshark, and at some point having shots FORCED down my throat!!! I had to drive through some thick fog.  Of course Jimmy sang us out of the Keys as we pondered what was and what will be.  Key West in the rearview – NOLA out the windshield.  Gotta go check out the area "Down Around Biloxi" and check out life "off towards New Orleans".  

We made it through the Everglades without getting eaten by a gator (Sparky’s measure of success).  Inched up the west coast and crested the Skyway while the sun was still hanging a fist or so above the Gulf.  Spent a couple of days in Clearwater – doing mainland stuff like shopping at Target and Walmart.  Good thing here was that I wore Joyce down.  Answered every question "I
don’t know dear.  If I had a computer I could tell you."  She finally tired of it and got me this here laptop… writes pretty good I think.  Then it was on to Pensacola where we spent the night with friends before heading off towards New Orleans.  We gained an hour back!!!  Got a do over!!!  What if we could take that hour and have any hour of our lives back?  What would you chose?  My answer comes up fast –  but can’t share – it’s stuff that comes out while lying on a couch telling the headpoker about your childhood- it remains best kept tucked away in a dark corner in my brain cell.  But wouldn’t it be something?  Spark and I spent our do over – staring out the windows on I-10.
 
Pulled into the Big Easy and got our house.  Now we’re mired in packing boxes and paper, arguing about what goes where, and trying to find the nearest damn mini-mart!  Getting lost a lot and trying to understand the local lingo.  Working to shrink things down to rational size.  3 years in Key West changes your perspective and makes things "up here" look real big and scary.  If you saw Hoosiers you saw the coach measure out the basketball court in the championship arena to show his team, that even though it looked like a giant monster sized placed, it was, in fact just a normal sized basketball court.  Well we’re busy laying out that tape and convincing ourselves that NOLA is just another place, even though it looks much larger than Key West, and we’ll do fine.
 
Couple of lessons learned so far.  The house here is big enough to have "ends".  Like we can be at different ends of the place – and there’s an upstairs.  The dogs need to do some normalizing.  They have a hell of a time figuring out where we went when we left a room.  Sometimes when we call them from another room – they just won’t come – I think they’re frustrated and tired of trying to guess where we went.  In Key West we were all at the same end of the house because we only had one end and – it was almost like one room divided. 
 
OH!!! We also learned that it will be a "bikable" commute – BUT – NOLA is a city and outside of the French Quarter is city traffic and our Townies don’t do so well there.  WHEEEW!!! that was quite an intense experience I think we made the news. "Two unknown idiots tied up traffic in the business district today by BIKING" on Poydras St.  The rebel cyclists angered and frustrated shocked drivers as they pedaled down the busy city steet.  They eluded police as they ducked onto side streets and were last seen heading toward the French Quarter.  New Olreans police initiated a "Chartruese Alert"  – which is the Amber Alert system color for idiots.  Motorists should report sightings of the bicycists to NOLA police and should not approach the pair as they’re obvioulsy unstable.  They should be considered stupid and hazardous.  The man and woman cyclists were riding run down bikes one detective called "Conch Cruisers" – apparently a type of bike riden down in tiny Key West.  The woman had some type of demon strapped to the front of her bike, and both people were wearing helmets and flip flops.  Citzens are reminded that for MANY REASONS it is unsfae to ride bikes through downtown neighborhoods and on busy NOLA streets."  We’ll chalk that up as a once in a lifetime thing and consider thank God for giving us a second chance at life.  No tire tracks or bullet holes on either body – one more piece of evidence that God does watch out for fools. 
 
SO that’s it from the laptop for now.  My head feels much better after getting that all out.  Time to go try to find that damned Target again… it sucks having too many streets and more than one way to get to things.  I miss U S 1 – where the one stands for one way in and one way out!!! Hard to get lost in that world!
 
By the way, Jimmy doesn’t talk much about the opposite of Conky Tonkin’ or tell us how to have fun leaving the Keys…  so just like our heroes Lenny and Bella – we remain "…quite a pair of pioneers" but we’re a bit lost on what we’re doing right now.  Conky Tonkin’ was a blast though!!!

We’ll be back…