tonight i feel ambitious and so does my foot as it sinks on the pedal...i press it to the floor

I successfully made it to Salt Lake City, where I am dishonoring the memory of Brigham Young by having a glass of wine with my dinner. Alternatively, perhaps I'm dishonoring myself, since the wine isn't particularly good - the problem with ordering a glass of wine in a place that probably doesn't sell much wine is that there's a decent chance that it will be terrible. Sigh.

Anyway, I made it out of my apartment yesterday approximately four hours after I had hoped to; my rav4 is packed so tightly that nothing is shifting during my accelerations and decelerations, which is nice. I still managed some significant socializing yesterday - I went to work for one last lunch with Gyre (and of course ran into one VP and two directors), talked to Subz on the phone briefly, and then met up with Oniel in Union City for an extended coffee break while I was on my way to Tahoe. I think Oniel was quite pleased that my last substantive interaction in the Bay Area happened in the east bay, which I have professed to hate even more than the evil city. However, I hadn't had a chance to hang out with Oniel, and so I'm glad that we were able to spend a couple of hours catching up, even if I had to do it in the freaking east bay. It didn't quite become 'east bay fun day' - John, Oniel and I had hoped to hang out in the afternoon, but since I didn't leave my apartment until 5pm, it didn't materialize. But Oniel was great, as always, and I felt that by seeing him, my goodbyes were fulfilled.

Miraculously, even though John and I were leaving from separate areas of the east bay, we managed to end up within 5-10mins of each other on the road to Tahoe, so I met up with John and Jess for one last In-and-Out experience somewhere along I-80. We then proceeded to John's parents' house in Tahoe, where I spent one final night in California. It was nice to stop off there, since I got to have breakfast with all of them this morning (including John's two-year-old nephew, Cullen, who was vastly entertaining) before leaving around 10am to begin the long drive east.

In some ways, leaving may have been easier if I hadn't spent the last three weeks dedicated to some hardcore hanging out - my job had pretty much divorced me from my friends for the past few months, and so I was used to not seeing them very often. Now, though, I have tons of great memories from the last few weeks, and then had to say goodbye to people, which was difficult. As you all know, I have terrible taste in music, and so it was particularly awkward and sad when that stupid 'California' song from 'The O.C.' came on my ipod as I was driving away from Tahoe this morning - even though it's one of the worst songs ever, I almost cried. Then I got over it, of course, but there was a five-minute span that was pretty rough.

Oh well, this is only a leave of absence, and I haven't made any decisions about where I will end up afterwards, so I'm just going to focus on the book for now. And, I'll see several of my friends at Chris's wedding in July, which will be completely awesome.

Despite the sadness of leaving, I'm insanely excited about finishing my book - I've been starting to get antsy about working on it, and I am really looking forward to focusing on it almost exclusively for the next few months. Also, I get to tell myself that I’m 'living the dream' whenever I feel like it, which is completely nonsensical, but should make up for the fact that I will be completely broke. It's just too bad that living the dream requires an 1800-mile drive - but I'm 1/3 of the way there! Yay!