I left Washington DC today. Probably not for good. We’re still friends. We might live together again later if nothing else works out, I don’t know. It was just time for a change. And sometimes DC smells like urine in certain places, which bothers me and makes me have to go potty a lot.
How I feel about Bob Evans meat and potatoes, hold the meth. (Wheeling, WV; Aug 2019)
My one-year assignment working at the main State Department building downtown came to close, so I filled out all the paperwork, turned it in, got in my car, and started driving. In three weeks we fly to Abu Dhabi to start something new, provided Abu Dhabi doesn’t smell like pee. Even it does, I’ll probably tough it out for a few years.
DC isn’t so bad. I feel like it gets a bad rap. People call it a swamp. They want to drain it. But it’s not so bad. Sometimes you get to see the presidential motorcade cruising around town, sirens wailing, lights flashing. Once, the motorcade passed me while I was walking to work in front of the State Department. I kind of wanted to stop, turn to the passing cars, and shout my opinion, with my fist in the air, using rude words (don’t worry, it’s just locker room talk, it’s NBD). But then I thought, I don’t want to be on the news in front of the State Department shouting locker room words with my fist in the air. No, I want to be on the news in front of the State Department with myself in the air. Because I’m levitating. Actually it doesn’t really matter where I am, as long as I’m levitating. Think of all the things I could do if I could levitate. Like clean the gutters more easily, I guess.
I’m heading west in a silver Honda Pilot, driving alone, eventually meeting up with my family in Idaho. Today I was forced to listen to Imagine Dragons in the car. In other words, the devil made me do it. I’ll level with you: I don’t know what the Imagine Dragons guy is so pissed about. He’s always shouting, but never about dragons. If I had a band called Imagine Dragons, I would yell about dragons all the time, and then if there was any time left over I’d yell about gnomes.
I guess maybe he’s mad about being from Las Vegas. Maybe he had to work at Chik-Fil-A for spending money when he was younger, and he has strong feelings about waffle fries. Out of the two albums’ worth of material I listened to, my favorite lyric was “just another damn dog.” Or he could also have been saying, “just another down dog.” Either way, it resonates strongly with me, and I’ll be listening again tomorrow.
Award for best town that I passed today goes to Friendstown, Maryland. Nobody lived there. For 20 minutes after passing the town, I felt vaguely sad and found myself absently sawing at my wrist with the side of my cell phone.
I’m overnighting in Wheeling, West Virginia. I’m disappointed that I’ve been in West Virginia for nearly 2.5 hours and have seen no overt evidence of meth. However, this one man did pass me on the freeway, driving a rusted out Audi, and the man looked like that guy from Alice in Chains, three weeks after that guy from Alice in Chains died. I’d categorize that under “circumstantial evidence of meth.”
I didn’t know whether to eat supper at Bob Evans or TJ’s Family Restaurant. There usually aren’t any Bob Evans in the places I live, so I feel like you’ve got to let down your hair and go for it when you have the chance, you know? TJ’s looked good, but there was this topless place called TJ’s down on 122nd Avenue in the town where I grew up, so the name is kind of ruined for me. So is the name “Donner.”
Bob Evans sounded wholesome though, or at least down-homey. I had meat and potatoes, hold the meth.