This weekend was good. I enjoyed it. Coming in to work didn't really hit me as a hateful thing until I opened the door to the Maze of Cubicles and was hit by the stench of coffee. I hate the smell of coffee. Especially early in the morning, right after a weekend. Coffee sucks.

So I was hoping that there'd be lots of email waiting for me from all the bored d&e'ers who whiled away the weekend by posting useless bits of trivia and hate. Then I could sit and read it all morning and not think too much. But, noooo, you all had to go out and do fun stuff over the weekend and not post very much. Oh well. Good for you, bad for me.

I did get my box o' business cards today. That's cool.

Isn't there a law that There Shalt Not Be Lanes Closed Due To Road Construction On Memorial Day? I guess not.

I bought a compass on Saturday. I intend to use it for mostly for hiking, but I figured it might come in handy in the car when I get lost as well. But when I went driving yesterday, I found all the road signs I wanted to find, none of the roads I wanted to go on were closed, and I never needed the compass. Maybe it's a good luck charm.

I checked the compass occasionally while I was on roads that I knew. It rarely pointed even close to the direction I thought I was going, and the direction that the map said I was going. I guess the roads are curvier than I suspected. So much for finding my way on roads with a compass.

I want a GPS system for my car. Not one of those wussy things where you select a destination, and then it shows you all the turns you want to make. No, I want one that starts out blank. Then, as I drive, it plots all the routes I take to a precision of 100 feet or so. And it has a touch- sensitive screen so I can make annotations. That would be cool.

I've been slowly building a personal library of maps of my travels (on paper). It includes a lot of roads that don't appear on the maps, along with data about the type of road surface, width, degree of twistiness, amount of driving fun, etc. Quite a lot of the roads are marked "closed due to slides." Grn.

Yesterday I found that a road that had been closed due to slides had been reopened. Good thing, because I was counting on it being open so I could get to the other side. It was an excellent road, too. It'll get a good rating on my maps.

I finally found the dirt road that connects 101 to 25 near the Pinnacles National Park. That also gets a high rating. Along with a note to ignore all the "private property" and "no trespassing" signs on the cattle crossings. I guess people put them there because there aren't any fences along the road to put them on, but they sure are confusing until you spot a county mile marker in the supposed private property.

Hm. Maybe that means that Summit Road is also not private property. Hm. No, those signs were much larger and more forceful, and from the other direction the sign said "no through road," so I guess it really is private property. Even if the map says it's a through road. Grn.

The dirt road I found is marked "impassible to large vehicles and trailers." Woo woo!

Saturday, I watched Braveheart with Derek Noonburg. It was pretty good. It gets points off for showing more penuses than breasts. I don't go to movies to see penes, I go to see violence and gore. Fortunately, there was plenty of that. Three hours of it, whoo hoo!

Hey, how about that Harvard girl who stabbed her roommate to death and then hung herself? That could never happen at CMU, eh?

Sunday I watched the Indy 500, some of the Coca Cola 600, some of a hockey game, and a recap of a Porsche Supercup race. I never even put my shoes on. Boy, I suck.

Kurt called me about 8 o'clock to invite me out to eat with his housemates at this microbrewery place called "Tides" or "Tidewater" or "Tidesomething." But I had already eaten. Suck.

So they planned to maybe rent a movie after they ate, and then they'd invite me over to watch it with them, but it ended up being too late, so they didn't. Suck.

My car is working pretty good again. Yay!

Midway along the dirt road, I pulled off (a difficult proposition on a one-lane road... did I mention that it had been freshly graded, which made it a real nice drive, but made the shoulders rather high with soft dirt?) and ate lunch. I noticed that the dust had been vorticing (is that a word?) up behind my car and depositing on the top of my bumper. There were also just a few spots of dirt on my trunk lid where my fingers had last touched the day before when closing the trunk. When I got back home, the dirt was gone off the bumper, but there were still fingerprints plainly visible on the trunk and the gas cap cover. Dusting for fingerprints is cool.

Despite the velocity with which I was hurtling along on a certain two- lane country road, I was still caught up to and passed by four motorcycles. They seemed slightly faster on the curves, but willing to go much faster on the straightaways. I smiled and waved. Later, I saw them grouped beneath a shade tree pulling off their helmets and stretching. One of them waved at me, but I couldn't tell if he smiled because he still had his helmet on.

I passed a gas station near San Lucas that appeared to be selling regular unleaded for 2.139 and premium unleaded for 4.119. Or maybe I was just seeing things.

Gas seemed to shoot up in price by 6 or 8 cents a gallon just before this weekend. I wonder if their costs actually went up, or if the gas stations were just padding their profits during this heavy driving weekend.

I didn't get to play volleyball with the Indian guys this weekend. I guess they were off doing other things.

After all the driving yesterday, my head hurt. This seems to be happening more frequently lately after long drives. I think it might be because of the sun. Maybe next time I'll try wearing a hat while I drive and see if that helps.

Q. When is a mouse like an elephant?
A. When it's on vacation.

Hm. I seem to be slumping into unconsciousness. I guess that means the stream of consciousness is over. Adios!

<cpn