On the Eve of the Beginning

As I am not the most consistent blogger, I will try to sum up the past month with the following: I passed my physical and, despite 28 years of abusing my body with some of the shittiest food available for human and/or bottom-feeder consumption, I am in remarkably good health - though the doctor ordered me to lose 20 lbs.; I have read the entire James Bond collection of books; . . . yeah, that's about all of it. So, I have just been waiting around until this day came, Monday, March 3rd, 2008 - tomorrow - when I enter the Merchant Marine program at Piney Point, Maryland.

I flew up to Washington DC from Atlanta, GA on Friday and my buddy Matt (who I am sure all of you know from the much-acclaimed blog-masterpiece www.mattkaar.com) picked me up and we began a walking tour of DC. We met up with our good friend Sam, now a disgruntled polling analyst whose office for the past many years has been in sight of and just a stone's throw from the White House. Having spent just a day in the capital city, I realize that this disgruntled - even shall we say "soon-to-be-going-postal" - aspect of character is a necessary adaptation in order to survive in the modern-day political climate. I am not at all surprised that Sam has extensively planned for the end of the world as we know it, complete with a "get-the-fuck-out-of-town" satchel and a brand new rambo knife . . . which is big and scary. Needless to say, we have all had a great time catching up.

Today, we are making the final approach towards Piney Point in an old-school road-trip fashion. I have booked a room for the night in what I later found out to be one of the sleaziest rat-traps in the nation (woohoo!!!), and tomorrow I will take a taxi to my final destination. In these last moments of camaraderie with my friends, I have been bombarded with a number of questions which I have found to be of repeated interest to my growing number of fans who are following my great adventure. I felt this would be a good time to address those now:

Do you know what you'll be doing? No.

Will you have any free time? I don't know.

How old are the people typically attending this program? I don't know.

Will you be able to use your cell phone? I don't know.

Will you be fighting in Iraq? No, it's not that kind of work, and anyways I'm a coward.

Since you're supposed to be in it, will you make it to Matt's wedding? I don't know.

Are you concerned at all that maybe you don't know enough about what you're getting into? No.

So, that basically wraps up where I am right now. It's an adventure! I will write more diligently moving forward (assuming of course that I have internet ability at school, which of course, I do not know).