Okay, so the Ziddio video (did they anticipate the cadence of that phrase when they named the site?) is a little wider than is comfortable on this page. It appears to be covering the side menu a little. Apologies. So, I'll just write something now to nudge it further down the page, shall I?

I am at Crackers in Indianapolis this week. If last night's show is any indicator, it should be a fun week.

Did another marathon drive to get here yesterday. Left the house at 4:00 a.m. and made the drive in eleven hours, door to door. I stop a lot. These old bones need to stretch from time to time, and I have the bladder capacity of a nervous german shepard. Fortunately, I don't piddle when showing submission.

I took a leap of faith and took a different route to get here. You see, when I'm planning my route, I am in a constant search of ways to avoid Chicago. Unfortunately, the worst thing about living in Minneapolis is that if you want to head to any point east of Lake Michigan, but north of Dixie, Yahoo! maps will send you through Chicago, which means a) tolls, b) unpredictable traffic and c) tolls. I hate all three of those things (so much that they create cognitive dissonance, apparently).

What I've been doing is driving through Iowa, through Cedar Rapids, Davenport and then across Illinois via Peoria and points East. It adds about 50 miles, but a) there are no tolls, b) it's a delay I can count on, rather than the kind of suprises Chicago traffic offers, and c) there are no tolls.

The other night, Neenie saw me doing my Yahoo! map for this trip and asked why didn't I go through Wisconsin, down to Rockford, IL and then keep going down to Bloomington and then head East? I said, "There's a toll road by Rockford." It sounded less reasonable coming out of my mouth than it had in my head, so I did the Yahoo! map for that route and lo and behold, it was only 30 miles longer than going through Chicago.

And the toll, it turns out, is a dollar.