GIMME A V!!! GIMME AN A!!! GIMME A C!!! GIVE ME ANOTHER A!!! GIVE ME A T!!! GIVE ME AN I!!! GIVE ME AN O!!! GIVE ME AN N!!! WHAT'S THAT SPELL? VACATION!!! TELL ME AGAIN!!! VACATION!!!

One of the sweetest words in the human language... vacation. I just finished one up. Two glorious weeks with a new car and a full tank of gas. Sweeeeet. The first week it pretty much rained. No problem! I sat around, read, rested, recuperated. By Thursday though it began to get old. Sooooo... I checked out the old Weather Channel and found that just 250 miles away... in Memphis... it was gonna be sunny and in the 70's all weekend! Woo Hoo! I quickly informed Debbie that she needed to pack a bag because after she got off of work on Friday we were Tennessee bound. And so we went!

You ever been to Memphis? No? Well if you go... don't bother leaving downtown. I mean, there is Graceland. Tacky, tacky, tacky. Trust me, just stay downtown. You'll be much better off. Ok, do go to see Bellevue Baptist Church. But then run... do not walk... back downtown. And be sure to stay at "The Peabody." They have ducks there. They keep them on the roof most of the time. But at 11am each day the "Duckmaster" brings them down the elevator where they exit at the lobby and walk across a red carpet before sliding into a lovely marble fountain. At 5pm they go back home to the roof. Why, you ask? I don't know. They just do.

It rained in Memphis that weekend. All weekend. But it was ok. Even convertibles have tops. So we kept ours up. We walked Beale Street and ate pork sandwiches while watching a pseudo-Elvis serenade us with "Blue Suede Shoes." We dined at the world famous Rendevous and the ribs were supurb. Still... it rained. We went home on Sunday evening. Chris met us at the door. He said it had been sunny and in the 70's all weekend. Hmmmm. By the time we got home it was cloudy. Drizzly. Yukky.

I settled down in front of the weather channel again. It was going to keep on being ugly. But.... Chicago... was going to be nice! Sunny and in the 60's! Poor Debbie had to go back to work but I loaded my own luggage and headed north on Monday morning. It was cloudy when I left Bethalto. It was cloudy in Springfield. Same in Bloomington. Ditto for Joliet. In Chicago... I had to turn the wipers on to keep the snow off of my windshield. The next day, Tuesday was more of the same. I called home. Scott answered. I listened in dismay as he sang "Blue skies!! Nothing but blue skies do I see!" I spent the night, got in the car, drove home. Through the rain. It was still raining when I got there.

I was down to one last weekend of vacation time. Weather.com. The Weather channel. Cindy Pressler. They all agreed... it was going to be cloudy and not so warm. But Kansas City! Kansas City was going to be NICE! West was definately the way to go!

Fool me once... shame on you. Fool me twice.. shame on me. Fool me three times... just shoot me. I stayed home. Saturday I put the top down and cruised town. I fired up the motorcycle and sped up and down the highways and byways. I basked in the rays of God's own sun. Sweeeet.

When will I learn? When WILL I learn? I'll tell you when I'll learn. As soon as I figure out what the heck happened... that's when I'll learn.