We’re in transit (on our “Supersize Me” tour– For the next 30 days, we’ll be eating fast food three times a day!), so the postings will appear in spurts. (We’ve noticed a steep uptick in the number of hotels that now offer hi-speed internet these days. Just six months ago, it was necessary to seek out “better” accomodations to get the hi-speed. Now, even Econo-Lodges and Microtels are offering it! And it actually works– we recall staying in a Homewood Suites specifically because they offered hi-speed and being frustrated at not being able to make it work with our laptop. The support center at the company who was subcontracted to provide the service– a firm called Merlot– blamed it on our operating system, Windows ME, and tried but ultimately failed to get us up and running on the broadband highway.) We’re connected now, though, via the ol’ CAT5E!

Another reason our postings have been sparse– technical difficulties! Our mail has been diverted (lost in the ether? delayed in cyberspace?) and, we’ve been occupied with solving that problem. We might have to resort to totally reconfiguring all of our addresses “out there” so that everything comes to one address. More on that later. IF you’ve sent us a subscription request or a Like We Care in the last 72 hours, please send it again to bmckim(“at”symbol)mindspring.com and it’ll get to us!

Yet another reason we’ve been posting intermittently: A wicked back spasm incapacitated the male half of the staff for 48 hours!

I’m not sure if it was the tennis (45 minutes of it after laying off it for eight years), or the slouching in the Danish modern chair in the back office while transcribing “Marty Robbins All Time Greatest Hits” (1972 Columbia Records) from vinyl to CD. Either way, it gave me a horrific spasm which, 48 hours later, stopped me dead in my tracks in the middle of the living room, unable to take even one more step.

And, of course, since the only cure for a spasm of this type is a muscle relaxer (and the attendant coma), the next 72 hours are lost as well. Cyclobenzaprine, also known as Flexeril, causes a waking death, but eventually enables the victim to stand erect and participate in society. Our favorite side effect is “syncope.” (defined by Webster’s as “loss of consciousness resulting from insufficient blood flow to the brain.” Syncope, indeed.

Anyway, we’re in Cookeville, TN, right now. The hotel (which was formerly a mutant EconoLodge and is now a Country Hearth), actually charged us $5 for Traci. That’s right– “Are there two of you, sir? I’m sorry, but that’ll be an extra five dollars for your wife!” You heard correctly– the booker only pays the single rate and the comic must cough up the extra fin for the hangers on– in this case, Traci. If I brought a pet, it’d be $10, so it coulda been worse. This is Traci’s first time just hanging out as “the comic’s wife” and it’s costing us! (We picked up a one-nighter on the way to our weekender, but there was only room for one of us on the bill, accounting for Traci’s idleness on this evening.)

We’ll be in Vegas by Monday. In the next three weeks, we’ll hit Georgia, Shreveport, Phoenix, Reno and Pontiac, IL. We’ll be out for just about 28 days total. Stay tuned.