Take a Bow

As a senior in high school, I was completely sure that I had an amazing future on the silver screen ahead of me. With a few local commercials under my belt and my name in bronze in my high school auditorium, a number of generous locals felt the same as well. But after two years of taking theater in college, I wanted out, and didn't want to look back. Theatre was not for me - at any given time, 1% of all actors on the planet HAVE work; and of those 1%, 1% are the ones you see on film and television. I do have a dream of someday being a devoted family man, and I can't buy braces or fund a college education on that, let alone even be home for family Scattergories night.

Beyond that, what I found in theatre was a culture of promiscuity, drugs, and drama that simply did not align with my morals and how I was raised. I felt the gravitational pull into the black hole of that aspect, but luckily hit the accelerator and launched myself away from that cosmic catastrophe. Don't get me wrong, I have MANY wonderfully delightful memories from my two years in theatre - but much like a rotten orange, you only need to peel away the bright surface to reveal that things have gone sour.

And on the final note, the type of acting we were taught was not "memorize your lines, move here, smile now, drink from the glass." I guess it's what you call method acting - where you actually BECOME your character. You spend literal days-worth of hours getting into the mind of your character - and where you may only have 30 lines to deliver, you investigate and imagine in your head an ENTIRE backstory to make your person real. You imagine what they eat for breakfast, are they a creature of habit, what was their favorite cartoon as a kid, what was their prom night like - all this stuff you imagine, to give your "fake" person a history, and make them real. Although this has given me a REALLY great ability to understand other people now, after I had become a nazi, mentally-disturbed doctor, soldier, abusive boyfriend, and countless others - I had spent enough time in dark-people's minds that I was done.

So after I transferred and changed majors, I only dabbled here and there. I played a wily old man in a murder mystery dinner theatre, and then played a small role in some artistic film student's piece about a bomb shelter. Mostly I sat in a corner wearing camouflage and cried under a swaying light. I generally imagined what it would be like if macaroni and cheese had never been invented - it brought the tears.

But after the trial of the marathon was over, and I survived the blistering hippie-heat of Burning Man, I for SOME reason, felt that I needed a new challenge. So, I decided to give theatre a try again. I kept it mostly secret that I was going to audition, but gained great support from those who I told.

Wouldn't you know it, I landed the first audition I went out for? Despite the audition being completely beyond what I had expected (I had to sing, and did not bring my own music - and I had to dance, and was wearing jeans and shoes NOT happy with dancing), I somehow landed a very nice part. It was a musical, and for the next three months I would rehearse in an abandoned car lot with a cast of characters of all ages and backgrounds.

My role did not actually have a lot of stage time, although a relatively important character. I actually spent more time on stage as "Mysterious Man #4" (as I came to call myself), than my primary role. You could distinguish the two by whether I wore my glasses or not. ;)

Most of the time at rehearsal, I either read or txtd on my phone with friends. Looking back, I can see this gave off an aura of disinterest and isolation; however, I was doing it simply to be able to concentrate and listen for my cues and director's notes, and to not talk and get in trouble for making noise. In addition, it kept me out of the drama forming backstage. For most of rehearsal, it was not there - however, come opening week of the show, lines had been drawn and gossip had begun to flood the backstage. Thankfully, I had remained in limbo in my digital hand-held, and thus my enemy list remained at zero.

There were a NUMBER of children in the show; and although I love kids, this made me really re-evaluate how much I like the little ones. Explosive balls of energy ages 8-16, the kids sprinted around backstage, fought, played video games with the sound on, left garbage all over the place, listened to ipods as they carried props on stage, and dropped, banged, crashed, and smashed more loud objects backstage during performances than Rodney Dangerfield at a cocktail party. It was a true test of patience.

I am not here to single any particular person out. I felt all the employees of the theatre (non-actors) were VERY professional, and very good at what they did. There were people in the cast who I truly enjoyed their company, and will stay in touch with after the show. There were people who, when I caught sight of, made a lump in my stomach. There were the familiarities I remember of college - loud, dramatic people who's lives are "all a mess", and are very gossipy and "sassy", if I may so. But there were a number of delightful people, who kept me laughing and smiling throughout the entire ordeal. Was the rush I felt from theatre six years ago gone? Yes, yes it was. I enjoyed putting on my final costume, and smiled inside when I was onstage and I knew someone in the audience. But the flash and excitement and energy of the old days are gone; and by the end, I felt as if I were just going through the motions.

It meant the world to me how many people came out to support me - my wonderful gf, my supportive father, awesome fellow employees, and best friends who road-tripped all the way from Indianapolis to see the show. They all mean everything to me. But as for the show, I simply missed my life. Working a 9-5 job five days a week, and then having four hours of stage work almost every night for three months took an exhaustive toll on me, and I missed out on so much quality time with my friends, family, and Allison. It made my mother so happy that I was acting again (she has always been my biggest fan), but was not able to come to the show due to family illnesses out east. So I will HAVE to act at least once more so she can see me on stage; but for now, I'm ready to get back to my people and to this city. There's much to be done - and it's not pretending on a stage.

I do not regret at all doing the show - I am truly glad to have given it a sample again and to see what acting outside of college was all about. I had many a great laugh and heartfelt moment, and a number of disappointing frustrations - and from them all, I can say that I've learned and grown that much more as a person. Patience for the young, patience for the old, the ability to avoid gossip and cruelty, and to show appreciation to those who reach out and make you smile - there are good things to be taken from the last three months.

I took a final bow yesterday, and it is time to be with those I love.

Please have a very very Merry Christmas! :)

Mix and Make

Every few decades, someone with a vision comes along, and takes that flurry of neurons spinning around in their noggin and turns it into something palpable. Something you can hold, see, taste, or sense. That decade my friends, is upon us.

One of my best friends from Illinois, Greg Zimmerman, has just released his first solo album. Having been the nucleaic catalyst for the Bahnann Brothers, his band later evolved into Certain Company, an ever-evolving band that's taking the Chicago bar scene tour.

Certain Company pulls its influences from a variety of sources, delving into 90's rock, sucking some long solos from 70's jam bands, and even taking a taste of ragtime and jass from the 20's and 30's. (Fun historical fact: "Jazz" was originally spelled "Jass", but when a Chicago promoter began putting signs up all over the city announcing brand new "Jass" players, youth would run around after him and scratch out the "J." Not wanting to taint the name of the cultural movement before it took off, he changed the spelling to "Jazz".) A heavy amount of original work inspired by love, sunsets, and 'shake' 'in it, Certain Company's music has really been taking audiences into long nights of singin' along, clappin', and dancin'.

In Folklore Troubadour, Zimmerman gets to experiment more with his own interests and talents. While brilliant, an artist's favorite pieces may not always be mainstream, and a solo project gives one the chance to play and challenge their own beliefs and convictions. Zimmerman's overarching themes seem to delve from dreams of a Utopian world, built on true love and striving for something better. Never satisfied and never settled, he begs for more passion, more fulfillment, and better days of back and looking forward.

Whether a folk ballad like the kick-off tune in "No Time to Lose", or a 90's catchy-tune rock like "Taught Me", his diverse talents reflect a youth and influence ranging from Sinatra to The Doors. An overdriven guitar, gentle plucking of an acoustic, mixing his own harmonic vocals, wicked drum breakdowns, and even lofty violin all originate from this artist's studio and create an album that will have you toe-tapping and already singing along by the second chorus.

Personal favorites of mine are "You Know What I Want", where Zimmerman lures his evening lover with bongos and sweet harmony; and "Spumento", a catchy 90's tune that has you bouncing your foot along to his guitar rhythm. "Dargento and the Legion of Death" simply has to bring a smile to your face, as every Lord of the Rings fan now has a rock ballad to go along with the film. "Backporch Blues" drips the essence of a slow jam from AC/DC, and you find B.B. King throwing his fingers onto the neck of Zimmerman's Stratocaster in the closing number of "Queen of Spades." Zimmerman loves the blues, and you can hear he's having a great time sharing it in the final piece.

It's a roller coaster of an album, but you can hear Zimmerman's smart smirk behind every lyric, and he's loving what he's doing. The music takes you down a positive road and through rolling tunnels of life crafted in the Midwest and aboard racing sailboats, and reminds you of your first love, your first political rally, or sipping some fresh-squeezed lemonade on a summer afternoon with friends. You finish imbibing this album and feel refreshed, energized, and right with the world. It's a musical high five.

So for a journey through music history and an enjoyable, toe-tapping, great back-porch-in-the-spring album, check out the music online: http://www.gregreedmusic.com/lyrics.

Rock on.

Waverly Hills Sanitorium

Halloween and Christmas are my favorite holidays, bar nun. Both holidays have the top activities, and provide the best decorations and movies, without argument. If you try and argue with me, you hate happiness, and probably sell puppies for drugs. Here's the breakdown:

Halloween

• Haunted Houses
• Scary movies
• Costumes
• Apple Orchards
• Pumpkin Patches
• Ghost Story Telling
• Candy
• Crazy decorations including crashed witches and spider webs
  

Christmas

• Skiing
• Snowboarding
• Ice-skating
• Festival of Lights
• Hot Chocolate
• Polar Express
• A Christmas Story
• Huge Sweaters and ridiculous socks
• Snowballs
• Giving presents
• Getting presents

Back in October, to help celebrate the fantastic month-long holiday of Halloween, Allison talked me and three of her best friends into visiting the Waverly Hills Sanatorium Haunted House in Louisville, KY. Thankfully, I'm with someone who's as obsessed with October as I am. We love haunted houses - I make sure to go to as many as I can every year, even if they're terrible. However, this was one of my first experiences into an actual haunted house.....

Brief history: in the 1920s, Waverly Hills Sanatorium was built to combat the tuberculosis outbreak in the United States, and was the most advanced hospital of its kind in the country at the time. Insert decades of thousands of people dying, mysterious employee deaths, and a creepy setting in the middle of the woods - and you've got yourself the perfect recipe for a haunted structure, having been closed in the 1970's for "malpractice." Yeah, goosebumps, I've got 'em too. If you want a more in-depth, gruesome history of the place, go here.

However, the fake haunted house is not the story here. I WILL say that I was extremely impressed with it though. They didn't focus on loud bangs and jumping out at you, but more on creating eerie, haunting images. My favorite of these involved us walking into a small cement room that only had one small spotlight cast in the corner. There was a hospital bed, and a large man sitting in a wheelchair next to it, staring over his hospital gown at his feet covered in blood and vomit. We had to walk right by him to get through the room; and although we anticipated him jumping at any second, he never even looked up. We passed through the room, and began to head down a long, pitch-black hallway - and then heard a rusted squeak behind us. Without us noticing, he had begun to follow us down the hallway in his wheel chair, staring at us up through his eyebrows, as if his neck were limp. He paused under a small, blue spotlight and just stared at us, then slowly rolled backwards and was sucked up by the darkness. Haunting.

At the end of the haunted house, we learned that you could actually take real, guided paranormal tours of the building in the off-season. Allison's eyes lit up like those of a 6-year-old in Toys R Us with $20, and wanted to find out when the tours were going on. So the next day I called into the Waverly Hills Office, and found out that only one tour remained available - the final tour at the end of November. Some secret coordination with two of Allison's best friends, a few flashlight purchases, a white lie here and there, and six weeks of secret-keeping later, and Allison's surprise ghost hunt was sprung on her.

Allison was under the impression that we were going to my father's retirement party; so when her "Friends"-like apartment-mate Andrew and her lifelong buddy Ashley knocked on her door at 5:45 p.m. and were ready to go last Friday, she was shocked. Hopping into my car (see previous blog about her car being incapacitated) with cameras and flashlights galore, we took off southward into the approaching darkness. Waverly was waiting.....

We parked in the shadow of the looming sanatorium, all lights out and every single window shattered to the ground. A traffic director (i.e. dude in a black hoodie and jeans) told us to wait by the one outside light of the building, which coincidentally illuminated a ferocious gargoyle that watched over the driveway. When nearly ten of us had assembled, the guide took us to a well-lit building off to the side of Waverly, flanked by a hearse.

Entering a door at the bottom of a set of concrete steps, I was shocked at what I saw: formal organization. Four rows of tables and chairs were lined up in a large room, all facing a large projector screen. Most of the seats were filled, totalling around 50 people in the room. A third of the space was taken up by Waverly merchandise - tote bags to hats - and about ten different Waverly employees, all in black, caroused around the cash register.

When everyone was seated and settled, they flipped off the lights, and began the movie. I thought to myself if I came all the way down here to watch a movie about a haunted place, SOMEONE is paying me back $40, or better jump out and scare me. But the movie was the perfect set-up. It began with an old black-and-white film actually FROM the time of the tuberculosis outbreak, which reviewed some of the prime facilities in the nation fighting the epidemic. Of course, Waverly Hills was the highlight, and the the hairs on the back of my neck began to rise as we watched real, live people walk through the rooms and halls we would soon be traversing. Well, ONCE alive.

The second video was from a '90's series called "Ghost Hunters", which I generally found eye-rolling and disappointing. It gave a general history of the building, and then followed ~six teenage girls as they attempted to spend a scream-fest night in night of self-inflicting terror in the building. Twenty minutes of watching make-upped, blonde Kentuckian teenagers scream and run around a dark building? Yep, bring on the Advil. The link doesn't seem to be working, but the website says you can watch the video here.

However the third video followed the newer TV show TAPS, a group of plumbers-turned-paranormal investigators as they spent a weekend investigating Waverly. Although the premise is ridiculous, this was a well-done piece that really highlighted some of the best parts of the building. My favorite clip from this episode is when they were doing a thermal scan of a hallway that is frequented by a young boy apparition, and you can CLEARLY see a pair of legs run across the hallway. No-joke. THAT got me excited to go into the building.

At the completion of the videos, we were split up into two groups, and each given a tour-guide, and our 90-minute paranormal investigation began. We. were. pumped.

The first stop was the "body chute"; which the website had claimed we were not allowed to enter, but our guide was being "the cool guide" and letting us go down. The skivvy: at the peak of tuberculosis at the facility, people were dying by the hour, and they felt that the constant flow of dead bodies past the patients would demoralize them (if having tuberculosis didn't suck enough). So they build a cement chute at the back of the building, which bodies could be discretely slid down inside to the bottom of the hill where the hearse was waiting - seemingly ~100 yards. However, sometimes there were just too many deaths and unclaimed bodies, so there is a mass-grave hidden somewhere nearby, which our guide would not reveal the location of. Bring on the eerie.

The chute was creepy, cold, and of course dark. I had no problem with walking down all the stairs (even on what I would find out later to be a sprained ankle), but was uncomfortable coming back up. Allison and I were the last to come out of the shoot, and I had the haunting feeling that we were being followed. We both refused to look back, and I snapped pictures over my head back down the tunnel as Allison shined her light behind us, as scary things stay away from light.

We then entered the building. I think what really made the tour worthwhile is we simply had a GREAT tour guide. He was patient in his story telling, believed his own stories, and had great set-ups. I can't tell you how many times he would shuffle us all into a pitch black room and say something like, "ok, now that you're all in here, let me tell you how many people died in this tiny room...."

Allison, Ashley, Andrew, and I (sorry, NOT an A-name) had created code-names for the night, as our paranormal investigator titles. Allison = The Lady in White, Me = Ecto 1, Ashley = Dr. Snakebite, and the last one escapes me. But our cutsiness ended quickly, as we had to remain silent for most of the trip, and our flashlights could only be turned on in the stairwells. Although cameras with flashes were permitted, we had to say "flash" every time before a picture, so everyone around us could close their eyes. Everyone hated me, I think......

The building was fantastically creepy, with Tim Burton painted all up and down the hallways. Abandoned hospital bedrooms, wind-whistling hallways with windows blown out, and never ending stairwells set a brilliant air of quiet haunting. We were taken down countless corridors and abandoned rooms, and told story after story of paranormal activities - from ghostly visions to playing catch with an unseen ghostly child. Stories of a homeless man and his dog found at the bottom of an elevator shaft in the abandoned sanatorium, and a hung nurse during its hey-day made the group grow quieter, and our friends grow closer. Two stories only really caught my unwavering (yup, that's a pun) attention.

1. Our guide was telling us stories of trespassing on the property, and how it used to be ~500 people a week would get inside, and now they have it down to around 20. He told us a story of one night they heard screams coming from inside Waverly, and knew that some trespassers had seen something that scared them, and were panicking. He and a couple of the staff went to the center of the building inside to hear where the screams were coming from, and located them on the (insert scariest floor in the building here). They went to the stairwell, and found three 16-17 year old boys pounding on the other side of an iron door. A small 1' x 1' window was slid open in the door, and the boys were screaming and crying, pleading to be let out. They kept yelling things like, "they won't let us out, they won't let us out!" Finally, the door fell open and the three boys fell to the floor in the stairwell, their pants covered in urine. One boy held a hatchet, which he had been hacking at the door with to break open. However, there are no locks on this door. Three late-teenage boys scared into urinating themselves, trapped behind an unlockable door, and trying to chop it down with a hatchet? They never said what they saw.

2. We then went through that door. I'll simply try and repeat the best I can what our guide said to us. "This is the most serious floor in the building. I know some of you have been wandering off and looking in other rooms, but not on this floor. On this floor, we stick together. If I catch you wandering off, your tour is over. This floor scares me. On this floor we have "Big Black." Big Black is one of the only physical apparitions in the building, and he is exactly what his name describes. One time I was giving this tour, and when I finished his story, Big Black hit me in the chest so hard that my breath was knocked out of me and I stumbled back (our guide was not a little guy). Another time, we heard a thud so loud that it sounded like a wall had fallen down on this floor. The tour group scanned the floor and found nothing. I came back the next day with the team, and we found no structural damage anywhere in the building. Anything that big and that strong that can shake a concrete floor, can hit hard. We stay together here."

Yeah, the crap was now officially scared out of me. Our group was divided into two, and we went down opposite ends of the hallways. Our new guides, who had been at the back of the group making sure we all got through the doorways, told us about "shadow people." Shadow people are the outlines of people that appear in darker parts of the building, and are most activated by a real body being nearby (I know, this KINDA sounds to me like just a "shadow" too, but I wanted to believe). So, with our group clustered around the end of the hallway, our guide asked for a volunteer to walk ~50 feet alone down the hallway with their arms out so we could watch the shadow people around them. Andrew, the other guy from our group, went first as he's "never been scared." He strolled down the hallway with a bit of a swagger, while some of the group members oo'ed and aw'ed at the shadow people running around him. I'm not going to lie, I saw diddly-nothing. So when they asked for a third volunteer, I thought to myself when am I ever coming back here, and I stepped forward.

I later found out Allison hated me for doing this, putting myself in apparitional danger. So as I strolled off down the hallway in the pitch black (and my sight's not that great in the dark), the guide said, "if you look out of you peripheral vision, you'll see some crazy things." Thanks guide, thanks. That's awesome. I followed her instruction, and just saw eerie abandoned hospital room after each other, until she forcefully said, "stop!" I had only made it about 1/2 of what the others had walked, and I could barely make out her mumbles and whispers to the group behind me. I was in complete darkness, and all I could hear was their whispers, and then Allison's gasp. "What!?" I exclaimed, and the guide responded by saying, "Um, you can come back now. Yup, just turn around and come back." I hauled it back to them, to where Allison gave me a big hug. A majority of the group looked at me wide eyed, and we were quickly escorted out of the hallway. "What happened?" I asked Allison. "When you got to the end of the hallway, a see-through-like mist, white, a little taller than you, appeared over your shoulder, then followed you back halfway," she replied. "Really?" I asked, "I didn't see a thing!" "Did you feel anything?" she asked, in seriousness. "Fear," I responded, in a half-mocking manner.

Did a ghost really follow me down the hallway of an abandoned sanatorium? I have no idea, and I have more doubts than the stock market has failures. But it was exciting, fun, and got my heart racing - exactly what I had been counting on. They offer group rates - 10 or more people, and you can stay the night in the building without any help from the paranormal team. When we found out this fact, Allison turned to me and said, "we are SO doing that for my birthday!" Never a dull moment my friends, never a dull moment.....

Thanksgiving with the Outlaws

They're not really in-laws, because there's no ring involved.....

Work gives out days-off about as about as often as Hitler gave out hugs, so one must use them carefully. This Thanksgiving, I opted to stay in Ohio instead of traveling to the family's homeland in the East (haha, that makes us sound like we're from Tibet or something), and dedicate most of my accumulated vacation-time to Christmas. With the aging and passing of a few relatives here and there, the clan doesn't prepare a meal anymore, and most of the afternoon is spent napping or watching football. Christmas is the big deal, especially with the dogs trained to open their own Christmas gifts, so that's the show not to miss....

Although Allison and I have only been together for a little over three months, I felt close enough to her and her immediate family to venture a holiday with them. The night before Thanksgiving, I joined her and her mother to get the break-down on who I was going to be meeting the next day. Over the course of more than an hour dinner, I received an overwhelming myriad of instructions regarding who would enjoy what topics to discuss, what topics to completely avoid, what food to expect (and who to complement extensively on it), and whose kids were whose. It was entirely helpful - until I walked in the door, and forgot every single detail they had explained. I remembered two names - Doug and Kathy. Beyond that, blank slate. THANK YOU selective memory.....

So around 3 p.m. we pulled up to the lovely little house with a few cars of various sizes parked outside, and shuffled up to the front door, slightly behind announced arrival schedule.

I can say that I truly had a wonderful time. Her father, a hot-rodder by trade with a hearty personality, quick on a joke, and very friendly, spent the evening feeding me Coors Light and teaching me how to get my butt kicked in Backgammon (when I asked him to teach me how to play, his brother had immediately responded "do you have any money?" Thankfully, I had left the wallet in the car). The house had two little girls in it; who, regaled in pink and full-fledged fans of Go Diego Go and Dora the Explorer, provided plenty of cute entertainment, toddling around the living room and activating every electronic Christmas-carol-singing object in the home.

Her mother and I, whenever she was out of ear shot, shared embarrassing stories about her and reviewed the family member information that I was SUPPOSED to have remembered. Phillip, the man of this household, was a woodcarver by hobby, and was kind enough to take me on a tour of his many, many sculptures he'd created. Sincerely, I thought it was very fascinating - that takes a lot of patience and skill to pull that off. Sadly, he doesn't make sculptures for anyone but himself - I think Ally wanted him to make her a wizard or something....

Phillip and his wife had just returned from a trip to Israel, and brought back a VERY nice olive-wood manger scene for the little girls and of course their parents (I'm not sure who it was really intended for - kids or parents). The Aunt was very proud and protective of it, as it was more something to "admire and look at." The little girls, being little girls, saw all the manger animals as a zoo to play with, and immediately the camels began going on epic adventures across sanded wastelands in the living room. Subsequently, within 20 minutes, a camel had slipped off a treacherous precipice and cracked his leg-off, a common injury back in biblical times. Aunt = heartbroken. Little girl = brought to tears. Camel = limping. Me = obvious.

A first fore me - there were other people there our age, or all right around our age, so we were able to hang out with "the kids." This was new to me, as for every Thanksgiving I've been the junior of about 12 years, so ideas of talking about recent college days and playing board games was a fresh take on Turkey Day. We did have our separate kids table in the library, where we spent most of the time admiring the diverse library that posted books like "Dinosaurs" right next to "His Life: The Story of Jesus Christ." The cousins were all hip and really entertaining, and were a real blast. Other relatives were big fans of theatre or were in to marketing, so I had plenty to connect with throughout the evening. A family homerun.

As always, we stuffed ourselves. I think there were three different types of macaroni casserole, but I was still able to go back for seconds and enjoy my favorites - potatoes and turkey. Allison and her mother are big apple crisp fans, but I had to wait a good two hours before any wine or apple crisp could be further consumed. But it was WELL worth the wait.

As the evening wore on, we leafed through old photo albums and laughed at how family members had changed, or how sharp they looked in their army uniforms. Eventually, the kids ended up in the basement, where I continued my reigning undefeated title in Scattergories (yes, I was THAT annoying visiting faux-relative), and we polished the night off with "Rain Man", everyone's favorite Thanksgiving movie (seriously though, it's a great movie - but it DID take us over an hour to pick one, the Uncle literally had a catalog of all the movies he owned). I spent most of the time trying to calm Ally down, as she really hated Tom Cruise's character for being so mean to Dustin Hoffman - and reassuring her they were just acting.

Work had me in the next day at noon, so we had to be the first kids up and out the door. With some warm apple crisp in my belly for breakfast, the drive wasn't going to take too long, and I'd be in and out of work in a flash. I was driving Allison's car; because although she is a fantastic road companion, she gets sick if I drive my car for too long. I SWEAR I'm a smooth manual driver, but for some reason, she's not buyin' it.

So we're on 71S only 30 miles from the 'Nati, when Allison's '99 Honda Civic makes a HUGE lurch, and I look out the rear-view-mirror because it feels like the bottom of the car just fell out. White smoke immediately begins to pour out of the hood of the car, and I pull the little guy over to the side of the road and shut her off.

I am unlucky, I've been inside many a break-down. I'd like that to stop sometime soon. With the car on the side of the road, Allison jumped on her cell phone to try and reach her parents who had the AAA number, while I popped the hood to take a look. Now, I am NOT very good with cars. I know the basics, and if you open the hood and point to some things in there, I could make a pretty good guess at what you were trying to identify. But if you asked me to FIX anything in there.....show me to the trunk, I'll just replace your tire. In this case though, there was so much smoke pouring out that I couldn't even see where it was coming from.

Within five minutes a state trooper had pulled up and took a look in the hood. Moments after, another highway patrolman came by, and each glared into the smokey mystery of the car. "Yup, looks like you ran out of oil!" exclaimed the local. We pulled the dip stick out, and for the first time in my life I saw a smoking dip stick that was dry as a bone. Irony = Allison's dad is the guru of cars. None of us know where the ball was dropped, and it never crossed our mind to need to check the oil before the trip. But there was no driving the car, she was shot.

Allison's family had decided to fully embrace the holiday and turn off every phone in the house. So we waited and waited as she tried every number she could. In the meantime, I reclined the driver's seat, and waited patiently for someone to turn their phone on. There was a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere not too far away, and Allison wanted to hop the barb-wire fence and go ask for help. However, I reminded her this is how movies like "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" start, so I instead chose to relieve myself on their roadside bushes and quickly hustle back to the safety of the car, as four glasses of orange-juice had caught up to me on the burm.

Her family finally answered the phone, we received all the AAA info we needed, and her parents headed south to meet up with us. As triple A needed to know our exact location on the highway, I think my favorite part of the entire ordeal was watching Allison run down the side of the highway to go check the mile marker, which was beyond our view. She insisted on going, I swear. Picture this: you're driving down the highway, and you see a smoking Honda on the side of the road with a woman wearing a velvety pink sweater and long, bouncing black hair (bed head) running away from the car in the grass along the highway. Yeah, people are definitely going to stop and help us - we're the crazy people. I laughed 'til I cried.

The tow truck arrived, one of those large flat-bed types, and my hopes came entirely true. Out hopped an old, grizzled man from somewhere NOT downtown, who bathed in engine grease, hadn't combed his hair since 1974, and delighted in eating pebbles and rocks for dinner. There was a slight whistle through the trenches between his incisors when he spoke. He went to work immediately without acknowledging us, like Santa on a mission on Christmas Eve. It was cold outside, and the cars rushing by sent bitter blasts that caused Allison and I to try and become one by clutching to one another for warmth. For protection, I went to the cab of the truck and opened the passenger door to hop in, but was greeted with gnashing teeth and the barking of a ferocious canine. I immediately slammed the door, and Billy-Joe-Bob-Tom (named changed to protect the innocent) shouted "Eh! I'm not ready yet!" Allison and I clung for dear life, like we were sinking on the Titanic.

BJBT finished up his work, and we were permitted to enter the cab. Before I opened the door again, I turned to Ally and whispered, "Ok, I will sit in the middle, but you owe me SO big time." The door creaked open, and the "ferocious canine", a little Jack Russell Terrier, was restrained for our entry. Billy-Joe-Bob-Tom found the fact that we ran out of oil hysterical, and out-right unheard of. It had been a slow day for him, but he liked to chat, and we had a healthy 40 miles to go before we got to Allison's father's shop. Let's ride.

Missy, as the dog turned out to be called, was extremely affectionate. Wedged in between Billy Bob's hip and mine, she laid her head on my left thigh, and always seemed to uncomfortably stretch her nuzzle farther and farther over. If I took my hand from Missy's head, she became VERY upset, and would head to my mouth for a lick. Needless to say, my hand did not leave her head. She smelled of Burger King, and her paws left mysterious brown streaks on my jeans. Allison's version of help = giggling. I love you too sweetheart.

Two highlights of the ride: Billy Bob has five other dogs at home, all named with an "M" in the beginning, except for Spot; who ironically, is spotted. They are all Jack Russells, and after Moe, Mickey, Mischief, Missy, and Mini, Bob ran out of "M" names and had to go with Spot. Billy Bob also has something like six kids and 17 grandchildren, so Thanksgiving was a feast of epic proportions for him. Allison clung to my hang for faux safety the entire time. Billy Bob was never actually scary or intimidating, just a true, excellent, American-boy character. I couldn't have made him up better if I had tried.

We dropped off the car at her dad's shop; and Allison's parents, having high-tailed it down to Cincinnati, gave me a ride home. A diagnostic later revealed that the engine is completely shot, and something probably DID fall off the car on the highway. New car, here we come.

So let me get this straight:

• We've been canoeing through the massive hurricane winds
• We went to the ER together for peanut ingestion
• Near-hospital visit for crippling migraine
• Met each other's parents
• No heat in her apartment for weeks
• Met some ex's
• My car was broken into on her street
• and now we've been through her broken-down car.

....all in three months.....

You know she has to be absolutely worth it for me to still be here. And she is, 100%. A great family that made me feel very comfortable and respected, and a forgiving boss that didn't yell at me for being two hours late - it was a holiday I will never forget. If this keeps going the way it's going, I just need to buckle down and accept that my life will, from now on, be filled with unforeseen shenanigans. At least I'll always have something to write about....

Happy Thanksgiving!