all my favorite songs are slow and sad

I'm back in Denver, after the v. sad realization that the only states I've been in in almost a year are Colorado, Iowa, and Nebraska. Colorado and Iowa are great, but I hate driving across Nebraska (and yet it continues to be my destiny). This is the one-year anniversary of my last week in California, and it feels like a lifetime ago....

sssanyway. Things seemed to be going well when I said my farewells to my parents this morning, so hopefully my dad stays on the mend. I left them with the threat that if I have to come back to cook for them, I'm cooking garbanzo beans, so hopefully that's some motivation. After I packed up my car and ate some breakfast and said goodbye to my parents, I hit the road - the drive is officially ten hours and twenty minutes, but I think I lost fifteen minutes because I stopped four times, so it was more like ten hours and thirty-five minutes. Usually I speed just enough to almost keep up the pace, but still, I feel like I made pretty good time.

The drive grows ever more boring since there is nothing new to see, but I had a long chat with [censored], so that helped. I also listened to an audiobook called CHATTER by Ethan Kross - it's about our internal monologues and how to reshape them (which is key, since my internal monologue veers mostly between arguing with coworkers + being worried about not writing enough + tallying up my quarantine stockpiles). It was really interesting and sort of made me wish I'd gone into neuroscience after undergrad - and it was a good audiobook to listen to while drowning out my internal monologue on the drive.

When I got home, I dragged most of my stuff inside, ordered Indian takeout, and took a quick shower. Then I had a family dinner zoom - we hadn't talked in weeks, so when John suggested a zoom tonight, we all showed up. Priyanka didn't join, and Sam was offscreen, but otherwise it was a full quorum: Claudia (aka Santy), Chandlord (aka Vidya), John and Jess, Adit wearing a v. fashionable sweatshirt, and Ritu and Bill (+ a very creepy doll that Bill left on screen as a placeholder before they could actually join). We had much to discuss, which was accomplished, and we also went a little too deep on discussions of influencers and SPACs and how to wipe off a cake.

And now, I'm completely wiped out and need to sleep since I have to work tomorrow - goodnight!