I have got to be the least fun person to listen to when someone announces that they are going on a trip. This is something I've recently noticed about myself, and it's not like I mean to say the things I say. They just sort of... come out of my mouth. Kind of like that one friend (you know the one) that always invites himself to your parties and eats all the M&Ms in the bowl, even the very last two (which always seem to be a red one and a brown one).

For example, last year a friend went to New York just after war had been declared with Iraq and there were all kinds of protests in Times Square. My parting words? "Don't get trampled by political activists. If your plane isn't hijacked before you get there."

Or when my family announced that, during our stay in Vegas (when I was twelve), we would make the trip to the Hoover Dam: "Do you know how many dead bodies there probably ARE in there?!"

Naturally, when my dad announced this evening that he's being sent to New Orleans on business, I was less than supportive. Mainly because I don't get to go along. After requesting that he visit the French Quarter and bring me a shrunken head, I proceeded to make a request that he find and tour the house of one Madame Delphine LaLaurie, if it was possible. When he asked why, I informed him offhandedly that she was a New Orleans socialite that had mutilated her slaves and chased her own handmaid off of a balcony, sometime in the eighteen-hundreds. The house is supposed to be haunted. I wanted a postcard of it.

He just stared at me.