Gentle Reader, I am sorry for having left you in the lurch. Of course, given that no one checked to verify my continued existence, I am left to contemplate the unpleasant notion that only my family cares about me (which, of course, is more pleasant than no one caring at all). Then again, perhaps I was the one showing a callous disregard for my friends by neither blogging nor sending cheery emails over the past nine days. Either way, I feel that it is time to restore contact with humanity.
I have had quite an eventful and exciting break. My vacation got off to a rocking start at 7:45am CDT on Friday, when my flight from Chicago to Des Moines was supposed to take off. At that point, we still hadn't boarded; and due to extreme fog that required the plane to need extra fuel in the case of circling or a redirect, the gate agents were asking half the plane to volunteer to stay behind for a later flight. By 10am, they had canceled the flight entirely, and the agent I spoke to couldn't guarantee me a seat on a flight until the following afternoon. I quickly purchased a daypass to Chicago-O'hare's wifi network, discovered that Hertz was the only rental car company with cars still available, and reserved a Chevy Malibu to take to Iowa. The cost? $200, plus an $0.80 toll every thiry miles or so through most of Illinois - but given that flights from Chicago to Des Moines were canceled several days in a row due to a cascade of bad weather, I'm lucky that I got out when I did.
Less than four hours later, I was just outside Davenport, Iowa, where I met my brother on his lunch break so that I could spend a few hours at his apartment until he got off work. By then, the fog was so thick that I was unable to see the largest truck stop on I-80 until I was a few hundred feet from it. After Michael got off work, we drove back into Davenport so that I could buy some clothes (since my luggage was lost in Chicago), then dropped the rental car off at the Quad Cities Airport in Moline, IL, before heading home. Michael listens to a strange mix of music - in a couple of hours, I managed to hear George Strait, Roxette, and most of the first half of 'Les Miserables'. This was made even more surreal by the fact that you couldn't see more than four seconds ahead on the road, or past the shoulders, and that I had been living in this strange, obscured world for ten hours. I must admit that I engaged in some rather annoying backseat (or in this case, passenger-seat) driving, but the fog was freaking me out. Anyway, we made it home a little before one a.m., where the surreality of the day was completed by watching a rerun of a 1970s dance show called 'Soul Train', which, if it's Iowa's concession to diversity programming, is a rather strange thing to play.
Saturday, I received a Christmas miracle - I was checking on my luggage, and American had no idea where it was, when someone knocked on the door and delivered it. I was impressed that they had delivery people driving seventy miles from the airport on the cusp of blizzard-like conditions (the weather changed from intense fog to intense snow in twenty-four hours), and v. happy to get the Christmas presents that had been sitting in my luggage.
Christmas passed in a four-day blur; Saturday was Christmas with my mom's sister and her family, Sunday was Christmas with the Wamplers at my grandmother's (followed by a rousing game of Apples to Apples with my parents, brother, grandmother, aunt, and the now-almost-respectable scandalous boyfriend), Monday was Christmas Eve with my sister and her kids, and Christmas morning was just for my parents, brother and me. Christmas night, Katie and James came over for a couple of hours, which was v. fun. I spent the rest of the week lazing about, hanging out with my parents, playing 'Civilization', researching my romance novel, and reading up on various blogs and websites about the romance publishing industry.
Now, my vacation's over, and I have to go back to California tomorrow - but I only have twenty-three days in the office before I'm done! I don't know what the future holds (the likelihood that I could finish a manuscript and sell it in six months is slim to none), but I'm excited nonetheless. Not too excited to sleep, though, so I'm going to bed.
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