I’ve been in El Paso, Texas for a couple days. Check out this photo:

There are some words written on the face of a mountain off in the distance. You can’t see them in this photo, but they’re there. I don’t speak Spanish, and I don’t know what the words mean, but I’ve made a little agreement with myself to believe that what the sign says is something like, “If you’re in an airplane, pull up.”

El Paso is strange. If you look south, you’re looking right at Mexico. I know I have a lot of foreign readers who are probably used to the idea that there are countries in the world other than their own, but you must understand – for many of us ‘Mericans, it’s kind of a novelty, and particularly for those of us who don’t live on the border of another country.

Up north we have Canada, but that’s nothing like having Mexico. Although it drives the Canadians crazy when we say it (and this is, perhaps, why we say it in the first place), Canada is just like a clean America with manners, free health care, and funny money. It’s not so much a foreign country as much as it is a very large amusement park with a happy waitstaff.

Mexico is a whole different ballgame. It’s not at all like the states. The bit just south of El Paso looks like one big shanty town. I’m not used to seeing that sort of thing while sipping my morning coffee.

But I’m gone.

Having left El Paso, I’m now sitting in the Las Vegas airport, and I’m surrounded by the scum of the Earth. Poorly made-up slot machine stuffing, cancer inhaling, cheap booze swilling sacks of leather. My kind of people. I would welcome them one and all into my home and my heart. I would invite each one of them over for dinner if only:

1) I had any furniture

and

2) They promised that the only reason they might smoke at my pad would be spontaneous human combustion

I should enjoy their company while I can. Instead, I’m writing this post.

Today I gave my last MSDN Event of the fiscal year. That brought me up to forty-one events this year, thirty-eight of which I presented (the first few were training). If you were to line it all up side by side, it would mean talking for about 9,100 minutes straight. That’s almost an entire week without a break.

This job has taken me to Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Alaska, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, California, Washington, and my home state of Oregon.

To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that I’m not dead, and that I only went blind once.

My plan now is to spend the holiday weekend (it’s Independence Day weekend here in ‘Merica) being completely useless. I will sit in front of something that glows. Perhaps a television; perhaps a computer. Not radium. I will eat food that is not good for me. I will not move for any reason. I will become a human cesspool of a mess. The EPA will condemn my body before Monday’s over. Dogs will sniff curiously at me, wondering what could have died to have created such an exquisite odor. I may vomit - I reserve the right to vomit. Vomiting is a right I grant myself for this weekend.

Whatever happens, I will not do anything useful for three straight days.

Which means I might blog.