prime directive

It's official, I've patronized that car wash down on Sunset by my girlfriend's place for the last time. Pulled into one space & saw that it was out of order. The next space had a fucking snow-cone cart parked in it. The last one was out of order, too, & one of the drunken louts standing around pointed a scribbled piece of paper taped up on one of the walls: "no service." So I was backing my truck out, right? And as I'm putting in in drive & getting ready to bail out I see 'em all staring at me. So I'm staring back like "What the hell are you looking at?" & promptly drive into three-foot concrete post that's in the parking lot for some reason. That got 'em pretty riled up, I guess I was disrupting drunken snow-cone time. It kind of cheered me up that it bothered them so much, I was was actually laughing when I drove off. I took a look at my truck there's a small dent on the fender, not really noticeable except for the small amount of paint that rubbed off from the cement. I consider it a testament to the durability of Ford trucks, I put my vehicles through a fair share of punishment, & the last 3 have been Ford trucks. I should have my own Ford commercial: "Only Ford trucks can endure my catastrophic road rage!"

On another, less psychotic note, I started my private investigation training at Nick Harris Detectives. Pretty cool stuff. It was weird to get the actual lowdown, it wasn't too far from what I've been looking at on my own, mostly free stuff, public records and shit like that. What a bunch of nut-jobs in class with me though! I can't imagine them thinking the same about me, the walking talking picture of normalcy. The instructor was pretty cool & said I could "sit in" on the classes & pay the fee later. I normally feel bad about paying for that kind of stuff since I was totally ripped off by some correspondence-course ruse. But these guys are legit, several of the agencies I've called looking for work have said to call back when I took this class. And these guys let you get some hands-on experience. Yeah, they let you pay to work for them, goofy huh. But you get to socialize with other P.I.'s & use their databases & they give you equipment & shit like that. So I'm excited about it. It's Mondays & Thursdays, 7-10, so I bid a tearful farewell to Monday Night Football. This is the one thing that I'll take over football though, so it's all good.

To wrap it up, let me leave you, the earnest reader, with a nickel's worth of free advice: If you like spicy food, try not to scarf down your meals in less than a minute, lest you be stricken with explosive diarhea. I'll spare you the gruesome details, just enjoy the opportunity to learn from someone else's mistakes.