Road Trip Part I: Taking Cleveland by the Balls

The M/MLA (Midwest Modern Language Association) Conference was in Cleveland the weekend, & since I hadn't been to something like this in a while, when I heard a few friends were going for the day yesterday, I decided to tag along. The friends included Emily, Jenny, Kristen, & Kristen's fiance Patrick who is currently staying at his parents' house on Lake Erie in Monroe. Since he & Kristen were there, Emily, Jenny & I met them there before continuing the drive. Of course, the spider in Emily's car only nearly got us killed twice during that 1/2 hour drive as it caused her to nearly drive into a semi & them to nearly drive off of the exit ramp at 85 mph. But the real excitement happened when we got to the house & were introduced to Patrick's Mother's pervert dog, Paddy. Apparently, the dog has a weird thing for nylons & therefor spent the first 5 minutes trying to tear Jenny's apart. While everyone else did their part to remove the dog from her leg, I did my level best to remove myself from the whole dog situation as is my M.O. The other oddity of the short visit was the fact that her dog & her son have the same name. Before I realized what the dog's name was, she was saying things like "I really feel sorry for Paddy... he really want to come out & play w/ all of you." I thought, "That's an weird thing to say, he is coming w/ us, but referring to it as playing doesn't quite make sense." It wasn't until she said, "I feel so sorry for Paddy, he has to spend so much time in his cage" that I realized some fucked up name thing was going on, at which point Jenny realized she needed to get the Hell out as soon as possible & said, "So, is there a lake around here?" Of course, the house is 4 houses from Lake Erie & we'd driven passed it on the way into the neighborhood. When Patrick's Mother explained where it was, she decided she needed to check it out... & Emily & I were right behind her. We walked down to the lake & hung out for about 10 minutes before Kristen showed up & asked if we were ready to "Take Cleveland by the balls." Emily, Kristen, & JennyBefore we were even on I-75, we were introduced to Kristen & Patrick's mushy, syrupy-sweet nausea-inspiring cuteness. They refer to each other & to the act of love-making w/ the word waffle... which as it turns out is also used in all sorts of other weird ways. Apparently, while speaking in some sort of baby language to each other once, she said "I love you," but it sounded something like "I waffle," & then it caught on for good. At this point, we knew we were in for quite a day as we were exposed to more of this stuff when we stopped for breakfast at the first Service Plaza on the Ohio Turnpike. I was able to get out of witnessing too much of that though by dumping a couple quarters into Ms Pac Man & playing the game of my life. I was to the banana before I lost my 1st life. I knew that the longer I made those quarters last, the less "waffling" I had to experience. I then grabbed an OJ & a breakfast sandwich at Hardee's where I was asked the ever-present road-trip question "You don't want no meat w/ that? I mean, you don't want no meat at all?" If I had a dime for every road trip I've taken were this question came up, we could have stayed in Cleveland last night rather than driving home to save money. I grabbed my food, & then hit the brochure stand to get some reading material for the ride before we hit the road again. Of course, more mis-adventures occured at the actual confrence, but you'll have to check back for Part II later.