Checking in
So left work astonishingly early on Tuesday evening -- before 5:30, possibly by 5:15, and with a nice clean desk -- got home, and started working on various last-minute tasks and taking another pass at the packing list to gather up some things I didn't pack Sunday. (Laundry that had still been drying at the time, netbook and its peripherals that I wasn't carting around in my backpack to work for two days, that sort of thing.) Left very little to do in the morning, and wound up collapsing onto the love seat in the living room to finish watching Clash of the Titans with Mom before drifting off to my room.
Got myself tucked into bed and reread the last chapter of Changeless to refresh my memory for Blameless when I got it on Wednesday -- and by then it was so close to midnight that I figured I'd stay awake a few more minutes to see if I could download it right then. I might even have been silly enough to start reading it at that point if it had appeared -- but it didn't, and a few minutes past midnight is when I actually drifted off with the lights still on and my glasses in my hand. (Apparently I was in the act of reaching to put them away when I just shut off like a light?)
Woke up at 6:18 according to my wristwatch, decided that I could stand to nap a few more hours and put my glasses in their holder and shut the light off. (Oh, and did check my Kindle app one more time, found Blameless waiting, and downloaded it for later.) Woke up again at 11:30, ah ha hah! I'd been planning to hit the road by noon (even better, by 10am), and I needed to shower and pack away my toiletries and load the car, as well as tend to a couple of other last-minute tasks. Under the circumstances, I was somewhat proud of myself for being on the road at 1:30.
Stopped off at Shreveport for lunch and it took longer than I'd planned (came in at 4pm and I guess no one in the kitchen was moving all that fast), but at least I got a good start on reading my e-book. Decided to stop at 9pm, and was delighted to discover that the twelve-hour drive-time estimate I'd gotten from Mapquest had evidently been based on a presumption of merely driving the speed limit, as opposed to setting the cruise control on 75 or 80 mph and gliding along. Meaning, I apparently had reached the halfway point or just about, despite driving five hours instead of six. Stopped off in Jackson, MS just because I felt like I might as well complete the True Blood tour of the South. Stayed up till 1 or 2am finishing Blameless in my motel room.
Not a whole hell of a lot to report about today. Hit the road at 10am, had a really fast lunch stop -- as in, not long enough to get past the sample chapter I'd pulled up from Kindle when I discovered that the book I was planning to read next wasn't the one I actually had in my e-library -- reached Atlanta at 5pm local time, and discovered that they really weren't kidding about what a difference it makes to the process of picking up your con badge if you buy at the door rather than spending many hours waiting in the pre-registered line. According to the ticket I got at the parking garage, my car was only in there half an hour -- and that includes time to walk to the hotel, find my way to the correct room, and weave my way through the empty, empty people corrals to wind up behind the one other person in line ahead of me in the cash ticket purchase line, go through several stations to pay and have my name tag printed and collect my badge, wander back out into the basement lobby and ask when vendors would start selling Dragon*Con T-shirts, and head back over the parking garage and follow the winding path to the exit, at which I had to wait in line to escape. Half an hour.
And then I eventually made my way out of downtown Atlanta (couldn't find an on ramp to take me south like I needed to go, finally got on the freeway northbound and exited to turn around, and had to drive miles out of my way to find the end of the long line of cars waiting to get onto the on ramp I needed) and checked into a Motel 6. Same one I was in last year, actually, and at least it's cheap and has wi-fi and is easy to find my way back to. Pity it doesn't have a microfridge unit, though -- I was in a Motel 6 last night and while the room was damn near identical right down to the decor it had a microfridge unit that I wasn't there long enough to really use. Now that I'm in this room for three nights, I actually could do with a fridge for the bottled drinks I acquired today and didn't consume -- so of course, I have none.
But I've settled in, scattering my things hither and yon across room and bathroom. Got my outfit for tomorrow set out, and went down the list of things to remember to take with my tomorrow and set them out. Went back out for just long enough to gas up my car and pick up a salad from Wendy's (I felt obligated to get something green and leafy to compensate for my diet for the past couple of days -- the Apple Pecan Chicken Salad is really good, BTW) and now I'm parked in front of the laptop working on my Irtfa'a Shawl and finally getting around to watching the first episode of The Deep. I need to go through the schedule for the next few days and mark my calendar in the Blackberry with the panels I'd like to maybe see (I would have done it last week, but it only came out a few days ago), but aside from that I can just relax and unwind for the rest of the evening...
This entry was originally posted at http://fyrdrakken.dreamwidth.org/717182.html. Please comment there using OpenID.