Friday, April 29, 2011

and they lived happily ever after

So, Katie, James and I are not staying up all night to watch the royal wedding. I'm too wiped out from the drive, and they apparently live like real people, so we were all too tired to keep going. It's 2:16am mountain daylight time, so we did pretty well -- but we're going to sleep, get up and around in a leisurely fashion tomorrow morning, and then have lunch at the Four Seasons (which is showing wedding coverage all day). This sounds ideal to me, particularly since I drove almost 800 miles today and would like to get some sleep.

Yeah, so the drive. Ugh. I didn't sleep as well as I would have liked last night, and dreamt too many dreams, and so I wasn't fully rested when I finally stumbled out of bed. I was out of Elko around 8:45am (pacific time), fueled with a large McDonald's coffee and some leftover pizza, and proceeded to drive through major swathes of four different states (big states, not little eastern-seaboard types). Given that I kept stopping for gas, caffeine, and then bathrooms to ameliorate the side effects of too much caffeine, I did pretty good by getting here by 10:30pm (mountain time) - but that means I drove for thirteen hours. Really, though, it wasn't too bad; there was a span between Rawlins, Wyoming, and Laramie, Wyoming, where I was really tired and on the verge of wanting to quit, but when I got to Laramie I put my contacts back in, changed my clothes, got some chicken strips, and was miraculously wide awake again.

My other tactic was so dorky that I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I listened to the first three or four hours of an audio version of 'The Odyssey' as narrated by Ian McKellan (aka Gandalf). Given that this is an 11-CD behemoth and I only made it to the middle of the third CD, I still have a lot to go. But, the narration was lovely, it was interesting to see how Homer was so vivid with his descriptions, and it's 'research' for my next romance novel (which is a loose Regency retelling of the Odyssey). And it kept me awake, which was the main thing.

When I finally arrived, Katie and James were waiting for me, and James made me a professional-grade pismo sour before we settled in to catch up. Katie and I mostly gossiped while James played Halo, and it was a wonderful, relaxing end to a long day. Now I'm kind of wishing that I wasn't flying back to California tomorrow; I want to go to my friend's service, but it's going to be hard, and being with Katie and James is v. easy. At least the ticket is on Southwest; if I change my mind in the afternoon, I can get a credit for it without any problems.

But now, I should really sleep -- William and Kate (and Katie and James, of course) await. Goodnight!

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