My soon-to-be epic Tennessee/Carolinas/Georgia (and a little bit of Mississippi and Alabama) road trip with Carly begins at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, June 30th.

The full line-up is below. (These dates are not exact after Memphis, as I do not want to be found, particularly if I run off with my soulmate who is, no doubt, a cowboy.)

I will most assuredly be tweeting/TwitPic-ing. And if I'm not too lazy, I'll have photos up on Facebook once I get back.

June 30 - Winchester, VA (changed hands 13 times in one day during the Civil War)
July 1 - Monongahela National Forest; Mount Airy, NC (aka Mayberry/Andy Griffith’s hometown)
July 2 - Sliding Rock (natural water slide); Pisgah Forest; Asheville, NC
July 3 - Blue Ridge Parkway; Jonesborough, TN (Tennessee’s most haunted town!)
July 4 - Nashville, TN; Belle Meade Plantation
July 5 - Memphis, TN; Civil Right Museum (where MLK Jr. was shot)
July 6 - Graceland; Mississippi (location TBD)
July 7 - Tuscumbia, AL (Helen Keller’s birthplace)
July 8 - Georgia (location TBD)
July 9 - Savannah, GA
July 10 - Charleston, SC
July 11 - Wilmington, NC

Have you ever had that experience where you are listening to 'hold music' or have turned on the radio mid-song and hear this incredible new song that you have to hear again, so you scramble to write down whatever lyrics you can decipher before the song ends, hoping that it's enough to google? I just managed to do that with Barnes & Noble hold music and now have a new song for our roadtrip playlist!

I've been thinking about this one a lot lately: if you were to die tomorrow, what would you regret not having done?

Remember back when life was enjoyable? Sigh.

Does anyone else think it funny that superficial women are injecting their faces with a product whose "clinical" name is "Botulinum toxin"? Seems pretty off-putting to me. And knowing the full name makes me wonder what the people in charge of branding were thinking.

I have an extreme aversion to public displays of affection, mostly by others but also by myself. I'm not sure where it came from because in high school I loved making out with my boyfriend in the stairwell. But I did one of those online personality quizzes once, and it told me that I was the Adventurer type, and one of the characteristics of that personality type is a distaste for PDA. So now whenever I'm grossed out, I just think about what an adventurer I am.

I think all websites should adopt Jacob's version of a captcha.

I just updated my Firefox bookmarks toolbar and thought I'd share. I could joke, tongue-in-cheek, about how this is due to my recent indoctrination, but really, it's all genuine. I have complete faith that this country can become something better and stronger - not just than what we've been in the last eight years, but what we've been in the last many generations of our history. So, in that spirit, here are my new bookmarks:

The Obameter: Measuring which promises Obama keeps, compromises or breaks.

WhiteHouse.gov: You may have heard of this one. It's now run by our new messiah-in-chief and his team.

Reason.com: Writing for “free minds and free markets.” Very matter-of-fact coverage from what I've seen so far.

WhoRunsGov.com: Because there are just so many people to keep track of, and it's time to get interested. (A production of the Washington Post Company.)

USA Service: New site from Obama's team, because (from the inaugural address): We remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains...We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment — a moment that will define a generation — it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

So after decades of wondering, I finally googled what CCD stands for.

Confraternity of Christian Doctrine

Seriously. If they had called it that, I never would have gone.

A very close friend's mother passed away this week after a long battle with cancer. It's amazing how some things come along in life that just filter out the bullshit and completely refocus your worldview.