Ok, I cannot possibly look at another line of code right now. I have been documenting all of the programming I did for one of our clients ALL DAY today.

Twenty-Seven pages of documentation.

My eyes are crossing here.

It was the Summer of 1992. I had just returned home after a very unsuccessful journey into the realm of the traveling Renaissance Festival worker. After suffering through 21 days straight of rain in a tent that was barely big enough to fit my large ass, much less my gear, I decided that I liked some of the finer things in life. You know, like electricity. Walls. Showers that aren’t a 20 minute hike through mud. I also hadn’t gotten laid yet. You see, I was a virgin when I went on the road, and I had heard that “if you can’t get laid while on the road, you can’t get laid.”

And I didn’t get laid.

Needless to say, I thought my future was pretty bleak.

In retrospect, had I gone on the road with nobler intentions I may have had a better time. Unfortunately, sex was about the only thing on my mind at that particular juncture in my life.

Oh, who am I trying to kid? Sex is about the only thing on my mind now. But I digress…

I had been home for a few weeks, and was living on the folding couch at the Blain residence. Ann Blain and her children (Brooks, Holly and Beau) had, since the time I knew them anyway, always had the home for wayward children. That place you went to when you had to get out of your house but couldn’t afford to acutally live on your own, or the place you crashed at for a few weeks while you were in town. I don’t think that many people who lived with her actually ever paid any rent. There were a few, but I’m sure the majority did not. I know I never did.

The couch was, of course, in a very public place, so sleeping in was hardly ever an option. Not only that, but it was the place that the cats liked to hang out. Cats in heat. Next to my head. At 4 AM.

Thus the “McGreevy” rule was born in the Blain household : NO SCRUMPING ON THE COUCH.

So one morning I’m woken up by my friend John Colbert, who is more popularly known as Spud. Spud is an interesting guy. He has a genetic disorder that is kind of like albinism, but not quite as extreme. He’s very pale, and he has almost NO body hair. He doesn’t have red eyes or anything extreme like that, though. He’s just this pale bald guy who seems to know EVERYBODY. Seriously. You can’t go to a night club without someome recognizing him. Very charismatic fellow. Spud comes to me, first thing in the morning (a morning that had, blessfully, been cat sex free) and utters these famous last words :

“A friend of mine is having a Fourth of July party in Pennsylvania. Wanna go?”

I knew about 4 people in Pennsylvania, and I owed a considerable amount of money to them. Money I did not have. I was utterly and completely broke at this point. No job, and seriously on the outs with my mother (she has this horribly ill-concieved notion that I was pissing my life away and being a complete slacker. Just because I didn’t have a silly job and wasn’t in school and slept all day and smoked all night. I don’t know where this woman gets her ideas. Honestly!). There was no logical reason for me to go to this party.

So I blinked a few times, yawned, and croaked out my response.

“Sure. Why not?”

The first hurdle I had to get over was this silly little money thing. Fortunately, I had a friend at the time who kind of understood the pull of the open road and the whole desire to do crazy shit, and I was one of the few people who had actually gotten to know him personally. His name was Jeff Slyker, but he was more popularly known as Zoot Allors or FZappa. He ran a local bulletin board called Zappa’s Place. For you whipper snappers out there who don’t remember the dark ages of online communications, there was a time when the internet was hardly a blip on the radar of most computer users. We relied on phone lines tying directly into computers that ran bulletin board software over modems with incredible speeds like 2400 or 9600. There were several boards in the area that could accomodate 10-20 people at a time, but most of them back then were one or two line (I ran a board for a brief time called The Renraku Arcology). Zappa’s was, in my opinon, the best board in the area. It was full of interesting characters and lively conversations, and I met several people on that board who I am still in contact with today. Zoot himself, though, was a very elusive character. He didn’t like people really getting to know him. Bit of paranoid in him. I had managed to tear down those walls, though, and actually made the transition from online presence to real life friend.

I told Zoot of my desire to go to Pennsylvania, and my lack of fundage, and I didn’t even have to ask for a loan. He offered me $50 bucks on the spot.

So the day of departure comes. Spud shows up with his portion of the cash. Another fifty bucks.

It’s 1084 miles to Lancaster, Pennslyvania. We have 100 bucks between the two of us, and a pack of cigarettes each. We stopped to see Bill at Exxon before we left, and grabbed a few hot dogs.

We were set.

And on that note, I’m out of here…more later.