it's a dry heat

I successfully reached my destination today, but it wasn't without its challenges. The first challenge was waking up at 5:15 after five hours of sleep, but I accomplished that mostly successfully. I made it out the door within a few minutes of my stated goal, armed with a large cold brew for the road, and was wide awake for my drive to Des Moines. It was really pretty this morning after several days of rainy weather, and the sunrise was almost enough to make me consider becoming a morning person (but my body has other plans).

So I got to the airport without incident, parked, was the only person in the TSA precheck line, and so had time to grab breakfast and do some work before boarding. This was pretty key, since if I had planned to eat in Denver I would have died. I was supposed to have an hour and twenty minutes for my Denver connection...

But first, my flight to Denver attempted to leave early, and then was held on the runway in Des Moines for twenty minutes by Denver air traffic control. We made up some of that in the air and were going to be just a few minutes late...but then we landed in Denver and there was no gate for us, so we sat on the tarmac for thirty minutes. I got a notice from United that they were boarding my flight as I was getting off the plane, and my departure gate was at least ten minutes walking from my arrival gate (and could have been much worse).

So I sped to the new gate and made it with time to spare - but was forced to gate check my bag, which I found to be a travesty. The second flight was smooth and I did some good sleeping + journaling, but then I had to wait awhile for my bag in Tucson, and I was not thrilled by that.

However, with all those extremely minor complaints out of the way, I can say that the rest of the day was a success. I had a nice Uber driver from the airport to my hotel, and when I got here I promptly rendezvoused with Lauren (aka Subz) for a girls' weekend. Terry was supposed to be here as well and unfortunately had to cancel, but Lauren and I were still down for some broiling in the desert.

Lauren had already been here awhile and eaten lunch, but she hung out with me while I ate lunch (a v. tasty sushi bowl). Then we parted ways to check into our rooms, and I'm delighted by mine - a nice view of the mountains (and a bit of freeway, relatively unobtrusively), and an extremely comfortable bed in which I took a twenty-minute nap. I met Lauren at the pool outside my room, and we had a really lovely couple of hours - it's absurdly hot here (and will be 99 degrees tomorrow) but the pool was great, and some sun after all the springtime rain is nice.

Then we got cleaned up, grabbed an uber downtown, and had tacos at a restaurant owned by one of my favorite former Top Chef contestants. The tacos and salsas were excellent, although I overordered because I thought I was hungrier than I was. Then we walked around briefly but realized we were both crashing (Lauren didn't switch time zones, but she did get up at three), so we came back to the hotel, and I inadvertently napped while catching up on twitter. So now it's time for bed for real - goodnight!