I have come to dislike holidays. Well, not the major family holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas. And especially not my birthday. Those are still cool.

But these major government holidays like Memorial Day annoy me. Since I work in radio, I don't get these days off like everybody else does. You can close the bank, and the store, and the mortgage office, but you can't just shut off the radio station. I don't even get paid extra or get any comp time. If I were to take the day off, it would cost me a vacation day. It's just expected that we're at work.

So for me, the only differences between a holiday and a regular work day are: 1) I can't make any progress on anything in the real world, like send or receive mail, finalize my mortgage, update my budget off my online bank statement, things like that. 2) It seems many people decide to celebrate Memorial Day by driving their cars. One of the few enjoyable things about my 2:30AM-4AM daily journey to DC is that I get to do it more or less by myself. But not on Memorial Day weekend. No, instead, I get to drive in a gaggle of cars driving between 60 and 63 MPH, which means one car will get thisclose to passing the one in the lane next to it, only to fall back, so I can't get by. Too close for missles, Goose, I'm switching to guns.... (Why did the RIO always need to know that anyway? Shut up and shoot!)

What's more, much of my daily entertainment isn't taking place today because the generators of such were off yesterday. Dave Barry didn't blog at all. WVSR took the day off. Even the Bob and Tom show was off yesterday, which meant I had no show to record and listen to in the car on the way to and from work. (I should mention that some radio people, specificially 30+ year veterans with four Marconi awards, do indeed get Memorial Day off, and one of the lackeys gets to work in their place. Yes, I am a lackey.)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the concept of Memorial Day at all. I think it's great that hundreds of thousands of people visited DC over the weekend for the WW2 memorial and other stuff. And I'm quite pleased that our station is located in a portion of DC that is well removed from all the interesting stuff, so I didn't even notice any of those people. It's all grood, I suppose -- it rained here yesterday anyway.

-- My car is out of surgery and back at my service. I've pretty much broken in the new parts now, which include the hood, the front bumper, the left front headlight, the left front fender, and the rear driver's side door. There's also a new front door brace on the driver's side, so the door is notably stiffer when opening and closing. When I first got it back, you could tell from 150 feet that the right headlight was new and the left one wasn't. Now they're both equally dirty, so it's more balanced. Now to go out and get some of those doodads that supposedly scare deer away. Do those really work?

-- The house is coming along. It is now outfitted with doors and the whole place has been painted. They've put down the kitchen floor, and the cabinets and countertops are there and waiting to be installed. Hopefully I will be locking in the mortgage rate this week. This is both terrifying and frustrating -- the former because it's another step towards spending an ungodly amount of money, and the latter because I quite literally have had an easier time communicating with AP and CBS reporters in Iraq than I've had trying to get someone from GMAC Mortgage on the phone the past two weeks. You would think someone in Baghdad would be harder to reach than someone in Wilmington, Delaware. And you would be wrong.

-- Hearn and I golfed at The Rock on Friday. I actually did quite well, especially for my first round of the season. I was actually hitting fairway irons onto greens, which never happens. I'm not sure what I was doing, but I say "it's gotta be the shoes" -- I replaced my 10-year-old footware with a new pair of Adidas shoes, originally $100, now $50. Loving that. If I could putt, I would have shot 80 instead of 92. But at least I still whomped Hearn. His drive on #4 hit the water tower. That's hard to do, unless you're Craig and you're trying to hit it on purpose. When this happens, it generates a highly amusing DONG that catches the attention of everybody on the course. It was HIGH-larious.

-- Anyone familiar with lacrosse... is it an NCAA rule that Johns Hopkins and Syracuse have to play in either the semifinals or the finals of the NCAA tournament every year? Because it sure seems like they do.

This is perhaps the best StrongBad email ever. And at least the Homestar people were working this weekend, so I have something to enjoy this morning. Peace out.