As some of you know, I started a curse jar some time ago (Mid-April, I’d guess). The idea was fairly simple: I wanted to swear less (not that I’m cursing like a sailor, but on occasion it becomes rather easy to throw in a few colorful words when they’re not particularly needed). So I decided I’d charge myself a quarter for a typical curse word (your standard a/b/s/d variety) and $.50 for the F-bomb. Now, I wasn’t physically dropping change into a bucket or anything, but I was keeping a tally.. and then whipped up a pretty snazzy OSX widget/API for keeping track:

So that’s hooked up to an API on a home server that’s keeping track of total amount, and that is then also used to display that “Curse Jar” item on the left of this site. Nerd!

The good news: I believe I swear less now, and when I do choose to curse, I usually feel it’s worth the cost to emphasize a point, yada yada.. So that’s good.

The bad news: I’ve already (actually, just now) hit $50. The bulk of these fees I blame on a few unexpected items:

1. Frequent misplays at shortstop, especially during softball practice.
2. A bout of pretty serious knee pain that lasted at least a week, and resulted in frequent “I will no longer support your weight, but I will activate every pain sensor on this side of your body” performances by both knee joints.
3. Construction projects at my house resulting in more “whoever did this before was retarded” discoveries.
4. Mario Kart Wii

Oh, one quick thing: I decided at the beginning that quoting items doesn’t count. That’s proven important.

Here’s a shameless plug: Joel and I (and perhaps some day some other whiners) have been posting periodically at this new site: Dear Whatever. The idea: open letters to people and things that have, in one way or another, been (and likely continue to be) stupid.

… yeah, it is fairly passive-aggressive, I guess.

My friend Tim Vroom got married this past weekend (Congrats again Jenny and Tim), and the wedding was out in Bad Axe, Michigan. That is the background information needed to set up this story.

Another little thing that you probably already know is that I get lost on occasion… kind of often.

I was running a bit late to the wedding, as is my modus operandi, but had done fairly well making it all the way out to Bad Axe, and arrived at the church just in time to slip in the back row and see the service. The last section of the trip (a 60 mile stretch up M-53, which ranges from speed limits of 35mph-55mph in places) might have been traveled at speeds exceeding the posted limit… perhaps by quite a bit.)

After the wedding, there was a stretch of time before the reception started. I was hanging out with good friends that I’d not seen in quite some time, and afterwards headed off to the reception hall. I was in no hurry, as there was still some time to kill, and I still had to fill out the card for the newly married couple [because I'm thoughtful, am often stuck by things I'd like to say during the actual wedding ceremony, and am a rather notorious procrastinator]… All this to say I wasn’t really rushing to the reception.

At this point, I believe some maps might be helpful:

This is the map as presented on Tim and Jenny’s wedding website. You can see that the Church and the Reception Hall are fairly close, and on more or less a straight line from one another. Already you can see trouble brewing, right?.

Now, Here is another map:

Some information:

1. This is the Church, where I started.
2. This is the Reception hall, where I was eventually headed.
3. This is the Dairy Queen that Molly, Jeromy, and I went to, because it was warm, and Ice Cream is awesome.

Okay, so I’m at the Dairy Queen, and from there I knew I was supposed to get on 53, and take a left from 53 to 142. No problem. So I got back on 53, and that leads us to the A on the map. This is where I turned Left on to 142… you see the problem, yes?

At this point there is still about 45 minutes until cocktails…, and I saw a wind-farm out in the distance, so I went to get a closer look, which lead me to this church parking lot (B), where I wrote the message in the card, and watched the wind farm for a while (4). Eventually I decided to take off, and headed back down 142, assuming I had passed the place (even though I hadn’t seen it on the way out there) so I was headed back towards 53… and made it all the way back to 53 without seeing the place… Since I’m really, really smart, I turned around, and headed back down 142. I knew it was about 5 miles down the road (per the directions), so I kept track, and once again, around mile 5, I saw nothing… awesome.

Flash forward about 25 minutes of me doing u-turns and generally being a retard, and we reach C. Here’s where I call Jplant, and try to explain where I was and have him Google Maps me back to civilization. You’ll note that C is right by a green section on the map, which is another Golf course/country club, with another wedding reception. I really thought that was it, but none of the street names (or the Country Club’s name, for that matter) would match up. So Jplant explained that I was quite a ways away, and I came to the conclusion that I headed the wrong way on 53, and it was then that I also realized that 53 and 142 were the same road for a while, and thus it was possible to turn left from 53 to 142 in two different places…

I made it back to 53, and then drove up and down 53 past the church about 4 times, because the sign for 142 wasn’t visible from one direction, and wasn’t obvious from the other, so I kept missing it. Eventually I found it, turned left onto 142 as I was supposed to originally, and then sailed right past the Country Club… I turned around, and pulled in to the parking lot. Huzzah!!

After the reception, I started down 53 to head home. As I’m sailing along doing about 70 in a 55, tie around my head like a headband and dressy shirt half way off because it was really, really hot, and my AC doesn’t seem to work anymore and I was stripping down…. and I was listen to an old Ricky Gervais Xfm broadcast, and laughing really hard. So I’m laughing hard, half way undressed, with my tie around my head like a retard, speeding quite a bit just as the cop car drive past me. Awesome!

So the cop turned around, obviously. I slowed down to the speed limit, but the lights came on a half-mile down the road. When I pulled over, I got rid of the tie, figuring it did not send the right message (that message, I’m guessing, was “I’m drunk, and driving”). Turns out, the Cop was really cool, and after asking why I was up there and a few follow-up questions, he let me off with a warning, and told me to go slower… So I set the cruise at the limit, and took off again, in a pretty good mood.

I saw 8 deer in the next 30 miles, most of them about 4 feet from the road, including one that was clearly thinking about darting into the side of my car as I drove past.

I stopped at a gas station, and used my credit card to pay at the pump, but then decided to go in to the shop to get something to drink. I had a soda, which was $0.89, but when I went to pay with the card (I had $0 in cash), the guy said that they had a $5 minimum. So I decided I’d buy $4+ worth of candy bars, and call it good. After looking around a bit, I found the candy bars (turns out they were right by the register and I am retarded), and in one of the boxes was a One Dollar Bill. I grabbed it and handed it to the guy, saying “Here, I found this in one of the candy bar boxes.” He said “It’s yours then… and that’ll pay for that pop.” I politely refused, he insisted, and I thanked him, and headed off with my free soda. Win!

The entire trip down I-69/I-96 I was entertained by a spectacular lightning show that always seemed to be just ahead. When I got near the I-96 exit, the storm picked up to the point where the highway kinda shut down. Cars were stopped on the road all over the place (not just pulling to the shoulder, but in the slow lane as well).. and you could not see anything at all for stretched. It kinda sucked… Anyway, I proceeded at a slow pace, flashers on and all that, and after a number of white-knuckled miles, the rain slowed, and the trip continued… and eventually concluded.

Trip Over!