Preparations

One week from today, Mentally Incontinent comes out in bookstores. People who know me (and have seen the infamous tattoo) are probably thinking "wait a minute, Mentally Incontinent came out years ago. WTF?" Well, due to Joe's success as a self-published author/writer type person, he got a book deal with Penguin Books. Yup. So, they're releasing the next book, but not calling it a sequel as part of a very logical marketing scheme.

Anywho, the book comes out Tuesday November 3, 2009. In case you haven't figured it out, the links are to the Amazon.com presale page. I preordered mine forever ago.

The preparations aren't just for the book, however. The following weekend, there is a big book release party happening in Atlanta. I'm going. Yes, I am driving 9 hours to go hang out with Joe and others and to celebrate yet more weird stories from one of the coolest guys around.

So what have I been doing to prepare for my big road trip? Very little until now. I had Googled directions from my house to the hotel I'm probably staying at and from there to the venue for the party. That was about it, actually. Fortunately, the Fates intervened in my procrastination.

We decided to go see a movie on Sunday night. The app on my phone said 8:45, in reality it was a 10pm showing. Solution? Buy our tickets, and walk down the strip mall to the Barnes and Noble.

I bought a Streets of Greater Atlanta map, and the Rand McNally 2010 Road Atlas of North America. I'm already a pretty big nerd when it comes to maps and whatnot, and I'm just having ENTIRELY TOO MUCH FUN with my new atlas. Not only have I marked out the route suggested by Google, but I've found a detour I'm going to take on my way back to Columbus to indulge my Civil War geekiness. I found 3 fun things a lot closer to my fastest route than shooting across and through Nashville, which was my original plan.

Now I'm sticking to my Knoxville route for the most part, but I'm going to experience Jelico mountain and hopefully Gatlinburg. *happy dance*

By the time I'm done with this, I'm going to have at least four routes with various fun things to do along the way. Part of me feels bad for anyone who ends up riding with me on this one.

I've also gotten Blogger set up for mobile blogging (so people reading this on Xanga will have to switch over to timeracer.blogspot.com). I'm going to post cell photos and whatnot from the road. If I can figure out how to send video, too, then perhaps you'll get to enjoy a video of me harassing rest stop patrons. Hard to say, really.

But yeah..that's really all I have. I'm insanely excited about this road trip/book release/seeing people.

Oh, and did I mention that the preliminary forecast for Atlanta the weekend I'm down there is a good 15 degrees warmer than the forecast for Columbus that weekend? I might actually get to shed my hoodies for a couple of days.

The biggest downside to this trip so far is that CakeWrecks will be in Atlanta...the day after I leave. Grrrr.