Welcome holiday travelers

I rule, and here's why.

Today is the beginning of Memorial Day weekend on Cape Cod. Yes, it's Memorial Day weekend everywhere, but specifically on Cape Cod. This marks the beginning of the Big Crazy, and there will, as always, be multi-mile back-ups of cars at both bridges, all weekend long, wild traffic snarls on Cape, and hordes of confused drivers cursing as they fail to navigate the rotaries with aplomb.

The T-Shirt shops on the sleazier stretches of Route 28 in Yarmouth and Route 6 in Eastham will be open, the fried clam strips with onion rings fries and cole slaw please will be ruining somebody's circulatory system, and the traffic cops will be ticketing anyone with a Rhode Island license plate.

And here's a word to the wise: they really really really do mean 40 mph on Route 6 in Eastham.

Ever since leaving grad school about 5 million years ago, I have spent Memorial Day weekend slaving away in some restaurant, usually literally over a hot grill -- and not the good kind where you're outside, sipping beer and playing horseshoes.

Not this year.

This year, the beginning of Memorial Day weekend has been marked by the arrival of my very first payment for freelance work. I am officially a professional freelancer, and therefore officially not working in a kitchen this summer.

Sorry, tourists (whoops, "seasonal guests"), but your medium-rare strip steak will just have to be grilled to perfection (and then re-grilled, when you send it back, because you really meant to say medium-well, you meat-hating philistine) by some other chick.

I will be busy blowing a significant portion of my shiny new income at the Beachcomber, grooving to Dick Dale tunes, and slurping down littlenecks at the raw bar.

lalalalalalalalalalala.

OK, snarky gloating episode over. Gotta go. It's my turn in the horseshoe pit.