Now that I’m out of Hattiesburg, I can disclose that I was staying at the Comfort Inn there, the hotel that promised high-speed but didn’t deliver. I drove six hours and am now back in the Kilgore/Longview area, with a hotel that has high-speed access. It seems more and more hotels to their credit are delivering high-speed access, without putting another $10 a night on the hotel bill. Hail to the market.

On the drive over on I-20, I stopped at the outlet mall in Vicksburg, MS. Nowhere near the size of real outlet malls, such as Osage Beach, Missouri, it was still big enough to have a Reebok outlet where I picked up some extra large socks.  Did you know that sock sizes are graded one level higher than shoe sizes, i.e. a Size 14 shoe takes a Size 15 sock? Construction on I-20 was a lot better this week then it was when I was escaping Ivan weeks ago; there was only one 3-mile stretch east of Bossier City, LA, and all the intracity construction in Bossier City seemed to be complete.

Tonight, a return to the smoky Sports Page in Longview, with their $5 pitchers of draft. Supposedly they were looking into hiring a chef and putting out some real food. Tonight’s premium game is Spotlight, which contains that dreaded category of “guess the year X happened”. Until then, it’s an hour of Tae Bo, which I recommend playing with another source of music, faster than the music on the workout, such as Linkin Park.