Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way inspired to write a blog. In fact, I am only doing this for lack of something else to do since I am cooped up in my hotel room in Middletown, NJ with nothing else to do. Sure, I could take the train into New York City, but I’d be tired-er and poorer. Besides, I had a fantastic 20 oz steak and 2.5 pints of quality beer for dinner, and after succumbing to the mindless excesses of loneliness and boredom I feel so corpulent that I can barely move…

Not even two weeks ago was I going through the same sort of thing in Cleveland. Maybe I’m just a fuddy-duddy, but I find visiting big cities to be tiring and somewhat frustrating unless I already know my way around or am with someone else who does. I am in neither situation here, and New York City is far too large to attempt an exploration when one has only an evening or two, so my inclination is to retire into passivity and seclusion, wiling away the dull hours until I can fall asleep and go about the rounds again the following day. I still feel some of the lingering misery of last night’s accidental 2-hour-long excursion into the northwestern New Jersey wilderness, the blame for which I place solely upon apparently sadistic road architects. Around here they really want you to have to pay for toll roads. I found out the hard way that it’s not worth the extra 45 minutes of being lost to avoid a $2 toll. I felt like Dennis Nedry haphazardly fumbling about in the rain avoiding Dilophosauri with the weather and seemingly everything else set firmly against my success.

Perhaps it’s time for another round of Civilization 3?