What happens when I wring out my brain!!!!
Ah home, how do I hate it at times. More correctly, I like home, as far as my actual place of residence is concerned. It's the bits that surround it that tend to drive me directly up a wall, and that's on a normal day. Now I'm in that lovely mental state for which I have adopted the term "the fog of war", yes I stole it from various RTS type games. It's a weird mixture of comming back from vacation, and a varying level of culture shock depending on where I am given that I've been hanging out in the woods surrounded primarily by people I like for over a week. An example of the variance I speak of: Driving around putting up with the congestion and general sillyness of other people in their cars where there is at least some degree of separation = Mild distaste and an urge to be back home where I can lock the door. Walking into a wal-mart = Sheer insanity and a desire to burn down civilization as we know it.
Ah well, carrying on about how things are currently is for another post that I'll probably never make given that everyone knows the story... they live it most every day. This is supposed to be a recap of pennsic and the events directly surrounding it beginning to end. So if you're brave, and you have half an hour to read, I give you...
THE PENNSIC RECAP MEGAPOST!!!!111
Disclaimer type thing: Everyone knows my memory's a little wonky at times. If I messed something up, I did my level best to get things chronologically correct. Now... how many of you immediatly thought "anatomically correct" when I said chronologically correct? Busted.
Endless preparation
Heh.. I have to giggle at this part when I look back and do a comparison and note how things have built up when it comes to pennsic preparation. Our first pennsic was initially to be a side event that we were attending as part of Desmondus and Robyn's wedding. Kat (a.k.a. MarbleEye) threw together a few sewing projects as we were told it was in bad form to wear normal clothes, and I got the oil in the beretta changed which didn't help at all when the water pump broke on the way out to PA. Then, after getting to pennsic after the wedding, we made the discovery that it is the best thing since pants with pockets and made plans to be back next year.
During the first eight or so months after that first war we didn't really do anything except talk about how cool it was, and that we were most definitly going back, then after that we hit the realization that we weren't really prepared at all for a second war. Kat kicked the sewing into high gear and I went into a frenzy of reading up on various garb I thought I might want, followed by a flurry of buying things online and then calling the merchants directly for rush orders to make up for lost time. This time around I had the oil AND coolant changed since I'd blown out a radiator recently. Neither of these helped when the alternator went out on the way BACK from our second war. Ironically enough, however, by the time we actually got to our second pennsic I didn't use half the garb I'd gone through so much annoyance to have on time. I spent 99.9% of war in a utilikilt being lazy.
Now that we had TWO pennsic vacations to use as frame of reference, we felt we might actually be ready. It was our third pennsic, and it was pennsic 33. This made kat happy as she feels odd numbers are lucky, and three in particular is good since it's TEH DEFAULT LUCKEH NUMBAR!!!!!!1111 and it's also odd. The fact our second war was pennsic 32 is how we explain how various bits of it got a little out of sorts in places, too many even numbers in one place. Inline with wanting things to go smoothly since this was GOING to be our lucky year, come hell or high water, we got to planning pretty early. Our only real hang up was we didn't start shopping for fabric early enough, not a massive deal, it just meant we had to alter things a tiny bit.
Once the fabric purchase mis-timing was overcome in style we moved on to the last couple months before war and the seemingly never ending planning began. We were constantly generating lists, managing bills, saving every last bit of change we could, getting a truck to replace the beretta that finally blew up for good, and on and on and on. By the beginning of july we knew exactly what box we were packing any given item in, we'd had a dry run setting up our tent and had hosed it down with camp-dry, we had even gone so far as to determine what known expenses would be taken from what source of money after we went nuts paying down the credit card and counting out all the change we had hidden from ourselves. In the end THIS is what we had as our final version of the pennsic money plan. Once we were actually within striking distance (a few weeks) of war we started to organize the massive pile of stuff we'd been accumulating in the corner of the computer room for the last few months. It was nice to have our own place to get it all set up lemme tell 'ye. We could actually plan things properly, up to and including putting tape on the floor that marked off an area the size of our truck bed... to facilitate a simulated packing right there on the computer room floor.
In the midst of all the list generating, budgeting, and pre-flight planning, my attention turned to making sure the truck would weather the trip without any mechanical difficulty. I had no intention of having anything to do with a mechanic at least until we were on our own turf once again. Almost all the stops were pulled out for this pre-flight maintenance run. A friend of mine helped me change the serpentine belt, oil, oil filter, and spark plugs. I also put a call in to my mechanic to have the transmission fluid and fluid filter changed. The mechanic part was a smidge annoying... I called him on wednesday the week before we were supposed to leave figuring that would be plenty of time, but nooooooooo, he was going out of town that afternoon and wouldn't be back until the thursday we were to leave. This resulted in having to schedule the service for ass early in the morning on thursday when I was supposed to be getting sleep so I could make the drive to PA in our usual overnight style. Fed Ex has nothing on me, let it be known.
When our final day of waiting (thursday) came we got the truck up to speed on it's transmission fluid and were feeling pretty good about everything except how much sleep we weren't getting but didn't really care about. Several bits of going to sleep and waking back up to do something, topped off by a fruitless attempt to get more sleep before we needed to run our pre-flight lists at 8:00 PM. Yes, we actually use these terms for the stuff we do, and it's all run by the clock, even I can be organized when I want to be. HERE is the final copy of this year's pre-flight list. For the record, pre-flight is anything we need to do between when we have to stop tottering around the appartment or sleeping, and when we get all four wheels on east bound I-70. Such things as running the last bit of regular gas out of the tank and refilling it with premium, getting road snacks, icing the cooler, and getting fast food. Traditionally the fast food takes the form of McD's for reasons I can't fathom. Part of the pennsic ritual now is for me to get McNuggets and Kat feeds them to me while I drive. I think I got more sweet n' sour in my beard than I got in my mouth this year, the truck is quite a bouncy ride at times.
Where it all tried to fall apart
Yes, the fates, or whatever forces out there determine when tragic comedy of the cosmic sort will ensue, did make a semi successful attempt to fuck with us. The drive was set to end at Drazster and Arisonn's place, as we needed a layover point to stay at for recovery purposes and because troll doesn't open until noon. Up until the universe's true attempt to mess with our heads the only points of conflict we'd had so far was a slight mix up in indianapolis, and an hour long white knuckle stretch on the last bit of 70 before we got on the turnpike towards Drazster and Arisonn's. The Indianapolis annoyance was due to the fact the city council of indianapolis has a special slush fund they use to keep at least one road construction crew present at all times. They use this crew to redirect various sections of road just because they feel like it and I'm sure they find it funny. Unfortunatly they always seem to know we're coming and they move the ever present construction crew over to 70 just so they can mess with us... I swear, it's true. Then there was the white knuckle drive I mentioned which was mostly caused by my not being used to driving on massive hills that have sharp curves in the middle of them, populated primarily by insane truckers and PA drivers doing everything they can to cause a fifty car pileup. Once all that was managed we just had to find our destination, and that was where the cosmos decided to step in for it's giggles.
The true problem mainly related to our directions, which we had gotten from yahoo given that they're usually a little easier to understand when compared to mapquest's. Sadly, they failed us at the very end, and told us to go right instead of left, and we ended up 20 minutes in the wrong direction. I guess it just won't ever be pennsic unless we get lost in some way, but we're getting skilled at minmizing the effects. Eventually we gave up and called Arisonn to bail us out before we got any more lost, and she got a good giggle when she found out where we ended up. A short conversation later and we were headed back in the other direction, to a BP we'd been looking for and THOUGHT we had found... it turns out we found every BP in the world, except the one we had been looking for. Fuck you yahoo, even though I still love you and we'll be using you again next year I'm sure. Once we found the correct BP and drove in two complete circles trying to get behind Arisonn (she's silly and likes circles) we were good to go. A few hills later we were arrived and ready to pass the fuck out for a few hours, especially since caffeine was starting to not help me at all. Usually, right after the sun comes up, I start the caffeine. When I'm on long hauls I usually call my preferred road drink, bawls, "combat drugs". Those lovely things you have access to in most futuristic role-playing games that give you a massive burst of speed, strength, and mental fortitude for a period of time... then drop you off a cliff. It works the same way to a lesser degree with my road habit of caffiene and conquest. I drink the first one, and after it dies off I usually need two in quick succession to get me where I want to be, after that I have to keep the flow pretty constant or I end up feeling strung out... FUN!.
Back for round three - Pennsic War XXXIII
The few hours passed, I slept, and somehow managed to roll over onto both my arms and they fell completely asleep... someone explain to me why we don't have a built in response to ROLL THE FUCK OVER when we are lying on a limb, [leary]explain it to me god, explain it to me please, I want it explained to me right now JESUS!!!![/leary] At the very least, a response to roll over when lying on two limbs at the same time. It did made taking my wake up shower pretty interesting at least, try sitting on your hands and then jump directly in the shower to wash your hair. The lack of feeling and severely impared dexterity makes it an interesting challenge, at least when you've got two feet of hair to wash.
Once I had regained some relative measure of awareness and everyone was done packing or re-packing their stuff, we took off once again. Back up onto the turnpike with it's hills, curves, and nutty drivers. It was better this time at least, there were fewer insane truckers, so I knew if there was an accident at least there was no massive behemoth truck waiting to squish me into so much human jelly. The only stop between us and pennsic now was the most awesome beer place on the face of the planet, case's beer. I'd had a informal standing order (don't ask me how that works) for a case of skullsplitter dating back a couple months, and there was no way I was going to set foot in pennsic without it. Especially considering the case ran 55 bucks, which is fuckin' cheap as hell for 24 bottles of the best beer ever.
With the final pre-war requirement settled, we headed back to cooper's lake. Back into the trees on the ever familiar, narrow as hell in places, bumpy as hell road that leads to the gate and then troll. Time to go off on a tangent! Troll is a strange place, it's the boundary between normal life and the massive reality filter that is pennsic. It's pretty much where I drop everything that's built up over the course of the year and get my brain ready for the next 7-10 days. The first year I found it a bit annoying even though everyone was quite nice, and I thought it was silly when they said "welcome home", but by the time I left I understood why they said it and thought it to be very novel. The second year everyone at troll was in high spirits and being silly, but they said "have a good pennsic" instead which was a small letdown as silly as it may seem. This year we ended up getting our paperwork managed by some know it all fuckwad who insisted on acting like we were taking up his precious time. The part of me that was offloading the icky parts of mundane life really wanted to drag him across the table and tape his mouth shut.
Once we were all done buying our medallion string we started our slow decent into the bog, and everything was quite lovely. That brings me to another major part of war that kat and I like, and it's usually one of the first things we notice when we start down into the bog: the weather. Y'see... in Illinois it's pretty fucking warm and usually incredibly humid, as we are at the tail end of the main section of the gulf air stream. The gulf air stream is a massive air flow that comes from the gulf of mexico heading north-east over oklahoma, kansas, missouri, and most of southern illinois before it hits the northern air currents that chicago is so well known for. Unfortunatly it is primarily consisted of very hot and humid air. This shit is almost constantly flowing over or close to us from april until about september, after that we get tilted away from the sun far enough that we build up a slight defense in the form of a wall of cold air that lets the northern stream push down a little further and fend off the gulf stream. PA, however, generally gets a downdraft that stems off the gulf stream. After the air current pushes over us it goes north, and some of it gets deflected southward as it collides with northern air masses, which is good and bad. It's good because the air gets cooled quite a bit and keeps the temperature low, it's bad because when the air cools all that moisture that kicks illinois' heat index up as high as 110 degrees condenses and creates small monsoons, at least that's what I gather from the weather people, looking at weather maps, and all that other weird predicting the future crap.
Arrival at camp was it's usual interesting self. We pulled up to see FrostFalcon standing and watching us do so, Darius rolled in from somewhere, and we piled out of the truck. Unpacking the libation was it's usual fun, with the handing over of two bottles of everclear, and the breaking out of one bottle of the much anticipated skullsplitter for myself. The tent went up nicely given that it was kat and I who gave it the dry run setup this year instead of her and her dad. Then came the great unpacking and the donning of garb, or at least a utilikilt, followed by a nice boil down of sitting around and doing nothing until Drazster went up to park his car and I opted to be lazy and leave the truck where it was.
The next five days were their usual pennsic selves. Drazster gets up before everyone and runs off to see what classes he wants to mess around with, everyone else gets up and contemplates food for a few hours, thinking about and discussing going up top ensues, most opt to be lazy, showers get managed, general conversation, more food, Drazster comes back usually with Arisonn unless she's making mountain pies, Darius wanders around a bit before dark, so on and so forth until dark when something might happen depending on what day it is. It was pretty nice this year, we had an addition to the house in the form of Ron, one of Drazster's friends from mundania. Karst and Kathy were around for a few days as well, so we were all actually able to sit around and do nothing together as a group larger than four.
Other good things that happened this year would be such items as the tensions on the block seem to have eased a great deal. Last year house wynn seemed to be in a bit of an uproar and it was spilling over the edge and affecting everyone around them. As I recall it mostly related to land space, but there were some other elements that were never fully explained to me that were making it extra special nasty. This year it seemed to mostly focus itself and the general consensus was the leader of wynn does some strange and unusual, sometimes unacceptable things, but it's limited to him so it's easier to manage. Oh, and their drummers need practice. Yggadrasil, our neighbors, were in their usual style. Lots of loud and boisterous activity and even more just sitting around talking from them. I guess that's what you get when your house is run by pirates and associated types.
The days passed, the bread boules died by my hand (alot), and people were getting a little more active. Kat and FrostFalcon took a turkish bath class where they ended up being nekkid around a whole bunch of other women who were also nekkid. The class revolved around bath and beauty stuff, but there was apparently much trading back rubs and doing henna painting. If you're male and you don't get a half stack from the thought of this, you need to take the clamp off your cock or talk to Dr. Ruth. Darius and I were sitting around being lazy when the parade of soon-to-be-nekkid women passed by our camp on their way to the classic swimming hole... it was ALMOST enough to get us to move ourselves over to the classic and be lazy there while watching the nekkid women do their thing. You might be thinking "almost? aren't you the one who JUST got done saying we need to check our wangs if they aren't at attention?" To this I say: fuck you, it's pennsic, getting me to move at all during the day usually requires an act of god, a good deal of poking from Kat, or the promise of a bread boule.
Mother nature feels left out
Things were going well, Kat REALLY liked the turkish bath class and found she was almost instantly comfortable at the classic. She also took an interest in drumming and started talking about getting one... yeah, I didn't see it comming either. We'd had a mass house get together the day before where we painted each other with woad mixed with ammonia in an attempt to make it semi permanent. We still had plenty of libation to go around, and later that night we had ladie's night followed by men without pants... things were doing pretty good. The plan for the rest of the day was Darius and I heading up top (I know, we moved, shame on us) for bread boules while Kat and FrostFalcon went to ladies night. After that we would obviously be going to men without pants for the getting silly.
About the time Darius and I got in the insanely long line for food was when we felt the first few drops hit. We checked around, and there was a massive bank of angry looking clouds moving in from the west. I start my "please pass over quickly" thoughts, Darius predicted it would be a long and heavy rain... and he was right. We headed back to the bog full of meat and bread amid a light but constant sprinkle, arriving in camp just as it started to pick up. Yes, another "it wouldn't be pennsic unless" moment as we packed the chairs under the dining fly and stoked up the fire, followed by parking ourselves under the dining fly with beer and watched as the rain continued to pick up. Fortunatly, in perfect style and with perfect timing, the Yggadrasillies packed into the union tent and made enough noise to draw our attention. It didn't take much, we'd been staring at our feet and stoking up the fire for about half an hour at that point, and given that it was night time we wanted to be doing stuff after a hard day's being lazy. Taking ourselves and our chairs over we secured spots in what was now clambake heaven, and yammered with the Yggadrasillies until Kat and FrostFalcon strolled past. Eventually I got up to go say hi, noting that someone had turned up the gravity, and strolled around in the rain looking for kat who had landed herself in the Yggadrasillies OTHER tent where the OTHER half of the camp had migrated and were busy finding places with silly names on a globe pillow. Sometimes entertainment is found in the most unlikely places.
The next day there was supposed to be a scheduled appointment for pretty much the entire camp to head up to troll and meed Desmondus at troll so we could roll into town and get chinese, with a slight aim at freaking the normals. This seemed like a much better idea now that we didn't have fire to cook on and everything was soaked. Initially it was scheduled for 11:00AM... this seems fine until you're actually at pennsic and you remember that 11:00AM doesn't exist for most people. 11:00AM is in that limbo period where it's too late to stay up for, and it's too early to be awake for. 6:00AM, great, that's just greeting the sun as you run back to your tent to pass out and hide from it's blinding sillyness. 1:00PM, great, that's about the time your tent is baking and getting some fresh air is more important than sleeping/recovering. Anything in between, bad, it just doesn't exist on most days for most people. Once this was realized we asked Karst to fire a message over to Desmondus and Robyn when he left on tuesday and inform them that we needed to re-schedule for 3:00PM. The only real hang up with this plan was we had no way for Karst to contact us ane let us know the results of our attempted schedule change. Figuring we'd just have to play it by ear, Kat checked troll at 11:00AM since she's insane and was awake, and we had the solid plan to leave around 2:00PM. This marks our first real town run, and unfortunatly it was to be our last. We headed to FrostFalcon and Darius' house to get in contact with people and try to get things organized, eventually finding out that Desmondus and Robyn had already gotten chinese as 3:00PM was too late for them, and that they would stop by the house later to say hi while we were waiting for laundry to finish. So, we resorted to going it alone and proceeded to stuff ourselves full of MSG and other such things.
Now that the MSG requirement was settled, we headed back to the house to check the weather and generate the plan for the rest of the day. There wasn't much pennsic happiness anywhere on the weather map, as the radar showed us to be on the trailing edge of one massive red blob, and it's bigger brother was right behind it. It was shaping up to be a rough night outdoors, and the decision was made to avoid said outdoors until the next day. The night was spent watching TV, playing starcraft, and being happy we weren't outside when the main body of the storm hit. Unfortunatly, while we were happy to not be in the middle of what was coming down, thoughts turned to the rest of pennsic and how any remaining enjoyment of it was probably going to get rained out as there were yet more storm cells in the midwest that would be riding the gulf stream over to say hi.
Endgame
We headed back out the next day hoping that things weren't too incredibly wet, and that we might be able to clean things up enough that spending the rest of war AT war would be possible. The sight we ran into was directly counter to that thought. The Yggadrasillies were packing up, as were the folks down the street, and we had seen many cars on the way in that were laden with muddy camping gear being wrangled by people wearing very wet garb. While it was not a happy decision to make, it was decided that we were going to head for the hills. Weather reports were enough to drive most of the people around us out and they had already weathered one storm, so we followed suit. Kat and I had just got our tent emptied, broken down, bagged, and everything into the truck when the first deluge hit. We had to rush through snapping the tonneau cover back on and draping the tarp over the back before joining everyone else in packing under the dining fly. So, wet as hell yet again, we started trying to figure out what else to do while the rain beat down. After re-creating next year's to-do list and sitting on our collective thumbs for awhile with little respite from the rain, the option to take what we had packed already and move out at the next lull started to seem pretty good. Oh, by lull I mean you only got slightly soaked instead of completely drenched. The Yggadrasillies who were already too wet to care about staying under anything came over to say goodbye and leave their contact information, and we headed out.
We were fortunate enough to pull up at the house during a slight break in the rain and we managed to get the important things unloaded. Namely the shower bag, liquor, and beer. A short time later Darius was beating things up in a game of neverwinter nights, followed shortly by us doing some blowuptuating of the world (starcraft) while the women types sat downstairs and watched stargate and cartoons. Spirits ran a little higher once the center of the main storm cell was passing over, however, as it fucking POURED. We found out the extent of exactly how wet things got when FrostFalcon and Kat returned the next day from a day trip back to pennsic they had planned for shopping purposes. Apparently some camps had mud up to their waists, and any camp was a good place to find drowned rats. Then came the most disappointing part of war... the part where we have to begin to think about leaving. At some point Kat found her way upstairs and we discussed leaving the next day. It would mean saving some vacation time at the very least, so we set up a plan for the men types to stay up as late as we possibly could and then I would sleep as late into saturday as I could. This didn't pan out quite as well as expected. Not only is it much harder to stay up and say hello to the sun when you're sitting in front of a computer rather than doing active things at war, something broke in my brain and I woke up after about six hours of sleep and couldn't drift off again. By the time Kat was poking me about getting my shit together to go, all I could do was dread the drive and focus on how much I didn't want to do it. Fortunatly, FrostFalcon and Darius were OK with us staying another night, and after awhile Kat managed to not be too upset over the prospect of staying.
Things went much smoother the next day as far as the preparing to leave part went. I didn't stay up as late, but I didn't wake up until about 2:30, which was about where I needed to be. Kat ended up happy we stayed, as all the women types got together and did craft stuff, which made her happy. Darius and I kept inline with our blowing things up in starcraft and the day proceeded to pass incredibly quickly, it was 9:00PM before I knew it. Enough time to jump through the shower, get our shit together, say our goodbyes, and head to the nearest sheetz for caffeine and conquest. Another year down, only 343 days as of this writing until we get to do it all over again, hopefully without the rain this time. That's 29,712,600 seconds, 1,000,000 seconds is 11.54 days, so every 11.54 days that 29 in the million's slot will tick down once... ooooog.
The drive home was a pretty good one, despite a slightly rocky start which is to be expected. It's rather difficult to want to go back 100%, so it takes an hour or two for things to smooth out so we can settle in. Once we did things got better and we went through the usual paces of driving home. Hitting illinois was the standard blaaaaaaaah event as we passed through the near tangible wall of humidity with the sun behind us making everything rather uncomfortable and bright. It was the first time in the ENTIRE trip that I had to run the air conditioner. This. Place. Fucking. Sucks.
Aftermath - a.k.a. back at work, or at least trying to be
Heh.. this part I normally wouldn't include, but I had to throw it in just because Murphy (of Murphy's Law) got up and kicked my ass when he knew it would hurt the most.
I decided to hit the fuckit key and actually stay on vacation until wednesday. In all reality I could have gone back Tuesday and saved the vacation time, but I took stock of my mental state and realized that I didn't even want to sign on to IRC because it meant dealing with mundania. Taking that into account, I'm pretty sure I'd have gone postal if I went back to work. So, wednesday, I got up and went through the normal work day motions. Once I got in the truck and got on my way I started running up the list of things I needed to do.
First and foremost, I needed a new vehicle pass to get on base because I had finally put my real liscense plates on and the pass I'd been using was for the temporary plates. Roll up to the gate, say I need a pass, listen to the guy standing around doing nothing read all the stuff we wrote on the truck, eventually head into the gate parking lot. Now, to get a pass, you need the following: Driver's Liscense, DoD ID if you don't have a sponsor on base, proof of insurance, registration, and valid plates. I had all of them, but I was unaware that my insurance card was expired. This was pointed out to me and the options I was left with were: park off base and walk in, have someone come pick me up at the gate, or provide proof of insurance that was current. Mildly irritated I called into the office and told them I was headed back home to get my current insurance card and took off.
Now, given that the card had expired very recently, I figured the new ones would be stuffed in the mail box with all the other stuff that had been piling up. I get back, check the mail, no dice. Head inside to go through the massive stack of stuff on the end table where all the mail piles up, no dice. I go through the OTHER stack of stuff where all the old mail that gets moved off the end table usually piles up, no dice (I really need dice at this point). A little confused, I decide to call Geico to find out what the hell happened. I had already seen the letter FROM Geico informing me that my lien holder had requested full coverage insurance for the truck as it's state law, VIN number and everything right there, so I'm even more perplexed now because I know they know about it. After about fifteen minutes on the phone with the agent I discover that not only do they not have the truck on the policy, the shadow (kat's car) isn't on there, and the beretta is. The beretta SHOULD have gone away the moment the state applied for a junk title after the police towed it away at the end of june for whatever reason they had. I had called the belleville sheriff's office and asked what they do with cars that nobody comes to get, and they said they just impound them while they wait for a junk title to be issued, which basically annihilates the vehicle's existance as it is and it becomes propery of the state. I had paid the beretta's loan off about a week prior to them towing it, and it was going to run me fifty bucks to get it out of the tow yard. Given that it was on the other side of the county and it wasn't exactly driveable, I'd have to pay to have it towed yet again. So now we're up to one hundred bucks to get a car back that doesn't run and my only real option is to sell it for salvage. Selling it to salvage was worth 40 bucks, thus the decision was made to let it rot since I didn't want to see it ever again.
So, that aside, half an hour later I've got my insurance straightened out with the truck and the shadow on the policy and the beretta NOT on it. The part that really screws me up above all others is the fact that I've been paying $110 and change a month since I got the truck and the beretta got junked. I *had* been paying $136 a month for the beretta and the shadow with the beretta still under loan. After getting all the shit straightened out with Geico, guess what? The quoted rate is $110 and change, exactly what I had been paying since I got the truck... SOMEWHERE there had to have been SOMEONE who changed things and had it right. A little bit later the agent and I get things sorted out so that she managed to get a copy of my proof of insurance e-mailed to me.
Yay, armed with what I hope will be acceptable since I wasn't really sure how the gate guards were going to handle documentation that was obviously generated by your standard laser printer. I figured it was worth a shot at the very least, and headed back to the base. The guards on the curb just waved me through, and it was pretty obvious they recognized the truck... hard to miss given all the shit that's written on it. Things act like they're going my way after that, I get a pass issued and head out on my way to the office. Then the next shovel full of shit hits the fan.
I'm tooling along through the officer's housing block that I have to go through to get to the office, and one of the SP's clocks me going 27 miles an hour. For the LONGEST time, pretty much ever since I lived on base during 1994-1996, that area has been 30 MPH. Recent road work drew the attention of the base planners, and they decided to reduce it to 20. I guess they ignored the bit about that road being the ONLY way to get back to the main part of the actual air base without going to the other side of the strip. They also skipped the part where they needed to realize that every road that connects to that ~1,000 foot section is 30 MPH... including the other main road that runs through the residential area. So now I've got to go through getting stopped by the police and all that goes into it. Fifteen minutes later I'm underway yet again, fortunatly with just a warning. I thought Murphy was done with me at that point, oh what foolish thoughts. I hadn't even dropped my stuff off at my desk before I get a couple requests for help, and my supervisor informs me there's a compusec inspection rolling through on friday. People say I have the rage, AND IT'S DAYS LIKE THOSE THAT MAKE THEM RIGHT!!!!!!111111111111
The end, bravo if you actually made it this far!
Ah well, carrying on about how things are currently is for another post that I'll probably never make given that everyone knows the story... they live it most every day. This is supposed to be a recap of pennsic and the events directly surrounding it beginning to end. So if you're brave, and you have half an hour to read, I give you...
THE PENNSIC RECAP MEGAPOST!!!!111
Disclaimer type thing: Everyone knows my memory's a little wonky at times. If I messed something up, I did my level best to get things chronologically correct. Now... how many of you immediatly thought "anatomically correct" when I said chronologically correct? Busted.
Endless preparation
Heh.. I have to giggle at this part when I look back and do a comparison and note how things have built up when it comes to pennsic preparation. Our first pennsic was initially to be a side event that we were attending as part of Desmondus and Robyn's wedding. Kat (a.k.a. MarbleEye) threw together a few sewing projects as we were told it was in bad form to wear normal clothes, and I got the oil in the beretta changed which didn't help at all when the water pump broke on the way out to PA. Then, after getting to pennsic after the wedding, we made the discovery that it is the best thing since pants with pockets and made plans to be back next year.
During the first eight or so months after that first war we didn't really do anything except talk about how cool it was, and that we were most definitly going back, then after that we hit the realization that we weren't really prepared at all for a second war. Kat kicked the sewing into high gear and I went into a frenzy of reading up on various garb I thought I might want, followed by a flurry of buying things online and then calling the merchants directly for rush orders to make up for lost time. This time around I had the oil AND coolant changed since I'd blown out a radiator recently. Neither of these helped when the alternator went out on the way BACK from our second war. Ironically enough, however, by the time we actually got to our second pennsic I didn't use half the garb I'd gone through so much annoyance to have on time. I spent 99.9% of war in a utilikilt being lazy.
Now that we had TWO pennsic vacations to use as frame of reference, we felt we might actually be ready. It was our third pennsic, and it was pennsic 33. This made kat happy as she feels odd numbers are lucky, and three in particular is good since it's TEH DEFAULT LUCKEH NUMBAR!!!!!!1111 and it's also odd. The fact our second war was pennsic 32 is how we explain how various bits of it got a little out of sorts in places, too many even numbers in one place. Inline with wanting things to go smoothly since this was GOING to be our lucky year, come hell or high water, we got to planning pretty early. Our only real hang up was we didn't start shopping for fabric early enough, not a massive deal, it just meant we had to alter things a tiny bit.
Once the fabric purchase mis-timing was overcome in style we moved on to the last couple months before war and the seemingly never ending planning began. We were constantly generating lists, managing bills, saving every last bit of change we could, getting a truck to replace the beretta that finally blew up for good, and on and on and on. By the beginning of july we knew exactly what box we were packing any given item in, we'd had a dry run setting up our tent and had hosed it down with camp-dry, we had even gone so far as to determine what known expenses would be taken from what source of money after we went nuts paying down the credit card and counting out all the change we had hidden from ourselves. In the end THIS is what we had as our final version of the pennsic money plan. Once we were actually within striking distance (a few weeks) of war we started to organize the massive pile of stuff we'd been accumulating in the corner of the computer room for the last few months. It was nice to have our own place to get it all set up lemme tell 'ye. We could actually plan things properly, up to and including putting tape on the floor that marked off an area the size of our truck bed... to facilitate a simulated packing right there on the computer room floor.
In the midst of all the list generating, budgeting, and pre-flight planning, my attention turned to making sure the truck would weather the trip without any mechanical difficulty. I had no intention of having anything to do with a mechanic at least until we were on our own turf once again. Almost all the stops were pulled out for this pre-flight maintenance run. A friend of mine helped me change the serpentine belt, oil, oil filter, and spark plugs. I also put a call in to my mechanic to have the transmission fluid and fluid filter changed. The mechanic part was a smidge annoying... I called him on wednesday the week before we were supposed to leave figuring that would be plenty of time, but nooooooooo, he was going out of town that afternoon and wouldn't be back until the thursday we were to leave. This resulted in having to schedule the service for ass early in the morning on thursday when I was supposed to be getting sleep so I could make the drive to PA in our usual overnight style. Fed Ex has nothing on me, let it be known.
When our final day of waiting (thursday) came we got the truck up to speed on it's transmission fluid and were feeling pretty good about everything except how much sleep we weren't getting but didn't really care about. Several bits of going to sleep and waking back up to do something, topped off by a fruitless attempt to get more sleep before we needed to run our pre-flight lists at 8:00 PM. Yes, we actually use these terms for the stuff we do, and it's all run by the clock, even I can be organized when I want to be. HERE is the final copy of this year's pre-flight list. For the record, pre-flight is anything we need to do between when we have to stop tottering around the appartment or sleeping, and when we get all four wheels on east bound I-70. Such things as running the last bit of regular gas out of the tank and refilling it with premium, getting road snacks, icing the cooler, and getting fast food. Traditionally the fast food takes the form of McD's for reasons I can't fathom. Part of the pennsic ritual now is for me to get McNuggets and Kat feeds them to me while I drive. I think I got more sweet n' sour in my beard than I got in my mouth this year, the truck is quite a bouncy ride at times.
Where it all tried to fall apart
Yes, the fates, or whatever forces out there determine when tragic comedy of the cosmic sort will ensue, did make a semi successful attempt to fuck with us. The drive was set to end at Drazster and Arisonn's place, as we needed a layover point to stay at for recovery purposes and because troll doesn't open until noon. Up until the universe's true attempt to mess with our heads the only points of conflict we'd had so far was a slight mix up in indianapolis, and an hour long white knuckle stretch on the last bit of 70 before we got on the turnpike towards Drazster and Arisonn's. The Indianapolis annoyance was due to the fact the city council of indianapolis has a special slush fund they use to keep at least one road construction crew present at all times. They use this crew to redirect various sections of road just because they feel like it and I'm sure they find it funny. Unfortunatly they always seem to know we're coming and they move the ever present construction crew over to 70 just so they can mess with us... I swear, it's true. Then there was the white knuckle drive I mentioned which was mostly caused by my not being used to driving on massive hills that have sharp curves in the middle of them, populated primarily by insane truckers and PA drivers doing everything they can to cause a fifty car pileup. Once all that was managed we just had to find our destination, and that was where the cosmos decided to step in for it's giggles.
The true problem mainly related to our directions, which we had gotten from yahoo given that they're usually a little easier to understand when compared to mapquest's. Sadly, they failed us at the very end, and told us to go right instead of left, and we ended up 20 minutes in the wrong direction. I guess it just won't ever be pennsic unless we get lost in some way, but we're getting skilled at minmizing the effects. Eventually we gave up and called Arisonn to bail us out before we got any more lost, and she got a good giggle when she found out where we ended up. A short conversation later and we were headed back in the other direction, to a BP we'd been looking for and THOUGHT we had found... it turns out we found every BP in the world, except the one we had been looking for. Fuck you yahoo, even though I still love you and we'll be using you again next year I'm sure. Once we found the correct BP and drove in two complete circles trying to get behind Arisonn (she's silly and likes circles) we were good to go. A few hills later we were arrived and ready to pass the fuck out for a few hours, especially since caffeine was starting to not help me at all. Usually, right after the sun comes up, I start the caffeine. When I'm on long hauls I usually call my preferred road drink, bawls, "combat drugs". Those lovely things you have access to in most futuristic role-playing games that give you a massive burst of speed, strength, and mental fortitude for a period of time... then drop you off a cliff. It works the same way to a lesser degree with my road habit of caffiene and conquest. I drink the first one, and after it dies off I usually need two in quick succession to get me where I want to be, after that I have to keep the flow pretty constant or I end up feeling strung out... FUN!.
Back for round three - Pennsic War XXXIII
The few hours passed, I slept, and somehow managed to roll over onto both my arms and they fell completely asleep... someone explain to me why we don't have a built in response to ROLL THE FUCK OVER when we are lying on a limb, [leary]explain it to me god, explain it to me please, I want it explained to me right now JESUS!!!![/leary] At the very least, a response to roll over when lying on two limbs at the same time. It did made taking my wake up shower pretty interesting at least, try sitting on your hands and then jump directly in the shower to wash your hair. The lack of feeling and severely impared dexterity makes it an interesting challenge, at least when you've got two feet of hair to wash.
Once I had regained some relative measure of awareness and everyone was done packing or re-packing their stuff, we took off once again. Back up onto the turnpike with it's hills, curves, and nutty drivers. It was better this time at least, there were fewer insane truckers, so I knew if there was an accident at least there was no massive behemoth truck waiting to squish me into so much human jelly. The only stop between us and pennsic now was the most awesome beer place on the face of the planet, case's beer. I'd had a informal standing order (don't ask me how that works) for a case of skullsplitter dating back a couple months, and there was no way I was going to set foot in pennsic without it. Especially considering the case ran 55 bucks, which is fuckin' cheap as hell for 24 bottles of the best beer ever.
With the final pre-war requirement settled, we headed back to cooper's lake. Back into the trees on the ever familiar, narrow as hell in places, bumpy as hell road that leads to the gate and then troll. Time to go off on a tangent! Troll is a strange place, it's the boundary between normal life and the massive reality filter that is pennsic. It's pretty much where I drop everything that's built up over the course of the year and get my brain ready for the next 7-10 days. The first year I found it a bit annoying even though everyone was quite nice, and I thought it was silly when they said "welcome home", but by the time I left I understood why they said it and thought it to be very novel. The second year everyone at troll was in high spirits and being silly, but they said "have a good pennsic" instead which was a small letdown as silly as it may seem. This year we ended up getting our paperwork managed by some know it all fuckwad who insisted on acting like we were taking up his precious time. The part of me that was offloading the icky parts of mundane life really wanted to drag him across the table and tape his mouth shut.
Once we were all done buying our medallion string we started our slow decent into the bog, and everything was quite lovely. That brings me to another major part of war that kat and I like, and it's usually one of the first things we notice when we start down into the bog: the weather. Y'see... in Illinois it's pretty fucking warm and usually incredibly humid, as we are at the tail end of the main section of the gulf air stream. The gulf air stream is a massive air flow that comes from the gulf of mexico heading north-east over oklahoma, kansas, missouri, and most of southern illinois before it hits the northern air currents that chicago is so well known for. Unfortunatly it is primarily consisted of very hot and humid air. This shit is almost constantly flowing over or close to us from april until about september, after that we get tilted away from the sun far enough that we build up a slight defense in the form of a wall of cold air that lets the northern stream push down a little further and fend off the gulf stream. PA, however, generally gets a downdraft that stems off the gulf stream. After the air current pushes over us it goes north, and some of it gets deflected southward as it collides with northern air masses, which is good and bad. It's good because the air gets cooled quite a bit and keeps the temperature low, it's bad because when the air cools all that moisture that kicks illinois' heat index up as high as 110 degrees condenses and creates small monsoons, at least that's what I gather from the weather people, looking at weather maps, and all that other weird predicting the future crap.
Arrival at camp was it's usual interesting self. We pulled up to see FrostFalcon standing and watching us do so, Darius rolled in from somewhere, and we piled out of the truck. Unpacking the libation was it's usual fun, with the handing over of two bottles of everclear, and the breaking out of one bottle of the much anticipated skullsplitter for myself. The tent went up nicely given that it was kat and I who gave it the dry run setup this year instead of her and her dad. Then came the great unpacking and the donning of garb, or at least a utilikilt, followed by a nice boil down of sitting around and doing nothing until Drazster went up to park his car and I opted to be lazy and leave the truck where it was.
The next five days were their usual pennsic selves. Drazster gets up before everyone and runs off to see what classes he wants to mess around with, everyone else gets up and contemplates food for a few hours, thinking about and discussing going up top ensues, most opt to be lazy, showers get managed, general conversation, more food, Drazster comes back usually with Arisonn unless she's making mountain pies, Darius wanders around a bit before dark, so on and so forth until dark when something might happen depending on what day it is. It was pretty nice this year, we had an addition to the house in the form of Ron, one of Drazster's friends from mundania. Karst and Kathy were around for a few days as well, so we were all actually able to sit around and do nothing together as a group larger than four.
Other good things that happened this year would be such items as the tensions on the block seem to have eased a great deal. Last year house wynn seemed to be in a bit of an uproar and it was spilling over the edge and affecting everyone around them. As I recall it mostly related to land space, but there were some other elements that were never fully explained to me that were making it extra special nasty. This year it seemed to mostly focus itself and the general consensus was the leader of wynn does some strange and unusual, sometimes unacceptable things, but it's limited to him so it's easier to manage. Oh, and their drummers need practice. Yggadrasil, our neighbors, were in their usual style. Lots of loud and boisterous activity and even more just sitting around talking from them. I guess that's what you get when your house is run by pirates and associated types.
The days passed, the bread boules died by my hand (alot), and people were getting a little more active. Kat and FrostFalcon took a turkish bath class where they ended up being nekkid around a whole bunch of other women who were also nekkid. The class revolved around bath and beauty stuff, but there was apparently much trading back rubs and doing henna painting. If you're male and you don't get a half stack from the thought of this, you need to take the clamp off your cock or talk to Dr. Ruth. Darius and I were sitting around being lazy when the parade of soon-to-be-nekkid women passed by our camp on their way to the classic swimming hole... it was ALMOST enough to get us to move ourselves over to the classic and be lazy there while watching the nekkid women do their thing. You might be thinking "almost? aren't you the one who JUST got done saying we need to check our wangs if they aren't at attention?" To this I say: fuck you, it's pennsic, getting me to move at all during the day usually requires an act of god, a good deal of poking from Kat, or the promise of a bread boule.
Mother nature feels left out
Things were going well, Kat REALLY liked the turkish bath class and found she was almost instantly comfortable at the classic. She also took an interest in drumming and started talking about getting one... yeah, I didn't see it comming either. We'd had a mass house get together the day before where we painted each other with woad mixed with ammonia in an attempt to make it semi permanent. We still had plenty of libation to go around, and later that night we had ladie's night followed by men without pants... things were doing pretty good. The plan for the rest of the day was Darius and I heading up top (I know, we moved, shame on us) for bread boules while Kat and FrostFalcon went to ladies night. After that we would obviously be going to men without pants for the getting silly.
About the time Darius and I got in the insanely long line for food was when we felt the first few drops hit. We checked around, and there was a massive bank of angry looking clouds moving in from the west. I start my "please pass over quickly" thoughts, Darius predicted it would be a long and heavy rain... and he was right. We headed back to the bog full of meat and bread amid a light but constant sprinkle, arriving in camp just as it started to pick up. Yes, another "it wouldn't be pennsic unless" moment as we packed the chairs under the dining fly and stoked up the fire, followed by parking ourselves under the dining fly with beer and watched as the rain continued to pick up. Fortunatly, in perfect style and with perfect timing, the Yggadrasillies packed into the union tent and made enough noise to draw our attention. It didn't take much, we'd been staring at our feet and stoking up the fire for about half an hour at that point, and given that it was night time we wanted to be doing stuff after a hard day's being lazy. Taking ourselves and our chairs over we secured spots in what was now clambake heaven, and yammered with the Yggadrasillies until Kat and FrostFalcon strolled past. Eventually I got up to go say hi, noting that someone had turned up the gravity, and strolled around in the rain looking for kat who had landed herself in the Yggadrasillies OTHER tent where the OTHER half of the camp had migrated and were busy finding places with silly names on a globe pillow. Sometimes entertainment is found in the most unlikely places.
The next day there was supposed to be a scheduled appointment for pretty much the entire camp to head up to troll and meed Desmondus at troll so we could roll into town and get chinese, with a slight aim at freaking the normals. This seemed like a much better idea now that we didn't have fire to cook on and everything was soaked. Initially it was scheduled for 11:00AM... this seems fine until you're actually at pennsic and you remember that 11:00AM doesn't exist for most people. 11:00AM is in that limbo period where it's too late to stay up for, and it's too early to be awake for. 6:00AM, great, that's just greeting the sun as you run back to your tent to pass out and hide from it's blinding sillyness. 1:00PM, great, that's about the time your tent is baking and getting some fresh air is more important than sleeping/recovering. Anything in between, bad, it just doesn't exist on most days for most people. Once this was realized we asked Karst to fire a message over to Desmondus and Robyn when he left on tuesday and inform them that we needed to re-schedule for 3:00PM. The only real hang up with this plan was we had no way for Karst to contact us ane let us know the results of our attempted schedule change. Figuring we'd just have to play it by ear, Kat checked troll at 11:00AM since she's insane and was awake, and we had the solid plan to leave around 2:00PM. This marks our first real town run, and unfortunatly it was to be our last. We headed to FrostFalcon and Darius' house to get in contact with people and try to get things organized, eventually finding out that Desmondus and Robyn had already gotten chinese as 3:00PM was too late for them, and that they would stop by the house later to say hi while we were waiting for laundry to finish. So, we resorted to going it alone and proceeded to stuff ourselves full of MSG and other such things.
Now that the MSG requirement was settled, we headed back to the house to check the weather and generate the plan for the rest of the day. There wasn't much pennsic happiness anywhere on the weather map, as the radar showed us to be on the trailing edge of one massive red blob, and it's bigger brother was right behind it. It was shaping up to be a rough night outdoors, and the decision was made to avoid said outdoors until the next day. The night was spent watching TV, playing starcraft, and being happy we weren't outside when the main body of the storm hit. Unfortunatly, while we were happy to not be in the middle of what was coming down, thoughts turned to the rest of pennsic and how any remaining enjoyment of it was probably going to get rained out as there were yet more storm cells in the midwest that would be riding the gulf stream over to say hi.
Endgame
We headed back out the next day hoping that things weren't too incredibly wet, and that we might be able to clean things up enough that spending the rest of war AT war would be possible. The sight we ran into was directly counter to that thought. The Yggadrasillies were packing up, as were the folks down the street, and we had seen many cars on the way in that were laden with muddy camping gear being wrangled by people wearing very wet garb. While it was not a happy decision to make, it was decided that we were going to head for the hills. Weather reports were enough to drive most of the people around us out and they had already weathered one storm, so we followed suit. Kat and I had just got our tent emptied, broken down, bagged, and everything into the truck when the first deluge hit. We had to rush through snapping the tonneau cover back on and draping the tarp over the back before joining everyone else in packing under the dining fly. So, wet as hell yet again, we started trying to figure out what else to do while the rain beat down. After re-creating next year's to-do list and sitting on our collective thumbs for awhile with little respite from the rain, the option to take what we had packed already and move out at the next lull started to seem pretty good. Oh, by lull I mean you only got slightly soaked instead of completely drenched. The Yggadrasillies who were already too wet to care about staying under anything came over to say goodbye and leave their contact information, and we headed out.
We were fortunate enough to pull up at the house during a slight break in the rain and we managed to get the important things unloaded. Namely the shower bag, liquor, and beer. A short time later Darius was beating things up in a game of neverwinter nights, followed shortly by us doing some blowuptuating of the world (starcraft) while the women types sat downstairs and watched stargate and cartoons. Spirits ran a little higher once the center of the main storm cell was passing over, however, as it fucking POURED. We found out the extent of exactly how wet things got when FrostFalcon and Kat returned the next day from a day trip back to pennsic they had planned for shopping purposes. Apparently some camps had mud up to their waists, and any camp was a good place to find drowned rats. Then came the most disappointing part of war... the part where we have to begin to think about leaving. At some point Kat found her way upstairs and we discussed leaving the next day. It would mean saving some vacation time at the very least, so we set up a plan for the men types to stay up as late as we possibly could and then I would sleep as late into saturday as I could. This didn't pan out quite as well as expected. Not only is it much harder to stay up and say hello to the sun when you're sitting in front of a computer rather than doing active things at war, something broke in my brain and I woke up after about six hours of sleep and couldn't drift off again. By the time Kat was poking me about getting my shit together to go, all I could do was dread the drive and focus on how much I didn't want to do it. Fortunatly, FrostFalcon and Darius were OK with us staying another night, and after awhile Kat managed to not be too upset over the prospect of staying.
Things went much smoother the next day as far as the preparing to leave part went. I didn't stay up as late, but I didn't wake up until about 2:30, which was about where I needed to be. Kat ended up happy we stayed, as all the women types got together and did craft stuff, which made her happy. Darius and I kept inline with our blowing things up in starcraft and the day proceeded to pass incredibly quickly, it was 9:00PM before I knew it. Enough time to jump through the shower, get our shit together, say our goodbyes, and head to the nearest sheetz for caffeine and conquest. Another year down, only 343 days as of this writing until we get to do it all over again, hopefully without the rain this time. That's 29,712,600 seconds, 1,000,000 seconds is 11.54 days, so every 11.54 days that 29 in the million's slot will tick down once... ooooog.
The drive home was a pretty good one, despite a slightly rocky start which is to be expected. It's rather difficult to want to go back 100%, so it takes an hour or two for things to smooth out so we can settle in. Once we did things got better and we went through the usual paces of driving home. Hitting illinois was the standard blaaaaaaaah event as we passed through the near tangible wall of humidity with the sun behind us making everything rather uncomfortable and bright. It was the first time in the ENTIRE trip that I had to run the air conditioner. This. Place. Fucking. Sucks.
Aftermath - a.k.a. back at work, or at least trying to be
Heh.. this part I normally wouldn't include, but I had to throw it in just because Murphy (of Murphy's Law) got up and kicked my ass when he knew it would hurt the most.
I decided to hit the fuckit key and actually stay on vacation until wednesday. In all reality I could have gone back Tuesday and saved the vacation time, but I took stock of my mental state and realized that I didn't even want to sign on to IRC because it meant dealing with mundania. Taking that into account, I'm pretty sure I'd have gone postal if I went back to work. So, wednesday, I got up and went through the normal work day motions. Once I got in the truck and got on my way I started running up the list of things I needed to do.
First and foremost, I needed a new vehicle pass to get on base because I had finally put my real liscense plates on and the pass I'd been using was for the temporary plates. Roll up to the gate, say I need a pass, listen to the guy standing around doing nothing read all the stuff we wrote on the truck, eventually head into the gate parking lot. Now, to get a pass, you need the following: Driver's Liscense, DoD ID if you don't have a sponsor on base, proof of insurance, registration, and valid plates. I had all of them, but I was unaware that my insurance card was expired. This was pointed out to me and the options I was left with were: park off base and walk in, have someone come pick me up at the gate, or provide proof of insurance that was current. Mildly irritated I called into the office and told them I was headed back home to get my current insurance card and took off.
Now, given that the card had expired very recently, I figured the new ones would be stuffed in the mail box with all the other stuff that had been piling up. I get back, check the mail, no dice. Head inside to go through the massive stack of stuff on the end table where all the mail piles up, no dice. I go through the OTHER stack of stuff where all the old mail that gets moved off the end table usually piles up, no dice (I really need dice at this point). A little confused, I decide to call Geico to find out what the hell happened. I had already seen the letter FROM Geico informing me that my lien holder had requested full coverage insurance for the truck as it's state law, VIN number and everything right there, so I'm even more perplexed now because I know they know about it. After about fifteen minutes on the phone with the agent I discover that not only do they not have the truck on the policy, the shadow (kat's car) isn't on there, and the beretta is. The beretta SHOULD have gone away the moment the state applied for a junk title after the police towed it away at the end of june for whatever reason they had. I had called the belleville sheriff's office and asked what they do with cars that nobody comes to get, and they said they just impound them while they wait for a junk title to be issued, which basically annihilates the vehicle's existance as it is and it becomes propery of the state. I had paid the beretta's loan off about a week prior to them towing it, and it was going to run me fifty bucks to get it out of the tow yard. Given that it was on the other side of the county and it wasn't exactly driveable, I'd have to pay to have it towed yet again. So now we're up to one hundred bucks to get a car back that doesn't run and my only real option is to sell it for salvage. Selling it to salvage was worth 40 bucks, thus the decision was made to let it rot since I didn't want to see it ever again.
So, that aside, half an hour later I've got my insurance straightened out with the truck and the shadow on the policy and the beretta NOT on it. The part that really screws me up above all others is the fact that I've been paying $110 and change a month since I got the truck and the beretta got junked. I *had* been paying $136 a month for the beretta and the shadow with the beretta still under loan. After getting all the shit straightened out with Geico, guess what? The quoted rate is $110 and change, exactly what I had been paying since I got the truck... SOMEWHERE there had to have been SOMEONE who changed things and had it right. A little bit later the agent and I get things sorted out so that she managed to get a copy of my proof of insurance e-mailed to me.
Yay, armed with what I hope will be acceptable since I wasn't really sure how the gate guards were going to handle documentation that was obviously generated by your standard laser printer. I figured it was worth a shot at the very least, and headed back to the base. The guards on the curb just waved me through, and it was pretty obvious they recognized the truck... hard to miss given all the shit that's written on it. Things act like they're going my way after that, I get a pass issued and head out on my way to the office. Then the next shovel full of shit hits the fan.
I'm tooling along through the officer's housing block that I have to go through to get to the office, and one of the SP's clocks me going 27 miles an hour. For the LONGEST time, pretty much ever since I lived on base during 1994-1996, that area has been 30 MPH. Recent road work drew the attention of the base planners, and they decided to reduce it to 20. I guess they ignored the bit about that road being the ONLY way to get back to the main part of the actual air base without going to the other side of the strip. They also skipped the part where they needed to realize that every road that connects to that ~1,000 foot section is 30 MPH... including the other main road that runs through the residential area. So now I've got to go through getting stopped by the police and all that goes into it. Fifteen minutes later I'm underway yet again, fortunatly with just a warning. I thought Murphy was done with me at that point, oh what foolish thoughts. I hadn't even dropped my stuff off at my desk before I get a couple requests for help, and my supervisor informs me there's a compusec inspection rolling through on friday. People say I have the rage, AND IT'S DAYS LIKE THOSE THAT MAKE THEM RIGHT!!!!!!111111111111
The end, bravo if you actually made it this far!