After about two hours of a very noisy midsection, I looked at the bag to see what was going on. Had I overdosed on mints? Apparently, yes, because these sugar free mints contain phenylalanine, which, if consumed excessively, can cause a laxative effect.
So, yeah . . . .
On a happier and less bathroom-focused event, I got to see Bryan again--except this time we explored Martinsville, VA! Martinsville is known for its Nascar race track and . . . .
That's about it.
This town is also somewhat close to Virginia's Fairy Stone State Park, so we thought we'd check in and head for the hills, as they say.
Bryan got there at 11 . . . I got there at 11:45 (took an early exit and GOT REALLY CONFUSED). Virginia may be a very nice state, but they don't have numbers on their frickin highway exits. What's up with that? I have yet to get someplace outside Hollins on time and I am counting the minutes till I can enter the North Carolina border and be rid of Highway 220 and its silliness.
Anyway.
So Bryan and I checked into the illustrious Days Inn of Martinsville, which, according to the management, has consistently received 5 sunbursts from the Days Inn Corporate Office.
Our room, which looks almost exactly like the room we had in Danville.So we got settled and realized that neither of us felt like hiking for three hours in the Virginia mountains. So we raided the local Little Caesar's and hooked up my dorm room DVD player to the television pictured above and settled in for an afternoon of Veronica Mars. The CW Network is on my enemies list right now because they prematurely canceled this amazing show that is well written and depicts a smart female protagonist who is more than capable of taking care of herself. And what did they replace it with? Hmmm?
GOSSIP GIRL!!!!!???? @^$%@*%^@*!($^!
(edited for my younger and more impressionable readers ;-))
GOSSIP GIRL!!!!!???? @^$%@*%^@*!($^!(edited for my younger and more impressionable readers ;-))
I am through with the CW Network. I could handle Gilmore Girls' demise, but Veronica too? They are now up there with FOX in the soulless television station list. Blah.
We had fun though watching season 2 and gorging ourselves on pizza, bread sticks and hot wings. It was awesome.
Awwww . . . .
We had fun though watching season 2 and gorging ourselves on pizza, bread sticks and hot wings. It was awesome.
Awwww . . . .Now, today, other than having way too many bowel movements, I have been making my way through The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. Great, great book. It is a collection of stories that make up Earth's attempts to colonize Mars. Some powerful stuff (especially for the 40s and 50s) including a story where all the black people in the South go to Mars to experience real freedom, a story about a man, who, reacting to the burning of all good literature on Earth, builds a real House of Usher on Mars, and, my favorite, a story where the Martians think the Earthlings who suddenly appear on their planet are Martians who have gone insane.
It's funny and sad and so prophetic. I was always fond of Fahrenheit 451, but this book is even better because it combines some of the themes of that novel with so much more insight about the human race. Now I have to write an essay about it, and I have no idea how to focus my admiration into a few coherent paragraphs, so we'll see.
I've quoting one of my favorite paragraphs below. I wish I could write something this powerful:
"Every man, they said, must face reality. Must face the Here and Now! Everything that was not so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air! So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that nobody lived happily ever after!), and Once Upon a Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!"
The power of children's literature, folks. That's why I'm here.
It's funny and sad and so prophetic. I was always fond of Fahrenheit 451, but this book is even better because it combines some of the themes of that novel with so much more insight about the human race. Now I have to write an essay about it, and I have no idea how to focus my admiration into a few coherent paragraphs, so we'll see.
I've quoting one of my favorite paragraphs below. I wish I could write something this powerful:
"Every man, they said, must face reality. Must face the Here and Now! Everything that was not so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air! So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 1975; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that nobody lived happily ever after!), and Once Upon a Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at the fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curiouser,' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away!"
The power of children's literature, folks. That's why I'm here.
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