The hubby's flight plan was supposed to be Atlanta to Dallas to Long Beach. Apparently, Dallas is on tornado watch right now, so they're shuffling a bunch of flights around. He was supposed to be arriving at 9:49 pm in Long Beach. Now, he's coming in at 12:35 am in LAX. He's going to take a shuttle home instead of having me pick him up. I have to leave the house before 9 tomorrow, so getting back from LAX a little before 2—especially on the three hours of sleep I got last night—wouldn't be the best idea.

Damn!

And, on a different note: today, I remembered something I read when I was nine. I have no idea why it popped into my head; it was in a newsletter for a program I went to once a week. Someone had decided to interview little girls in gifted and talented programs about whether they'd rather have someone tell them they were pretty or that they were smart. The idea was that the answer would indicate which quality the girls valued more. Perhaps not surprisingly, most of them said they would rather be called pretty. But the people conducting the survey didn't always ask the girls why they gave the answers they did. One of them provided a reason anyway.

"I want to be told I'm pretty," she said. "I already know I'm smart."

Twenty years later, I still don't know quite what to make of that explanation. I find it funny, to be sure, but there's more to it than that. I wonder how the responses as a whole might have differed if the girls had been asked about qualities they thought they possessed rather than qualities other people thought they possessed. I wonder how we come to believe things about ourselves, to just know them in a way that makes a compliment pleasant but superfluous, not an act of validation. (And what's the difference between "just knowing" and being arrogant?)

I wonder what that little girl—we were about the same age—is doing now. I bet I'd like her. Anyone who can summon that kind of snarkiness (and I do think she was being snarky, though in a childlike way) at age nine is all right by me.

From the kitty's perspective, my lap is obviously the very best place to be only when I have something else in it. Like a stack of papers that I need to get through tonight. I was almost done when I made the mistake of checking my email once again, and behold! More awaited me. Leo kitty thinks it's great fun. The dogs no longer think it's much fun, but they did when they were younger. Did I ever mention the time I put some essays down and went to get more coffee, only to return and discover that one of the essays was missing? The dogs had run outside, and Ivy was delightedly shredding poor Brad's assignment (I was very close to finishing with my comments, too). I went to class the next day, mangled essay in hand. "This is a little embarrassing," I said, "but my dog ate your homework."

Trip Highlights So Far

On the way out from LAX: Like a fucking idiot, I wore steel-toed shoes to the airport. "Beep," said the X-Ray machine. "Take your shoes off and put them through the machine, miss," said the security lady. "Glare," said the National Guard, silently. "Sigh," said I.

Once we got on the road, we discovered that in Minnesota, there is an actual gas station and mini mart called "Pump and Munch."

In Iowa: We stopped at a greasy spoon with the word "FOOD" printed simply on its roof. The salt and pepper shakers featured covered wagons. Grilled cheese sandwiches were $1.75. In a cooler, there was some sort of frozen orange confection. It looked like a big hunk of sherbet on a stick, but upon closer examination, we determined that they were supposed to look like Hershey's Kisses, only large. And orange.

In Iowa, we also started to spot a chain of establishments called—I'm totally serious—"Kum & Go." Lor and I joked about the other names that people in that brainstorming session must have rejected: "How about 'Get Off and Take Off'?" "Nah... too long." Indeed, we saw many fabulous signs (not just in Iowa), including:

"Hope: 1 Mile."
"Friend: Exit 369."
"No Name: Next Exit."

We ended up settling down for the evening in Lincoln, Nebraska. We attempted to head out for a beer, but found that the lounge across the street was closed (it was about 11:30 by this point). In fact, all of the bars and liquor stores around our hotel room seemed to be closed. However, one place was open: Doctor John's 24-Hour Sex Shop, a veritable novelty palace. After checking our identification to make sure we were old enough to browse around (ha ha ha!), the shopmistress quite helpfully pointed us in the direction of the vinyl nurse outfits and gave us directions to the nearest bar (of the sports variety, as it turns out) that stayed open past midnight.

On our way out, another shop employee let us check out the store's signature ambulance, which was painted, noveltied-out, and genuinely cool. We then headed down Cornhusker Street (really) to the sports bar for a beer. It was already nearly last call when we discovered a free Internet kiosk in the bar, so we hopped on for a quick email and LJ check.

After returning to our room, we slept the sleep of the sleepy. When we headed out for breakfast the next morning, Lorien and I ended up in a conversation about the difference between regular bastards and "special bastards." This conversation did not endear us to the restaurant's other patrons. Regular bastards, as you no doubt know, are people born out of wedlock. "Special bastards," on the other hand, are people who are born out of wedlock, but whose parents later marry. I am, in fact, a special bastard.

At one point, Lor asked, "Well, what do they call you if you're born out of wedlock, but then your parents later marry, and then they get divorced, but later marry once again? A bastard with honors? A bastard with distinction?"

"Bastard cum laude!" I proclaimed, thus earning me a particularly baleful evil eye. In retrospect, I'm guessing the woman who tried to turn me to stone with her gaze had no idea what "cum laude" means. Of course, it's also possible that she just didn't want a side of bastard with her hotcakes.

It was shortly after this conversation that we were hit with inspiration. People throughout the midwest had been looking at us with thinly-veiled suspicion—you could just see "they're not from around these parts" running through their brains—and we decided that we should embrace this opportunity to make an impression. This impression came in the form of signs posted in gas stations across Nebraska, Colorado, and Utah. The signs read simply:

I WANNA BE
YOUR JOEY RAMONE.
LOVE,
SHASTA AND LORIEN

We thought that the chances anyone in Utah would get it were slim, but we posted them anyway.

Soon after the inspiration hit, so did the rain. It didn't last long, and it washed the little bug splatters off the windshield. We forged on. Going through Denver at rush hour wasn't much fun—the blind spots on the truck are quite large, and changing lanes in heavy traffic is difficult when people tailgate. However, we got a bit of a break just past Denver in Golden, where we stopped for dinner. When I ordered a drink, I couldn't have anticipated that the glass would be damn near the size of my head, and it became clear that walking around for a bit would be a good idea. We did, and it was good to move with our actual legs.

As we stopped to refuel before getting back on the road, I pulled off a particularly smooth maneuver in the Penske truck. I then started to get cocky. "I'm such a badass in this truck," I declared. "I'm Truckmaster T."

And then we hit the blizzard in Vail. We had been idly wondering why road crews had been spraying down the highway with some creepy-looking substance, but their actions would shortly make sense. We found ourselves on a very icy surface with bona fide snowbanks, and soon, the snow started coming down hard. I was no longer Truckmaster T. I was Chumptrucker C., totally out of my depth and saying things like, "I live in Orange County. Snow just doesn't happen there. I don't drive in snow. And before I lived in Orange County, I lived in Seattle. It snows there every year, but people are afraid of it. When it snows in Seattle, people just cancel shit until it stops snowing. Every day is a 'snow day.' Moreover, I really don't do 'truck in snow.' What I normally don't do in snow is a Corolla. A little, itty, bitty, 1993 Corolla."

And then we were through it. I was almost sad when it stopped, because with the snow coming at our windshield so fast, it looked very much like we were in the mothership at warp speed, but I got over my semi-disappointment quickly.

We had decided on Grand Junction as our goal destination for the evening, and we made it there a little before midnight. We pulled into a Best Western, congratulated ourselves on our hardcore mileage for the day (about 850), and then settled in for some wine, some Xena (it was very brain-level appropriate), some cigarettes, and some quality time with our blankets.

Lor and I slept in a bit on Tuesday. By the time we were ready to get on the road, we were itching to make good time, so breakfast at McDonald's it was. Since the truck wouldn't fit under the overhang leading up to the drive-through (or "drive-thru," as The McMan would have me call it), we went inside and found a whole horde of very young people messing around and generally being obnoxious. I usually have little against certain forms of obnoxious behavior, but I was feeling cranky. "Isn't it a school day?" I grumbled to Lorien, thus causing myself to feel both old and cranky.

This particular McDonald's did not sell French toast sticks.

We quickly made our way through the rest of Colorado and into Utah. Utah was absolutely gorgeous, but it was very, very windy. There were times when the wind was blowing towards the truck so hard that I had the gas pedal floored but couldn't go past 60. This wasn't as frightening as the random gusts of wind coming from the side, which was a little unnerving on the more mountainous passes (particularly when less alert drivers let themselves be blown partially into our lane), but we managed to avoid any incidents. It helped that there were long stretches of road with no cars at all. It's a strange and lovely feeling, being the only people on the road while surrounded by such an awe-inspiring landscape. I felt a little like I must be trespassing. Lor snapped many photos through the burial ground for bugs that was our windshield, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing them when she gets her computer set up in Seattle.

The drive from Grand Junction to Vegas took us about seven hours total, and we arrived safely, though we were beset by MapQuest impishness on the last portion of the trip: "Take the 95 South to the 95 North? What is this?" While we correctly identified that particular directional item as wrong, the rest of the directions were vexing, too. This led to a cell phone conversation between Lor and beatnik during which a stressed-out me (being even slightly lost while driving a truck in heavy street traffic isn't my bag, baby) decided to think good thoughts about the pizza and beer that awaited us. By the time we pulled into the parking lot and bumbled around looking for a place to leave Penske—I had begun to think of the truck as a pseudo-person by this time—everything seemed funny to me. "You want me to back up? Back up?!" I shrieked, laughing.

After some food and Shiner Bock, we headed out to the fabulous Venus, where we met up with doctorgogol, hugged, chatted, and hung out until we could no longer ignore the fact that Lor and I were really very tired. We went down to a restaurant in the hotel, and I managed to toss my cigarette several feet behind me while trying simply to raise my hand. I refused to look for a while, afraid that I had managed to land the butt in the faux fur coat of a liposuctioned socialite with half a can of Aquanet on her head and The Bloodlust in her heart, but luckily, the lit smokie just landed on the floor. Still, it was obviously time for bed.

On Wednesday, I woke up at 5:30 am for no good reason, and after trying to get back to sleep in vain, I decided to walk down to the drugstore for some nail polish remover. Lor made us breakfast, and then we lounged around and played on beatnik's computer until the afternoon, when we took Penske out for a spin to pick up some lunch and some dinner fixings. Lor made an artichoke dip that was seriously delish, and I made gemelli with artichokes, feta, and capers. We had wine, joked around, and watched old videotapes. The doc came over to join us and then very kindly lugged my enormous suitcase (I over pack. It's a bad habit. I brought six pairs of shoes.) around for me while I checked into my hotel. He and I then spent some time chatting in the cafe downstairs until my 5:30 am wake-up time caught up with me. The day and the evening were just what I needed, perfect after a few days on the road.

I slept in on Thursday and then met up with the good doctor for lunch and round-town adventures while beatnik worked and Lor took some much needed alone-time for herself. We ate at a wonderful hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant with a signed picture of Suzanne Somers on the wall. There were other celebrities on the wall, too, but I had a direct Chrissy view. We headed out to a couple of thrift shops, where it was determined that I just wasn't in shopping mode, and then to the Shark Reef, because I was definitely in aquarium mode.

At the Shark Reef, we decided that the person who wrote the script for the guy who narrated the exhibits—upon entering, we were given talkysticks and could enter the numbers of the different exhibits to hear a spiel—really should not have a job: "Here at the Shark Reef," the talkystick said, "the environment is soothing and tropical. You don't have to worry about airports, jet lag, or getting shot." We then decided that someone should start a band called the Water Monitors. I marveled at the sharks and rays, but I was absolutely transfixed by the jellyfish. We later met up with Lorien and beatnik at Venus and eventually headed down to the same restaurant we had eaten at late on Tuesday. This time, I managed not to throw anything.

On Friday, the doctor and Lor went out to lunch and thrift shops while beatnik and I went out to lunch (I had Thanksgiving on a bun!) and rollercoasters. Well, just one rollercoaster, but it had two loops and a double corkscrew. One of these days, I'm going to have to take a systematic tour of all the rollercoasters in Vegas. I love those things. After leaving the Canyon Blaster, we played carnival games and a video game or two until we ran out of quarters, and then we wandered over to see if we could check out the spinning carousel lounge, but it was closed indefinitely. Instead, we decided to blow the circus joint and go to Caesar's Palace, where we spent some time at Shadow and then wandered around the Forum Shops a bit.

We met up with our thrift store-savvy friends for Mediterranean food, and then we all took a nap break before meeting up again at Cheetah's, which was way too crowded. After being jostled one too many times, we went to the Double Down, where the doctor and I eventually bade goodnight to the Seattle-bound among us, who needed to get a good night's sleep. Gogol and I proceeded to stay out altogether too late—it's easy to do in that town—and I made it back to my hotel room with just enough time to sneak in a few hours' sleep before checking out, saying goodbye to the crew, and catching my plane.