Location: Knoxville, TN

Russell and I are headed for the company terminal in Atlanta tomorrow. The old beast, as stormodacentury once called her, is being put out to pasture.  That's right folks, I'm getting a new truck!  I was expecting this to happen sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, as the odometer was quickly approaching the 400,000 mile mark.  It's happening a bit sooner than I anticipated.  I'm not looking forward to lugging things out of one truck and into another, but I am looking forward to a new truck.  Hopefully it's a new, new truck so I don't have to worry about moving again for a while.  This will make my 5th truck in 3 years.  I'm also hoping to get a Freightliner, as they have much more roomier interiors; a necessity these days with the constant riding companions since I began training.

Anyway, in honor of the the ol' girl, I thought it'd be fun to do a little photo tribute to my time spent with her over the past year.  She is rather photogenic, and I have more photos of her than any other truck I've driven so far.

These first two photos were taken the same day as the one I use in my icon, at a warehouse in Denver.  It was a bright, sunny day and I had just washed her the day before, so she was pretty, shiny and awesome looking.





When I think back over the course of a year, she's been there for a LOT.  She took me to San Diego to see the Beastie Boys and my friend Cara.  At the literal other end of the spectrum, she took me for the first time ever into Maine.  She knows about a secret mission I made in Nevada that I never wrote about on LiveJournal because the photos turned-out so awful.  She survived Jason!  She's been parked under two different shoe trees while I oooohed and ahhhed.

( I took the following photo of her while photographing the Indiana Shoe Tree... )

I've really outdone myself this time.

Location: Wheeling, WV

My weekend in Boston was fun.  Of course, I'd expect nothing less given my veritable hostess with the mostest mandy_moon.

I had decided to stay in a hotel for the duration of the weekend in Woburn, just north of the city.  Since they had an ideal location for truck parking, I decided to drop the trailer and drive the truck bobtail to Becky's house rather than take the train.  Upon my arrival, she immediately wanted to know if she could go sit in it.  I suggested we go for a ride.  So we tooled around the south side of Boston for a while in the big truck. 

When we got back to her place we did some photographic shenanigans for a while.  Let's just say that there is a sequel to the Creepy Lawn Ornament Guy.  In fact, she's already made her entry about it. Every attempt was made to go over-the-top with the story, to make it obvious that Claude Crawley is a hoax.  The funny thing is, when you read for through the comments, it seems purely plausible to most everyone that this sort of thing just happens in the world of mandy_moon.  It's kind of funny.  I suppose this means the Saga of Claude might be extended to a trilogy.

Next we played chess.  I had suggested this as I know she's an avid fan of the game.  I was sure she would kick my butt because, like, she's read chess books and knows defensive strategies whereas I'm totally self-taught, play too aggressive, and all too often make dumb moves without looking them over properly.  I'm proud to say that I rather thoroughly trounced her in several games.  But I think she's still a better player than me, she's just rusty.  The last game we were playing, which was cancelled due to the arrival of a guest, she was well on her way to beating me rather soundly.  She was starting to get her game back.  I look forward to playing her again some day.

The guest was commodorevic, otherwise known as Adam.  Adam is the person for whom the entire Crazy Lawn Ornament Guy scheme was conceived.  Adam, afterall, found the ornaments in the first place.  Becky decided she wanted to impress him by meeting the owner of the house, but figured the reality would be much less interesting than the possibilities of the imagination, and so Claude Crawley was born.  Adam had still not been clued-in to the ruse, so all week she had been telling him how an lj.friend was coming to visit and he had to meet this person.  Of course, in the time since the original scam was perpetrated I've cut my hair, not to mention, the glasses do wonders for masking my identity in the photos.  He didn't recognize me at all.  Eventually, she spilled the beans and told him though.

All three of us then went to get some dinner at a place called Bukowksi's where I had the best grilled cheese sandwich ever (havarti and tomato on sour dough!).  They also had Maker's Mark on the bar so I was a content lad.  Then we went to see Kung Fu Hustle.  If you haven't seen this movie yet, go... you can read this later, go now, I mean it.  I haven't laughed so hard and for so long in a very long time.  Like, eyes-watering, side-splitting funny.  I'm not kidding!  Go. right. now!

See?  I'm right here where you left me.  Wasn't that so worth it, though?  No, really...  there's no need to thank me.  But I'm glad you took my advice and went.  Oh, I know.  Funniest shit, ever.  I'm gonna learn that Palm move.  Oh hell, yeah.  Anyway, where was I....

After that we headed for Coolidge Corner to an old movie theatre where, upon the stroke of midnight all the geeks and nerds in Boston would gather mysteryously.  Ok, not so mysteriously, it was am Atari 2600 "competition".  Asteroids, Space Invaders, etc.  They had hooked the Ataris up to projectors so that they played on movie screens and held loose, timed play-offs to determine who would be in a raffle for the "championship" round which included Frogger and Pitfall.  They even had a NES room set-up where they had timed  run-throughs of the first world of Super Mario Brothers.  In the NES room is where I too briefly got to say "hi" to ruxxell.  See I've known Russ off and on for about 7 years now, first on IRC and for the past 3 years on LJ, but we've never met.  We basically got to exchange hi's then our trio split for the championship room as it is was beginning but Russ hadn't had his turn at SMB yet.  I was hoping to run into him again before the end of the night but it didn't happen.

After the championships were over, they screened The Wizard; the really bad Fred Savage/Beau Bridges/Christian Slater movie that was basically a fancy advertisement for Nintendo, particularly the release of Super Mario 3.  Russ suggested in his journal that watching it in that atmosphere with the rowdy kids yelling things at the screen was the best way to see it.  But dude, you weren't sitting right.be.hind.them.  It got old after a while.  What's scary is these guys like, knew all the dialogue to the movie.  You know how some people watch Monty Python's Holy Grail and know all the dialogue?  Yeah, it's like The Wizard was these guys' own personal Rocky Horror Picture Show.

By the time we got back to Becky's place it was something like 4am.  I bid adieu to my companions for the evening and told Becky if she wanted to hang-out on Sunday to just give me a call.  Adam added that he would have to work which sucks, he was fun to hang-out with, too.  I made it back to the hotel and crashed... and crashed...

...until Becky called me at 1pm!  She had something to do but she'd call me later, she said.  So, I got online via the hotel's wireless and did something I haven't done in a loooong time..  I did some heavy duty downloading of animal porn things to peruse later.  About 7 gigs worth.  That makes me happy.  It was at about 4pm I heard from Becky again, so it was off to the Land of Moon once again while the laptop continued to leech away.

We took Buddy for a walk in the arboretum that's near her house.  It wasn't an ideal day; it was actually kind of cold and it was threatening to rain, but it was a lovely walk all the same.  A lot of things are blooming this time of year, which made for a pretty walk.  In all the fun the day before I hadn't bothered pulling the camera out, but I had brought it along with me for the walk.  Proving once again that I can take a decent photo of a static object but suck at shooting live subjects, here is my favorite photo of the day...



...followed by some pretty bad ones of Buddy and Becky. ( Cut to protect small children and the elderly from bad photography )

We walked back to the house and more conspiratorial photographic hi-jinks ensued that involved me being in so very high places.  Then Becky made us some bowls of Mac 'n Cheese and we watched The Simpsons.  I got to eat my Mac 'n Cheese out of Sport Lily's motivational cereal bowl!  How cool is that?  It's a good thing Sport Lily wasn't around though, she'd have kicked my scrawny ass for sure if she caught me eating from her bowl. 

I excused myself early as we both had to be up early in the morning.  We hugged goodbye, thus ending another adventure with the delightful mandy_moon.  I won't descend into another lengthy string of superlatives about my pal Becky, I did plenty of that after the first time we met.  I will reiterate however that she's as much fun in person as the journal she keeps and should you ever have an opportunity to meet her, go do it, without hesitation.  Just like Kung Fu Hustle, it's something you don't want to miss.

You may recall a while back I expressed a desire to do an "Ate My Balls" website just for fun.  In that entry, democritus suggested that I do a "mandy_moon Ate My Balls" website.  That was an awesome idea, but, better yet... I've made it an LJ community!  I give you, best_balls_ever, aka "Mandy Moon At My Balls".  The inaugural photo has already been posted.

Edit To Add: Between working on best_balls_ever and a lovely poem that spleazeball wrote for me tonight, my faith has been restored in humanity after my awful day.

Location: Cartersville, GA

I would like to go on record and say that that dog-lovin', Lionel Worshippin', clone-makin', sheep wrasslin', crazy lawn ornament guy fabricatin' strrrumpet mandy_moon is a low-down dirty CHEATER!  She busted her jawbreaker open with a hammer!  A HAMMER!!!!!



While I  on the other hand have successfully (honorably/honestly) licked my way to the bubblegum center.



Even Delroy was impressed with my jawbreaker licking skeelz.



So I have won by default and any notion of a "race" is off, but I'm still determined to consume this thing, lick by sugary lick.

So help me

Location: Nasvhille, TN

Remember when I visited with mandy_moon and I mentioned a super-secret mission, complete with photographic evdience that would be de-classified at a later date?  That information has been de-classified, however, if you go and look at the report on this covert operation, you have to take an oath of secrecy not to divulge your knowledge of this subject.  This is a somewhat elaborate hoax being perpetrated for the benefit of a single person at the expense of her entire f-list.  The duration of this ruse is at the discretion of Ms. Moon... so zip your lip.  Feel free to comment over there, even in a wink-wink nudge-nudge sort of manner.  It's fun!

But don't blow my cover!  Shhhhhh!

Location: Taylorsville, KY

With my big week winding down, I finally have had some time to reflect, write, and dig through photos.  I had intended on writing more when I got here to my brother's house, but Kentucky is playing... so, ya know.

Seeing Slint at the Roxy with mandy_moon was loads of fun, for me anyway.  I probably wasn't much fun to be with as I was in my Slint-trance.  That was the fourth show of five, and I'm still enthralled.  I can't believe this Saturday is the last of them.  I got some video of the Roxy show in Boston.  Where we were in the balcony didn't afford me the opportunity to take any decent photos and the stage lighting was awful, so instead, I decided to use the inadequate space on my camera's memory card to capture some video w/ sound of the "I miss you!" portion at the close of "Good Morning, Captain".  I may get around to putting it online at some point. I'm negotiating the borrowing of a video camera for the final show.  With my luck getting a camera into the venues, it'd be pretty cool if I could do a complete video capture of what will likely be the last Slint show in history.

Speaking of the "I miss you!" bit... In a conversation on Wednesday, whilst devouring the best sandwich in the world with mandy_moon, she mentioned a Magnetic Fields song which closes in a particular way and how when she had seen them live there was a palpable sense of expectation from the audience for that precise moment in the song.  I likened it to the "I miss you!" portion of "Good Morning, Captain" for Slint fans (myself included) at these shows I've been attending.  She admitted to having been waiting for that moment at the show on Sunday as well.  The conversation progressed into thinking about other songs where a particular moment in the song is anticipated, whether listening to a recording or at a live performance.  I suggested that David Bowie tune with the "Awwww wham bam, thank you ma'am!" part and she countered with the headbanging part of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" forever immortalized in the Gremlin of Wayne's World.  We made some other suggestions, though not quite as good.  I:  Steve Miller Band's  "some people call me Maurice" with the subsequent whistle in "The Joker", she: the "as we wind on down the road" ending of "Stairway To Heaven."  Maybe the heavy-breathing/panting part of "Let's Go Crazy" by Prince.  I've continued thinking on this topic, some.  Here's some others (some maybe not widely known) that I have considered.  Please feel free to comment or add to this list.

-the blood curdling scream in Tragic Mulatto's cover of LedZep's "Whole Lotta Love" (yeah, this is the not widely known one)
-"You know where you are? You're in the jungle, baby! You're gonna die!" - G'N'R's "Welcome to the Jungle"
-the spelling-bee section of Aretha Franklin's "Respect"
-the "Darkness! Imprisoning me! All that I see! Absolute horror!" section of Metllica's "One"
-the chorus of "YMCA" by the Village People (c'mon, you know you all at one time or another have at least ironically done the hand motions)
-probably only delicarose will concur with me on this one: the "I know who you are! You're dead meat motherfucker! You don't try and rape a goddess!" part of Babes in Toyland's "Bluebell".
-the "Say, baby" parts of "Tommy the Cat" by Primus (a little factoid: Tom Waits did Tommy's soliloquy in that song)
- speaking of Mr. Waits, the "I look good without a shirt!" lines from his "Goin' Out West"

Doth the moon care for the barking of a dog?  -Robert Burton

Of course she does! 

So let's back up.  Monday, Jason and I did some cabinet delivering around Massachusetts until we discovered that we were leaking air from the brakes.  I could've babied the truck until we got out of the northeast, but since Jason was to be doing most of the driving, I thought it best to get them repaired.  This unfortauntely meant driving down to Connecticut to a truckstop.  Turns out it was merely a loose air line which they fixed in about 15 minutes. Of course this was after waiting for 4 hours! 

Then Tuesday morning, Jason announces that he needs to go home as soon as possible, since he has things to take care-of back in Illinois.  Rejoice!!!!11!!!  I suspect he has decided that trucking isn't for him, but just won't admit it.  In conversation he has mentioned some places he had put-in applications leaving messages for him.  I think he wants to sniff them out.  I hope something pans out because, quite frankly, he isn't going to cut it as a driver.  While he has improved a lot over the past couple of weeks, he still has a LOOONG way to go.  And I have serious reservations he would ever approach adequacy.

So Tuesday night, we parked in Quincy, MA and I met-up with mandy_moon again for the evening.  It was really neat when I walked out of the train station.  She and Buddy were waiting for me on a bench and Buddy had this look of recognition in his big, brown eyes.  This time I was not remiss in bringing certain items which I had promised, namely: shoes for her tree, a superball she unwittingly bounced from Massachusetts to Ohio, and what is quite possibly the world's giantest jawbreaker.  I'm happy to report that the Shrine of Lionel lives!  In hindsight, I wish I had taken a photo. We went to get some grub and she took me to a place where they have the BEST SANDWICH IN THE WORLD.  I mean, she even admitted having dreamt of this sandwich.  An opportunity like this could not be passed-over, so away we went.  It was indeed a very good sandwich.  It was probably enhanced by the really cool 70's rock overhead.  It's rare you get to hear The Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" or the Modern Lovers' "I'm Straight" anywhere other than your own stereo.

I wanna hold you, wanna hold you tight! Get teenage kicks right through the night!

So tonight I'm slowly getting snowed-in in Warwick, RI (hi rasa!).  They're calling for 6-10 inches!  We have one more stop to make in Coventry in the morning then we head back for Indiana.  He'll most likely get-off the truck in Allentown, PA or Springfield, OH.  I assume I'll get another trainee then, too.

I'm totally in love with ( Metric )

This is a continuation of my review of the year 2004 in pictures... enjoy!

---

2004: The Year In Photos, Part II July-December

July
So, after finally healing that leg of mine, I got to go back to work and frankly, I was ready for it.  What I didn't expect, though, was to be put into a Peterbilt.  I had always driven Freightliner trucks during my brief career thus far, so it was a new experience in of itself.  On top of that, it was a beautiful glossy black.  I'm driving a red Pete now, and while it's essentially the same truck, it's not nearly as pretty as that truck was.



But, I was finally back on the road.  The corn fields of Illinois, still being planted when I went on my leave of absence, were now oceans of green along-side the highway.



It was during this time that I decided to share with you something I had known about for some time, but hadn't taken the time to take pictures of it until now.  The Used Amish Buggy Lot!

( The rest of 2004 )

If you missed it, please check out Part I of this entry.