The first picture of the trip. The sun was actually worse than it looks, but I handled it fairly well, by which I mean I actually stayed on the road and didn't hit anything. I took several pictures, including this one, while driving, which increases the degree of difficulty a few notches.

Rather than try to make the entire trip in one day, I stopped in Pittsburgh to spend some time with my sister and brother-in-law. I didn't get to see my sister on the way out because, ironically enough, she was in Ohio. I did, however, get this wonderful picture of their unread newspapers. When I visited on the way back and was having breakfast with my sister, she was reading the paper from September 22.

This is the first picture I took at Kolumbus. This is Lillith, going through paperwork and determining that she paid too much for that muffler. (That joke is so old that I had to use it. Couldn't resist, didn't try.) There's a reason why the most prominent feature in this photo is the person leaning against the banister and not the person I was taking the picture of, and that reason is: I suck.

Here Lillith makes me a nice strong drink in someone else's room, because we couldn't get into our room because LadyBoobsalot was still en route, and when she did arrive we had more trouble because the eyehole lens in the door was missing so the door just had a hole in the middle, so we had to try to get another room, but the hotel was booked for the next day so even though they were able to give us a room they weren't sure if we would have it for both days or if we'd have to move, plus Lady B owed $3.40 for the room which she offered to pay at the time, but they said that wasn't necessary, and then they called on Saturday morning at 9:45 AM top say that we could keep the room for the second night but they wanted the $3.40 that they had declined when she tried to pay it in the first time, and on and on and on. Lady B has no luck with hotel rooms, and yet she keeps trying. She rocks.

Here's the view out the window of the room in the above photo. This is beyond picturesque.

This was a new one on me. I'd seen signs telling people that smoking wasn't allowed, but never had I seen a sign saying guns weren't allowed. As it was explained to me, Ohio has a concealed weapons law that allows people to conceal weapons, but businesses have the right under this law to disallow concealed weapons on their property. The No Guns Allowed graphic on the door states that concealed weapons may be legal in Ohio, but they are not legal in the Comfort Inn. That explained that. It still looks odd to me, but at least it makes some sort of sense.

I honestly don't recall all the conversation that went on around this time, but somehow it led to jezerfly asking me "What size pants do you wear?" Mr. Skullhead suddenly took much more interest in the conversation and asked, "What did you ask THAT for?" She responded, carefully innocent, "It's just a question." Later they allowed me to sit at their table at the karaoke bar. I repaid their kindness my spilling my drink on the table and having it spill into jezerfly's lap, and she had to liberally apply club soda to try to keep it from staining. She was okay about it, but I felt like a total ass.

The Howling Balloon Monkey made it from the restaurant to the Club Room in the hotel. It disappeared sometime during the night and I have no idea where it ended up.

Here's me modeling ludicrous balloon headgear, which is becoming something of a tradition at these meets.

The Orgasm Donor (not his real name) with his penis (not his real penis).

This is the sort of thing anyone should be proud to wear.

In the center here is the totally cool waiter who we tried hard to get up on stage to sing a song. Employees apparently aren't allowed to sing, so we got a petition to get his supervisor to allow him to sing. It reportedly worked, but then a bunch of other people were sent up before him and we all had to leave to engage in various other debauchery before he got his chance. We did give him a napkin with the KoL web address on it and Princess Sunshine's handle. I remember we were trying to find out if he would fit in, and she asked him if he was at all a geek. He said something about the glasses he used to have, and she said, "No, not what you looked like, I mean..." She hesitated, trying to figure out how to best put it, when I jumped in with "Can you quote entire scenes from Monty Python And The Holy Grail from memory?" He said, "Oh, man, I can quote that entire movie! 'What's you're favorite color?' 'Blue... No, yellooooooooo!'" That's when we gave him all the info about the site. Hopefully he checks us out. We're worth it. And hey, if you're reading this, sorry we didn't get to hear you sing.

This is me in the other silly balloon headgear, after we got back from the karaoke bar. The fishing rod and fish were Princess Sunshine's but she said I could keep them, on the grounds that it looked better on me. Lacking any better alternative, I decided to take that as a compliment, even though I don't look especially good in this photo.

This is Princess Sunshine standing with the only person at the meet who I know for certain is taller than me. I think he went by Ben, but honestly, I'm not sure. If someone wants to fill me in I'll put the correct name here. (UPDATE: I am informed that he is BigbenWD. Another mystery solved. I am also informed that there were plenty of taller people there, but this is the only one I am certain was taller in terms of standing next to them and having to look up to make eye contact.)

I am teh happy.

Me, Princess Sunshine, and FarfalleFromHome at lunch Saturday afternoon, before the Gameworks visit or the zoo visit, depending on which you prefered to go to.

Lilac kicks ass at Dance Dance Revolution. He brings the DDR gear to the meets, and in the Club Room people were playing this most of the weekend. Here at the arcade he demonstrated how good he is at this by hitting a combo of over 120 moves in a row, most of them credited as perfect,without even looking at the screen.

After an exhausting run at DDR at the arcade, nothing takes the edge off like returning to the hotel and playing some DDR there as well.

Yeah, okay, so see, there was, um... Well... That is to say, what happened was... Er... Okay, let's just move on.

That's better. Nothing to add here, really.

This is the inside of a White Castle. We got there through the pioneering spirit of Princess Sunshine, who twice opted to trailblaze through the grass to the parking lot rather than turning in at the light. Insane Steve, who suggested it first, commented "I was kidding" in the middle of the maneuver. She had given me a white-knuckle ride to the karaoke bar located maybe 500 feet from the hotel, and when I told someone who had driven me she responded, "You got in the car with her driving?" I said "Yes," paused a beat while her eyebrows went up, then admitted, "Twice," and watched her eyebrows rise nearly off her head.

The White Castle itself did not impress me, to put it mildly, and it had nothing to do with being warned by an employee that White Castle was a family restaurant and that "We have children in here" when we were the only people in the place, at 11 PM. I was warned by one of our party at the counter, "You've never eaten here before? Um... Stick with the cheeseburgers." I wouldn't even go that far. I've eaten regularly at McDonalds and seeing the food here made me feel queasy. I opted to just get a large soda and avoid the food. Back at the hotel later, jezerfly saw me with the White Castle cup and actually flinched. I quickly assured her that I just got the soda, and never even dreamed of touching the food. She relaxed visibly and said, "Good." The sentence "If you had eaten the food, we couldn't be friends anymore" was never actually spoken aloud, but it was implicit.

On the strength of this photo alone, this man will never be able to successfully run for public office anywhere in America.

Lilac displays the Universal Body English Signal for "Now where the fuck did I park my car?" Little did he remember, after the long tough weekend of a KoL meet, that he hadn't driven.

Some people chose to appropriate political signs for some reason. I can't imagine why.

Speaking of political signs, this rather lousy photo gives me the opportunity to tell this little story. As I was leaving the hotel, I ended up behind two black guys in a car with temporary plates. I was waiting behind them at a red light when this pick up truck roars to a stop on the side of the road by the traffic light. The door opens and a woman in an long upscale red coat gets out, and she walks over to some political signs in the grass area along the road regarding Prop 3, and she starts pulling and yanking at them until they come out of the ground. She pulles up several and flings them to the ground, then gets into the truck and pulls forward. The light is red so she cuts down the side street, does an immediate U-turn, and stops on the other side of the intersection. She gets out and repeats the process, pulling and yanking on the sign until she finally rips it out of the grass, then flings it disgustedly to the ground. She had this angry, miserable look on her face. She looked like she was someone who was fairly attractive once, but got a little older and a lot more beaten down by life, and was just an angry, bitter person all around.

As she got back into her truck and roared off, the passenger in the car in front of me got out and ran to one side, then the other, and put the signs back in the ground where they had been. Then he got back into the car, laughing and exchanging a high five with the driver. The photo here is the lady's truck. I didn't move fast enough to actually get a picture of her. The last bit of total insanity before I hit the highway to start home, and KoL had nothing to do with it.

Okay, here's a question. What the hell is the deal with Ohio's speed limit signs? Most states make them easy. There's the word "SPEED" and then the word "LIMIT" and then a honkin' big number underneath. Easy. Ohio's speed limit signs read like "Speed Limit 65 for cars, speed limit 55 for trucks, buses over four tons, unloaded weight, bicycles and motorcycles under 5 HP prohibited, solid gold rocket cars speed limit 45, stay in right lane, excluding joint taxpayers filing singly, void where prohibited by law (but only if there's absolutely no toilet)." You're so busy trying to read the entire sign that you fail to notice that the car in front of you has stopped and you crash right into the back of him. Even when there's other conditions in Pennsylvania they up two signs, "SPEED LIMIT 55" and "TRUCK SPEED 40," and it's easy and simple and you don't need a magnifying glass or to slow down to 20 just to read the damn speed limit sign. First Ohio fucks up the 2004 election, and now they make a speed limit a complicated and baffling ordeal. Something needs to be done about this.

Much better. West Virginia makes it even easier: The route number and the speed limit are both 70. That way there's only one number to remember. Now that's the way to go!

I stopped at my sister's on the way back, reeling from barely ten hours of sleep total over the entire weekend. Here's her welcome mat. It's like I never left the meet.

They have a ferret. Ferrets have a lot of major (by which I mean expensive) health problems and they tend not to last real long. They went from four to one in fairly short order. Here's Belle, the last remaining ferret. Ferrets are high maintenance, but they are cute as hell.

The only way to recover from a KoL meet. I need me one of these.