Wow - what an exhausting week. Really busy at work, not going to bore you with the details of that, but one thought that keeps crossing my mind is that the effect of this economy is to take the same amount of work and give it to fewer people. Anyway, before I get dangerously close to talking about something important, time to get back to the inane.

First, was on a call at home in the evening and whilst pacing around, I looked out the window and saw what I thought was a male downy woodpecker doing what woodpecker's do - pecking wood. It was climbing up one of the pine trees merrily woodpeckering away.

On closer inspection, it seems that this is actually a red-breasted sapsucker. The photo above is a bit blurry as the light was fading, but at least I now have a photo of him.

Next was a quick visit to the hospital again. Yep - couldn't quite make it a quarter without popping back in for a visit. Not a recurring problem - this visit was for a new and exciting problem. I've heard a few people say that a boil on the bum is one of the most painful things you can have. I don't know whether or not that's the case as I seem to have got something like that on my inner thigh rather than my bum. Bloody painful though, but appears to be healing so I won't dwell on that.

Right, next to the little one - he's been poorly. Some kind of bug I think. The only real knock on effect to me is occasionally waking up in the night and having to say “Karen - I think you need to go see if William's OK again.”

Then there's the birding society that I joined to see if I could find where interesting birds are. Managed to get a tip on a tufted duck that we were able to get out and see this Saturday.

Now, the interesting challenge is trying to find a single bird in a huge lake with absolutely thousands of ducks on it. Thankfully, it was more or less the first bird I saw as I walked to the lake (I'd started walking down whilst Karen got William out of the car). I caught site of it just before it went out of view under the near bank. Karen's approach was more interesting and that was the process of elimination. All I could here as she approached was “is that it? No. Is that it? No. Is that it? No .... ” seemingly answering her own questions. My fallback approach, had we failed to find tufty, was to look for the other people with binoculars and camera's at the lake (rather than the local residents) and see where they were looking. If you are interested you can see more pictures of this and other birds from this visit to Lake Merritt.

A busy week, but what has all this got to do with the title? Well, one of the birding messages came through with a link in it to someone's site. Being the nosey kind of person that I am I decided to go check it out. I was pretty impressed with some of the stuff that this guy's done and put together. See what you think voicewhiz. If you're a Simpson's fan like myself, I'm sure you've made the connection to the title. (Either that or I'm just way off base again).

Probably not that interesting to many of you out there, but there's a couple of things I've caught on TV that have reminded me about a couple of things from the road trip. The first was an episode of King of the Hill where Buck Strickland was being inducted into the Hall of Flame at a convention in Memphis. Long story shot, Buck meets up with his illegitimate son and they hit the town. Buck turns to his son and says “lets go out and get some women ... what's the bad area of Memphis called again?” His son looks at him quizzically and replies “Memphis.”

The next was an episode of Knight Rider. No, I've not gone retro on you - there's a new series of Knight Rider which, as I understand it, is not yet available in the UK. I think it's great - it's one of those things that's so bad it's good. It's also very Simpson like in its references to other shows. This latest episode had Billy dress up in a military uniform to pull a scam to free Michael and also ended with him getting a date with the pretty girl. Sound familiar? Well, the military character is introduced as Lieutenant Benedict and later in the episode, we find that his name is Templeton Benedict. Maybe it's just me, but you have to give credit for that.

I was debating whether or not to write this article under the Road Trip section as technically I'm on the trip now. I decided against that as I've got some thoughts as to how I'm going to organize my share of those blogs which you will see in due course. So, “The Knowledge”, for those of you that don't know, is what a London Taxi driver has to pass in order to get a license to serve in the City. Basically, you need to memorize the streets of London, so when someone gets into your cab you can take them to their destination - pretty complicated given the intricacies of London's road network. But it's achievable as there are many taxis working in London.

Now, I don't expect everybody to know everything, but I do kind of expect a taxi driver to have some sense of direction and have roughly an idea of where they're going. Not so in Florida. My faithful cabbie happily picked me up from the airport - I told him the name and location of my hotel and he drove off. As we're driving, he then tells me that he didn't know where the hotel was so I read out the address. Still no joy. He asked me if I had the phone number to call the hotel and get directions - seriously! Thankfully I have GPS on my phone, so I put in the hotel address and successfully navigated him to my destination. What we'd have done if I hadn't got GPS I don't know - I'd probably still be wandering round the suburbs of Orlando.

So I paid the driver when we got to the hotel and he had the cheek to ask me for a tip. “Yeah - buy a GPS .....tw*t”

I doubt it's escaped the notice of anybody in the world that the US has a new president. All eyes are on President Obama to see what changes he's going to bring about. And I think we're all hoping that these changes will help turn the economy around.

OK, so with Obama coming in, it's time to say goodbye to George W. I think The Sun newspaper ran an article “So Long George, Thanks For All The Laughs” and it does seem that, if nothing else, President Bush provided a lot of materials for the comedians. Well, with Bush leaving office, I have to give full marks to Veet for running a “Goodbye Bush” advertising campaign starting on the day of inauguration.

A friend of mine shot me a picture of a page from the Daily Telegraph in the UK showing the ad. I particularly like the placement of this, just under an Obama article.

Daily Telegraph Goodbye Bush. (Scroll to the bottom of the page).

So, for most of you that have been following the vote questions each week, you will know that we're going ahead with the cross country road trip. We'll be in Florida for the Daytona 500, then heading back across to Vegas for the Shelby 427. White trash or what!?!

Anyway, the listbelow outlines our currently proposed route stops. I'd be more than happy to hear from anyone who has any thoughts or comments. Any ideas of things to see on the way that we've not got mapped out.

Key
A - Daytona Beach
B - Kennedy Space Center
C - Atlanta
D - Graceland
E - Bald Knob
F - Springfield
G - Cawker City (World's largest ball of twine)
H - Lebanon (mid point of the US from New York to San Francisco)
I - Kinsley (mid point of the 48 states)
J - Roswell
K - Four Corners (only place in the US where four states touch each other)
L - Grand Canyon
M - Hoover Dam
N - Las Vegas

So, we find ourselves in 2009 with a whole year of excitement watching the economy collapse ahead of us. Guess it's time to start blogging again to at least shed some light on things that have interested me. The first of the year is a big shout out to Curt, a friend of mine, and the Drunken Clams, the band that he plays in. I went to see them play for the first time on Wednesday at Grant and Green in San Francisco. Now, even though I freely admit that I have less musical talent than the Spice Girls and therefore my opinion may not be worth too much, I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the band. Even considering the fact that Luis, the lead singer was suffering from an awful cold, it was still a good show - even if it was to watch Luis drink shots of Tabasco sauce in an attempt to ease his throat. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next gig to hear the band in full form. Couple of quick links if anyone's interested:

http://www.drunkenclams.org/ [edit - link no longer exists]
Drunken Clams on Facebook

Interesting tactics being deployed here to score a goal from a free kick. Simply get three of your team members to run forward and moon the keeper. Very debatable as to whether this would be considered “gentlemanly conduct”, but it worked.

I feel I need to explain how I came across this before I dive into the details as I don't want anyone to think that I was looking for anything related. So, I was on the photography challenge website that I look at to get ideas for photos and see what some of the other folks have done. There was a link to a forum thread on Halloween that someone had just posted to so I thought I'd have a read. Anyway, this one person had posted a picture of his dog that he'd dressed up as a bee (as he didn't have any kids - apparently he and his wife dress their dog up instead). A few posts later and someone had commented on the picture saying that there was a site dedicated to people who like to dress their dogs up as bees. Yep - apparently this is something that many people like to do. If you don't believe me, take a look Beedogs.

After being in the States now for over seven years, I've finally had my UK music collection shipped over. Anybody who knows me understands how near and dear my music is to me, so I'm one happy little puppy at the minute. In a complete blast, I've ripped all the CDs as they really don't take very long to do. I've purchased a record player (turntable) that I've connected up to my sound card and am slowly working my way through the vinyl. As the music gets processed, you'll see it appear on the Ragbox if you're interested in hunting for it, but my guess is that you're probably not.

It is very interesting taking a trip down memory lane. The one thing that seems to be sticking out to me is how truly awful the “B” side of singles really are. The Bone frequently does a “B” side request show, but they just use the phrase in the context of old classic songs that you haven't heard in a while. Not to mean the complete and utter garbage that some bands came up with that ended up on the back of their main hits. I sort of have this picture of the band in the recording studio working on a new album and one of the members is real stuck on a song. The producer clearly hears it for what it is and is desperately trying to think of a way to stop the band insisting on it being included on the new album. Everyone's agreed on what the main single is going to be and the producer turns round and says “ I've had a great idea - I know what will make that single really fly - if we put this song on the back of it. If we leave it off the album then people will have to buy the single to hear it.” And the drunk/stoned baned look round and go “Yeah!”

That said, there are some gems out there. I've very biased when it comes to Iron Maiden as I think they're the best band ever and I really like listening to some of their “B” sides where they've covered other songs.

The other thing that made me laugh is looking at some of the albums and knowing what I went through when I bought them. There's the obvious heavy metal band striking a pose to look hard (normally with the photographer lying on the ground looking up at the band to make them appear bigger than normal) which, at the time, I thought looked cool. But the one that cracks me up the most is back to the “B” side discussion, but this time on albums. Now, I do really like some of Hawkwind's songs, but I do remember picking up a record and thinking they've made a mistake as they're only listing one song for the “B” side. Then realizing that they haven't made a mistake and that there is a 30+ minute song. Now the first time I came across this I thought that the song must be good if the band put that much effort into it. Hmmm. You get home to find something that doesn't really make much sense and you realize it's the band doing one of their “experimental” songs (a.k.a. getting stoned and playing the notes that seem to match the colors that the band is seeing). Once bitten, twice shy as the saying goes. Not so. Trouble is that the next time you come across it, you know it's going to be painful, but if you want the songs that are on the “A” side you're going to have to buy the album anyway. Or buy the singles, but that just cost more money.

I suspect there may be more to come on this topic as I unearth many more gems. I estimate that it's going to take about a year to work through all the vinyl and convert to digital. I'm in no rush, so this seems like a nice hobby to have bubbling away in the background.

Well, it's been really quite for a few weeks, so what have I been up to. Nothing much really, sad to say, however, September is somewhat of a milestone month for me. September the 11th is the date that I quit smoking. No connection to the tragic events of 9/11, it just happened to be that day that I put my last cigarette out. This year was my second year without smoking, so still fairly recent, but appears to be on track.

This month is also the six month marker since anyone has looked up, probed or otherwise shoved an implement up my arse.

Now, whilst the former landmark of giving up smoking would seem like the bigger achievement, I can tell you that I'm much more grateful for the second. I'm not saying that things are perfect in the internal plumbing department, but there hasn't been anything serious that would warrant another trip to the hospital and provide cause for someone to go poking around again. (Although I'm in there every week for a problem with my leg, but that's pretty boring stuff).

Anyway, this is something I feel I need to celebrate. I doubt (and hope) that nobody else out there has cause to celebrate the same thing, but as the month draws to a close and you find yourself in a bar - feel free to raise a glass to the health of my bottom. Just don't push it up there.