Kyle and I left at 3:40 PM and ground to a halt to the forces of “Rt 1 and the Infinite Backup”.  Playing the local, I tried a convoluted set of back routes to get onto the turnpike via a rarely used on ramp and saw the source of the delay:

This was compounded by having spent more than six seconds behind this person:

Driving was dull, asphalt passing at about 70 MPH on the 65 MPH areas of the turnpike.  After about two hours I noticed that the GPS’s arrival estimate hadn’t changed meaning that the device was programmed to assume we were speeding.  That little bastard.  Kyle started driving an hour or two after the snow started and I remembered that my least favorite form of precipitation is brine.  Every mile we covered was red in tooth and claw salt and topical microfissures with time slowing as our maximum speed dropped to 45 MPH due to the conditions.  Time lapse failed to make the progress seem faster:

A side effect of tooling along at 45 MPH behind a salt truck was setting  a record of 34 MPG on a single tank.

We arrived in Columbus after midnight and caught Chris and Stephen in their element:

Meeting Chris’s dogs was fun in the sense that they had a matter-of-fact view of people which divided our race into either petters or chair-warmers, each having no compunction with stepping on your junk, lungs, or face should you occupying any corner of their domain.

I want to get the two an acrylic or plexiglass chair so I can see Small Dog in her native element.  Alternatively, maybe an IR-sensitive flipcam would do.

Chris situation seems best described as restless comfort.  I sympathize with his feeling that his job takes care of him but is far from the last step he’ll take.  I look forward to seeing him turn into a preacher’s wife at some time in the future but Stephen’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring could use some polishing.  I consider it a personal triumph that I’ve made no “polishing the organ” joke otherwise but did find it hilarious that he had a collection of nutcrackers.

Stereotypes either inspire humor or loathing in me and I immediately picked up on Chris’s collection of scrapbooking shears.  He insists they aren’t his but I’m skeptical.

I hoped there was some ritual in receiving each new set of sheers may they be egg/dart, sinusoidal, or traditional pinking shears involving defeating another scrapbooker in a scrapbooking duel but that doesn’t appear to be the case.  Or it’s like Fight Club and even if it were the case I could never know.  The day ended at 4 AM after my first trip to a Waffle House which didn’t involve my vehicle being cased and falling a sleep on a hide-away single bed that could have been more comfortably packed with gravel.