My God, where to begin? We’ve been in the middle of the country for so long, I forget that both time and space get exponentially denser once you hit the Eastern Seaboard. After a much-needed bye week, we’re back on the road and it already feels like a new tour. We’re back in the land of Places We Played Before, having re-hit Fisher College for reasons that still remain unclear and currently riding out our collective post-show adrenaline rush in our friend’s room here at Rensselaer Polytechnic.

There is no way in the world I can even begin to summarize the last week and a half of our lives. All I can really say at this point is:

1. I finally got to live out my dream of being a We Are Scientist tonight by accompanying the one and only Keith Murray on baritone guitar, and

2. Meryl from LeMoyne College threatened to let the air out of our tires if I didn’t mention her in the road notes.

Pretty typical week here at LLC headquarters. Ninety-six hours ago, I wrecked the van on my way out of a Jiffy Lube and decided that the best possible thing I could do at that point was rent a silver Mitsubishi and hole up in Madison for a couple of days. The band recently discovered some long-lost kin living on the shores of Lake Monona, which seemed as good an excuse as any to get the F out of D for a while and pretend to Get My Life Back In Order Before I Have A Mariah Carey-Style Breakdown when, in fact, I really just wanted to get drunk in a wheelchair, which is for some reason easier to do in Madison than any other city we’ve been to so far.

So, long story short, the van’s being worked on and we’re all just sort of cooling our heels in and around the Great Lakes until Monday or so. I hope we don’t resort to cannibalism, as I haven’t exercised in a while and would probably be the first to go, as much for my helpless frailty as for the tenderness of my flanks.

Which means I’ll be going as an unprepared fugu this Halloween, just to be on the safe side.