I'm back in ye olde Iowa, but I'm not in my house - I landed a little before midnight, and it's foggy and icy, so I decided not to be a hero and to check into a hotel instead. Luckily Des Moines is so efficient that I'm literally in bed, after getting my checked luggage and my parked car, less than an hour after landing, so it could be worse.
My day was generally good, but it got off to a bizarre start - my phone(s) woke me up at 5:45am with a blaring tornado warning. This is a normal thing in Iowa, but this was literally the first one ever in San Francisco. I did not go downstairs because I didn't want to risk getting stuck eleven floors down if the power went out, but I retreated to my windowless bathroom while I figured out the danger level. I quickly determined I was going to be fine, but I was extremely unimpressed by the local news coverage - where Iowa meteorologists would have had a tracker on possible rotation and projected it down to the block level, the SF news caster said, "there's a tornado warning in San Francisco, but the rain is clearing out in the north bay," and then went to a story about the insurance assassin like the weather was of no importance. But I saw enough to tell my friend Jane that she could stop hanging out in her garage, so at least I did someone a favor with my Iowa knowledge.
After that, I dozed for awhile, then finally got around, grabbed coffee, packed, showered, etc. Then I took an Uber to Hillsdale, where I had a friendship renewal brunch with Jen, Jane, and Joann. We went to Palette for dim sum, and since I hadn't had dim sum in forever, I mostly ignored my gluten issues and went deep. Jen convinced them to make honey walnut shrimp even though they only serve it at dinner, and we had many tasty morsels (including eel wrapped in rice crepe that was very interesting and good, and my beloved braised pork in bean curd, and shrimp dumplings and shu mai, and some tasty little egg custard dumplings, and I even loved the radish cake and the pea shoots, which I can normally take or leave).
We had many things to catch up on and clearly didn't have time for it all, but it was great to spend a couple of hours with them. Then Jane dropped me at the airport and I sped through security, grabbed a glass of rosé, and did some work stuff and personal stuff. Both my flights were mostly on time, which was a surprise given the weather, and I slept and journaled and read through both.
But now I need to sleep so I can get home tomorrow - goodnight!
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