Memorial Day Holiday Road Trip Part I: Sunday

As I famously once said:  "It's time to get out of Raleigh!"  Which I did in my usual last-minute, completely organised way for Memorial Day weekend.

Missed Sunday Cookout:  I tried to go to a friend's cookout on Sunday, but because of sleep wackiness and lack of a working time machine or teleporter to miss out on that which really sucked.

Mongolian Sunday Dinner Plans:  So, instead I decided to meet up with ranchonmars, gigaclon, Stef, and Shondra (of whom I really only know ranchonmars) at the "Mongolian BBQ" "up in Radford" for dinner on Sunday.  Efforts to extract such useful info as the actual name and address of the place so I could get there met with failure.  Undaunted, I used both my deductive and inductive powers, coupled with the vast resources of the Internet, to figure it out for myself.  Yea, me!

Driving to  Sunday Dinner:  While I left late (per usual for me) for the 5 hour trip, my typical insane joy of driving US-220's tight curves and hills at an average of 70mph actually gave me time to kill prior to dinner.  So I made a short stop in Blacksburg to visit cplpunishment to interrupt his studying for a while and otherwise have a nice visit.  ObWeirdness:  The song "Bilingual" (It played on the TV's Dance Music channel while I was visiting) suggests a way for me to solve my problem with learning a second language.  Paraphrasing its lyrics, I just need to have sex with the right person. Oookayyyy then.

Mongolian Sunday Dinner:  Amazingly I was not only on time but the first person there.  Proceeded to have some good Mongolian stir-fry, the kind of excellent wide-ranging dinner conversation I've been missing so much in my life recently, and otherwise have a good time.  All of which helped me realise that moving back to Blacksburg is probably a really good idea.  (If nothing else, I love making semi-obscure comments in public about knowing ranchonmars many years ago [OK, the feeling old part isn't so cool] and seeing if they just sail over peoples' heads or not...)  Anyway, finished up dinner at about 8pm or so.

Driving after Sunday Dinner:  Given the late hour, the fact that I'm not a morning person, and that I had to be in Maryland the next day for tzel's cookout, I got back on the road and headed north.  Shame I'm not a morning person or I could have skipped this step.  Instead I fought fatigue for 3 hours (total driving time for the day: 8 hours) and crashed in New Market and got away with paying only a little over *gasp* *wheeze* $100 for a room and breakfast the next morning.  But, considering how exhausted I was it was worth it.

Memorial Day Holiday Road Trip Part II: Monday

Driving to Maryland:  Woke up feeling more refreshed than usual thanks to the enjoyable dinner with ranchonmars et al the evening before, lazed in bed watching the telly long enough to catch one of my favourite eps of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" on USA's all-day marathon, grabbed breakfast at the hotel's Johnny Appleseed-themed restaurant (Did he even go close to New Market, Virginia?), and proceeded on towards Maryland to attend tzel's cookout.  Driving DC's Beltway was like driving the Beltline at home what with people driving in two lanes at once and otherwise driving about as poorly as possible.  At least I missed rush hour.  Anyway, it was a short 2 hour drive, which was a breeze after Sunday's driving.  Thanks to snidegrrl's excellent instructions I got to tzel's well before the cookout started and got to see her have fun with the "fool proof method for perfect easy to peel eggs" while making deviled eggs.  Since I'm so naturally dexterous I volunteered to not make things worse.  The eggs were delicious, BTW.

tzel's Cookout:  Completely fabulous!  tzel did a great job hosting, managing to hide just how exhausting it had to have been for her, and provided a great spread of food.  I babbled way too much about the SCA with a fellow guest, though it did make me decide that I really have recovered from my SCA burnout and will join the Blacksburg, Virginia group, Barony of Black Diamond, once I'm back there.  Caught up with another friend I haven't seen in forever and otherwise chatted with all sorts of neat people to the point of almost wishing I lived up there.  Thinking about the joys of the Beltway popped that last bit pretty quickly, though.  Realised I really need a social life.  My biggest personal achievement was sometimes almost enjoying having the children at the cookout there.  I certainly felt proud that I didn't actually try to kill any.  Loved the ginger ice cream tzel made as well.  I really must have enjoyed it since I stayed about 8 hours and only left because I was starting to really zone out.

Crashing at snidegrrl's place:  Cleverly I had pre-arranged with snidegrrl to crash that night at her place since there was no way I would have been able to do the 5-6-ish hours of driving home after the cookout.  Since we were both so exhausted we only stayed up past 1AM talking with me showing off my fabulous dexterity by playing some Katamari Damarcy on the PS2 before calling it a night.  At most people's homes crashing usually involves a couch, floor, or an uncomfortable fold-out bed.  snidegrrl's crash space was a very comfortable four-poster bed in the guest room.  I suppose if stuffed animals creep you out it wouldn't be so great, given the huge collection of them, but I rather enjoyed them, especially the stuffed peeps that looked like giant sibs of the ones you find at Easter.  It was such a nice crash space and I'd had such a good two days that I actually lazed in bed well into the next morning enjoying dreaming.  OK, this doesn't sound like a big deal, but I haven't dreamed well in months.

Memorial Day Holiday Road Trip Part III: Tuesday

Hanging with snidegrrl:  snidegrrl was incredibly cool and kind to take off the day from work to spend time with me.  Started off the day by finding out that she had spontaneously produced a year-old baby during the night!  OK, so it was really her boss' baby who was so well-behaved and entertaining that it was fun to have her around.  I admit to a very brief moment of thinking it would be cool to have one before sanity reasserted itself.  snidegrrl showed me a 1974 (I think) Genesis concert such that I'm now probably going to end up a raving Genesis loony, at least as far as the Peter Gabriel years.  Not only were their songs the kind with lyrics that actually tell a story, but Peter's costumes and theatricality really appealed to me since I grew up in theatre.  Need to work on getting a working time machine so I can actually attend their concerts (among other things)...

Anyway, I won't bore people more with us talking more about common passions, interests, and all that.  We finally realised lunch was a good idea and so, with me showing my usual decisiveness, went off to eat at Don Pablo's.  Our poor, incompetent waitress was on her third day so snidegrrl had a bit of a challenge getting her food, but the waitress was so apologetic and obviously trying hard that I couldn't be upset with her.  During lunch we realised that if I was going to not end up parked on the Beltway driving home, I had to leave right afterwards.  So, after getting the bill mostly straightened out, we went back to her place, I grabbed my stuff and left firmly setting it in my head that I need to make sure to have a guest room a nice bed so I get to see snidegrrl (and other distant friends) more often.

Driving Home:  Wasn't too bad.  Only had to completely stop on the Beltway and I-95 10 times and only for about 5 minutes altogether.  We'll just ignore the many more times we slowed down to under 20mph for no good reason.  I kept enviously looking over at the HOV lane.  To make a dangerous trip short, I managed to not crash the car from being exhausted (Been sleeping poorly for months so 2 good nights didn't really help much).  Driving I-85S was the biggest challenge since until about Butner, North Carolina all you see is your direction of the road with thick, tall pine trees on both sides of the road.  Fortunately I located one of my eclectic upbeat driving tapes that let me survive it.  After the 5 hours to get home (for a total of about 15 hours of driving in three days) and completely exhausted I still had trouble falling asleep!  But at least I dreamed well once I did.

Quick Summation:  I had a blast, enjoyed seeing everyone, wished I could have seen them more, and everyone helped me feel a lot better than I've been feeling.  Now for my next trick, I'll move to Blacksburg with no effort.  Heh.