stitchwhich (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stitchwhich) wrote2007-05-20 10:39 pm
stitchwhich) wrote2007-05-20 10:39 pm
Here We Go 'Round in Circles
I'm rested and bored after my road trip...
Well! How to start this... O, heck - it's my journal. I'll just ramble on and whoever reads all the way through gets a gold star for wading.
Friday I wanted to go visit Shilo. But I'd had three nights of poor sleep and had resorted to medication to make it happen Thursday so of course on Friday morning I was a groggy cross-eyed yawning woman. So after I wake up I call Shilo to tell her I'm going to be late but I'm am going to see her, by golly! before I hit the road for Cooper's Lake. (An 8 1/2 - 10 hour drive)
Uh, huh. I check email. There's a message in there that necessitates a phone call and I know it will be long and involve soothing and tact. Better wake up fast! I call Shilo back - I'll be later than we thought.
Make the phone call. An hour later, it's all good. Get up from the desk to take a shower - the power goes out in the house. Guess I'm not eating breakfast before I start the day. Hmmmm... candlelight shower when I'm already stressing for time or visit Shilo as a Stinky Woman? Shilo kindly votes for 'shower when the power comes back on and we just won't hug goodby'. I head for her place. Forgot the book I was bringing to leave on Brigit's door so she can read it while she's sitting with her mom in ICU... go back. Get up on the freeway and my cell rings - text message from Sprint telling me that my account is overdue and the service is going to be discontinued. Since I actually have an overpayment, this is weird. Note: Do not try to deal with an automated phone service to reach a human while driving on a freeway at the part that requires lots of lane-changing and merging. I knew that - did I mention I was sleepy? Closed phone like a smart person and just drove. But stay a tad grumpy about how often I have to "press 'one' if you speak English".
Get to Shilo's house. Laugh. Visit. Yabber out all my fears for meeting, meet the new cat, petting ensues. Leave. Drop off book, start to feel good about getting back on track. I can do this. It's 4 in the afternoon - I can see da hubby, take a nap, and then hit the road and still reach the campsite in time to sleep a good part of the night in the backseat before the meeting, no problem.
There's a message on our home phone when I get back to the house. (Power's back on. No computers melted when it came up.) An old friend and his wife are in Richmond for a job interview (they left for Colorado 7 years ago) and want to see us after dinner. They'll "only be in town this evening". Um, okay, I can skip breakfast/lunch, nap now and Arn will let me know to get up when they arrive. He agrees. I sleep. I wake up. Phone record shows that our friends called an hour before I woke up. Arn was on the phone with someone else. "Oh! Was there a call?" O-kay. Shower, pack the car, leave. It's 8:00.
Call the friends to apologise (wisely using the earbud now) as I'm driving to the gas station to fill the tank. They're 20 minutes away. Why don't we meet half-way, they ask. I really want to see them... we meet at the White Horse Pub, which was a kick-ass British pub with cider on tap but now is... sad. I forgot about the new owner. All the fun stuff is gone, the cider contract hasn't been signed so there is none, and it's Geriatric Kareoke Night. More loud Elvis music than they even play in Hell. A 'DJ" who's gay and loves to tweak the straight folks in the crowd - which is funny, really, but so not the Celtic Rock bangers-and-mash pub that my friends and I had loved. We meet, shout to each other over the music, and I hit the road at 11:00 at night. Twelve hours until the meeting... drive all night. Intermittent showers, fog, and deer make for an interesting drive. Approaching Pittsburgh during sunrise I get to see a part of PA that I've never seen during the day - that was nice. I had wondered what that looked like all these years I've driven/ridden through it in the dark.
Hour and a half nap in back seat, then meeting. Then more meetings. They're all in the pavilion that would become the First Aid pavilion during Pennsic but there's no wall now - the wind snarls everyone's hair and whips our clothes around. (It took me 30 minutes to brush my Sam Kennison-imitation hairdo back out. The wind dried the 'still wet from the shower' 'do into a frothy pillow of snarls). It's cold. Wet and in the low 60s, wind is wild. I wrap our Autocrat up in a spare flannel shirt I'd brought. It can cover her twice but since she's in one layer of a cotehardie, she doesn't mild the flannel plaid. Poor lady. More meetings. I'm in civvies so I can't go up to the event areas, thus, no chocolate milk and the pizza-lunch is all sausage or pepperoni pies. Okay. I've got some cherries I was eating while I was driving. They make an 'eh' cold lunch/breakfast/what meal am I on? But I get to see my Khan and the friends I have on staff, get a wedding invitation (WHOO-HOO!) for a dear friend and so it's all good anyway. More meetings. Final meeting is over at 10:30 that night, after thee of us retire to Chili's for hot food (finally!) and no wind. Hit the road again. Oh, look - there's repairs and one lane going this way. Joy. Worse rain and fog, but it is very pretty. I break down and get a cup of coffee. (real coffee drinkers would not recognise my beverage. 2/3 cup coffee, 1/3 half&half, 2 envelopes of sugar to cut the bitterness. I hate Starbucks.
Did you know that there are no rest stops between Winchester and Fredericksburg if you are travelling 81/66/17? I finally made it to the rest station between Fredericksburg and Richmond on 95 before my body threatened revolution. System shut down. Laid down in the backseat as the sun was rising and lost conciousnes for 3 hours. Boy, that was nice. Got home at 11:00, balanced the depleted checking account (How much did I spend on gas for this meeting?), sent off some reports that were needed and finally, after kissing my sweetie hello, crawled into bed. My waterbed. My pillows. My comfort, my rest station, my nest.
I'm finally awake now. And rested. Time to play catch-up. And thanks to Marie Callender's, I have a nice, hot, chicken pot pie to eat. Hot. No weird spices. Yum.
Oh - and the Sprint-thing? A computer glitch. The courtesy person was very polite and apologetic. So I did have service for the whole trip.
Well! How to start this... O, heck - it's my journal. I'll just ramble on and whoever reads all the way through gets a gold star for wading.
Friday I wanted to go visit Shilo. But I'd had three nights of poor sleep and had resorted to medication to make it happen Thursday so of course on Friday morning I was a groggy cross-eyed yawning woman. So after I wake up I call Shilo to tell her I'm going to be late but I'm am going to see her, by golly! before I hit the road for Cooper's Lake. (An 8 1/2 - 10 hour drive)
Uh, huh. I check email. There's a message in there that necessitates a phone call and I know it will be long and involve soothing and tact. Better wake up fast! I call Shilo back - I'll be later than we thought.
Make the phone call. An hour later, it's all good. Get up from the desk to take a shower - the power goes out in the house. Guess I'm not eating breakfast before I start the day. Hmmmm... candlelight shower when I'm already stressing for time or visit Shilo as a Stinky Woman? Shilo kindly votes for 'shower when the power comes back on and we just won't hug goodby'. I head for her place. Forgot the book I was bringing to leave on Brigit's door so she can read it while she's sitting with her mom in ICU... go back. Get up on the freeway and my cell rings - text message from Sprint telling me that my account is overdue and the service is going to be discontinued. Since I actually have an overpayment, this is weird. Note: Do not try to deal with an automated phone service to reach a human while driving on a freeway at the part that requires lots of lane-changing and merging. I knew that - did I mention I was sleepy? Closed phone like a smart person and just drove. But stay a tad grumpy about how often I have to "press 'one' if you speak English".
Get to Shilo's house. Laugh. Visit. Yabber out all my fears for meeting, meet the new cat, petting ensues. Leave. Drop off book, start to feel good about getting back on track. I can do this. It's 4 in the afternoon - I can see da hubby, take a nap, and then hit the road and still reach the campsite in time to sleep a good part of the night in the backseat before the meeting, no problem.
There's a message on our home phone when I get back to the house. (Power's back on. No computers melted when it came up.) An old friend and his wife are in Richmond for a job interview (they left for Colorado 7 years ago) and want to see us after dinner. They'll "only be in town this evening". Um, okay, I can skip breakfast/lunch, nap now and Arn will let me know to get up when they arrive. He agrees. I sleep. I wake up. Phone record shows that our friends called an hour before I woke up. Arn was on the phone with someone else. "Oh! Was there a call?" O-kay. Shower, pack the car, leave. It's 8:00.
Call the friends to apologise (wisely using the earbud now) as I'm driving to the gas station to fill the tank. They're 20 minutes away. Why don't we meet half-way, they ask. I really want to see them... we meet at the White Horse Pub, which was a kick-ass British pub with cider on tap but now is... sad. I forgot about the new owner. All the fun stuff is gone, the cider contract hasn't been signed so there is none, and it's Geriatric Kareoke Night. More loud Elvis music than they even play in Hell. A 'DJ" who's gay and loves to tweak the straight folks in the crowd - which is funny, really, but so not the Celtic Rock bangers-and-mash pub that my friends and I had loved. We meet, shout to each other over the music, and I hit the road at 11:00 at night. Twelve hours until the meeting... drive all night. Intermittent showers, fog, and deer make for an interesting drive. Approaching Pittsburgh during sunrise I get to see a part of PA that I've never seen during the day - that was nice. I had wondered what that looked like all these years I've driven/ridden through it in the dark.
Hour and a half nap in back seat, then meeting. Then more meetings. They're all in the pavilion that would become the First Aid pavilion during Pennsic but there's no wall now - the wind snarls everyone's hair and whips our clothes around. (It took me 30 minutes to brush my Sam Kennison-imitation hairdo back out. The wind dried the 'still wet from the shower' 'do into a frothy pillow of snarls). It's cold. Wet and in the low 60s, wind is wild. I wrap our Autocrat up in a spare flannel shirt I'd brought. It can cover her twice but since she's in one layer of a cotehardie, she doesn't mild the flannel plaid. Poor lady. More meetings. I'm in civvies so I can't go up to the event areas, thus, no chocolate milk and the pizza-lunch is all sausage or pepperoni pies. Okay. I've got some cherries I was eating while I was driving. They make an 'eh' cold lunch/breakfast/what meal am I on? But I get to see my Khan and the friends I have on staff, get a wedding invitation (WHOO-HOO!) for a dear friend and so it's all good anyway. More meetings. Final meeting is over at 10:30 that night, after thee of us retire to Chili's for hot food (finally!) and no wind. Hit the road again. Oh, look - there's repairs and one lane going this way. Joy. Worse rain and fog, but it is very pretty. I break down and get a cup of coffee. (real coffee drinkers would not recognise my beverage. 2/3 cup coffee, 1/3 half&half, 2 envelopes of sugar to cut the bitterness. I hate Starbucks.
Did you know that there are no rest stops between Winchester and Fredericksburg if you are travelling 81/66/17? I finally made it to the rest station between Fredericksburg and Richmond on 95 before my body threatened revolution. System shut down. Laid down in the backseat as the sun was rising and lost conciousnes for 3 hours. Boy, that was nice. Got home at 11:00, balanced the depleted checking account (How much did I spend on gas for this meeting?), sent off some reports that were needed and finally, after kissing my sweetie hello, crawled into bed. My waterbed. My pillows. My comfort, my rest station, my nest.
I'm finally awake now. And rested. Time to play catch-up. And thanks to Marie Callender's, I have a nice, hot, chicken pot pie to eat. Hot. No weird spices. Yum.
Oh - and the Sprint-thing? A computer glitch. The courtesy person was very polite and apologetic. So I did have service for the whole trip.