He Does a Great Janis Joplin...

So, for anyone reading this that wasn't involved in the comments from the post below, this probably won't make any sense....oh, well.

Here you go Stacey and Lisa, the beginnings of a balladeer. Exactly 3.5 weeks after I packed all my belongings into a UHaul and moved to my current location a strange occurrence transpired. Looking back, it was merely the beginning of a 3 year end. Mind you this was 3.5 weeks after arrival and exactly 3 days after I had obtained a rather interesting and enjoyable job as a surgical tech at an emergency animal hospital.....anyways, so I'm laying in bed at around 1:00am when the love of my life, totally out of the blue mind you, rolls over ands says "I think I need to spend some time on my own." Now granted, that is a perfectly reasonably and practical request...provided the person to whom you are making the request hasn't just moved halfway across the country to be with you. This is information I would have considered vital had it been publicized before we left. Anyway, long story short I don't handle these types of life-altering announcements coming as a surprise very well...something about appreciating a vague warning...I'm just weird like that. So my response was to stand up and begin packing. Less than twenty minutes later I had my puppy, my best clothes and books, my guitar and $50 in the car. Forty-five minutes after that I was outside the city limits and heading east on 1-20 bound for a friend in Atlanta I knew would take me in without warning. Now this car, this wonderful 1986 Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible had, as one of its many faults, a strange penchant for refusing to eject tapes that were inserted in the tapeplayer...and an even worse habit of refusing to play anything (radio or otherwise) besides the tape that was currently in the jam position. So there I am listening to the tape of Janis Joplin's greatest hits when my puppy, Ambrosious, who had neglected to tell me he would be requiring Dramamine, leaned over from the passenger seat and threw-up in my lap. Needless to say this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and the flood of tears I had barely been keeping underwraps broke through the dam and I began to sob uncontrollably. Being a male, and laden with inordinate amounts of testosterone I came to the conclusion that the only way to make this situation better was to sing along to the Joplin tape at the top of my lungs, tempt fate and refuse to let the speedometer fall below 120mph for the rest of the trip....which I did, through small town Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama (states containing police voted "most likely to kick the crap out of speeding hippies") and on into Georgia where I reached my friends house with a sick dog, a sore throat, and a soon-to-be blown engine at around 10:30am, making mine possibly the shortest and most miserable trip ever made between North Texas and southern Georgia. Two days after that my car finally gave up the ghost and my dog and I spent another two days sleeping in it and eating 2-week old bagels on the side of a northern Georgia back road until we were rescued by my long-suffering father.....much to our chagrin. Fini.