THE (BUZZED) SET-UP:

O.K. - some of you know I'm moving from Indy to Seattle.  I'm in temporary housing in downtown Seattle now, waiting for our housing deal to finalize.  In the mean time, Mrs. in Indy is back in Indianapolis doing her consulting thing.

So I'm stuck apart from her this weekend in Seattle - a great city with absolutely SPECTACULAR weather now.  Woke up this morning and felt The Mountain beckoning.  Threw on my hiking duds and drove to the Sunrise Visitor Center on the flanks of Mt. Rainier & put in about 6 hours of simply terrific hiking in one of America's great National Parks.

Despite hydrating pretty well throughout, I was pretty parched after 12 miles of pretty vertical hiking.  Upon arriving back in the temp condo in Seattle, I decided to get a nice meal & headed out to 94 Stewart - one of Seattle's many independent and outstanding restaurants.  In addition to the very fine food, I had only a beer and two Manhattans.  Normally, not enough to get much of a buzz.  However, I must not have hydrated as well as I thought, as the buzz became rather pronounced - I was doing well to walk the four blocks back to the condo, at least in my mind I was doing well ....

So, I'm back in my condo now and what should be on T.V. but the NASCAR race in Chicago.  GREAT!    I figure I'm in the appropriate frame of mind to appreciate an extended viewing of a Sprint Cup event.  Seattle doesn't believe in air conditioning - so I'm in totally authentic NASCAR viewing garb (stripped to my u-trou and a polo shirt, ... o.k. the polo shirt doesn't really pass muster, but I don't have a wife beater; likely TMI, eh? - sorry for those of you with sensitive stomachs).

NEXT MORNING NOTE:  The following has been left untouched, despite it's poor coherence and construction.  At the time, it seemed very well constructed and quite coherent, and it would be inappropriate to edit it (despite the embarrassing quality) as such editing would destroy the "buzzed blogging" perspective.

THE BUZZED STREAM-OF-QUASI-CONSCIOUSNESS BODY OF THIS POST:

Kyle Busch has been running away with the race to this point.  Larry McReynolds and the other dudes on the TNT Broadcast Team are saying things about stuff that really doesn't register with me, although their enthusiasm does.  O.K. - right there - despite the obvious enthusiasm, they missed Carl Edwards passing Kyle Busch until about 30 seconds afterwards. I guess it didn't fit in with whatever the hell they'd been talking about as Carl approached and passed Kyle for the lead.  No problem, ...  still an enjoyable video experience.  During a commercial break, Carl apparently came in for a green flag pitstop & his car then went all to hell.  But we don't really learn why (note:  much later, Larry McReynolds actually showed us why the spoiler damage was a problem - VERY helpful, even a u-trou wearing, buzzed dude sitting on a couch in Seattle had already figured THAT out).  The enthusiastic patter from the TNT booth focuses on the front spoiler of Mr. Edward's car; they continue to focus on Carl even after the next commercial break - despite the fact he's 1+ laps down.  Buzz or no buzz, even I know it's kinda weird that they're focused on Carl still ...  I'm starting to wonder, ... how many beers does it take before the broadcast makes sense and the race seems interesting enough to prevent channel surfing?  Well, I'm commited to my buzzed blogging/viewing experiment and will stick with it.

Fortunately, there have been some pretty funny commercials.  The Geico commercial with the racing kid always makes me laugh.  And the kids with remote control of the Sprint cars was also pretty funny (not sure who the advertisement was for in that one) - seeing Tony bail from his possessed car, telling others to "run for your lives" was decently amusing.

And of course, it's always amusing to imagine Hyrty or Hwerty or whatever the guy who goes apoplectic every time Busch does well - even moreso in a mildly altered state.  Busch still leads, as we get closer and closer to another Kyle Busch victory my level of anticipation of the weekly Hwrty meltdown makes it somewhat worthwhile to continue watching.  Maybe Kyle won't win - - somebody keeps throwing debris onto the track - - can't have a driver run away with a NASCAR event, afterall.

Unfortunately, we're now not only back into the routine TNT patter describing bizarre aspects of the race and more routine commercials that we've all seen for a couple dozen times, but the race has become terribly routine (Kyle drives to a 2 second lead - more debris, another caution, a bunch of commercials, Larry McReynolds talks about something, Kyle Busch drives to a 2 second lead - more debris, etc. ...). 

TNT has now officially declared a debris caution to be the "moment of the race".  Sheez ...

Naaah.  Even buzzed, I don't get how anyone can watch a NASCAR event for more than about 20 minutes.

THE KILLED-BUZZ CONCLUSION:

Maybe I wasn't buzzed enough.

Or maybe another network is broadcasting Ferris Buehler or The Godfather (any part), or maybe Peter Popoff is healing again ...  maybe I'll check back once in awhile to see if the race will end before midnight.

THE SURPRISINGLY SELF-AWARE BUT STILL BUZZED SELF-REALIZATION:

I'm sure I'll be too embarrassed to keep this up after viewing it in a sober state of mind tomorrow.  For any of you to mke it to the bottom of the post, you guys must be buzzed (or worse) too.