Home

A mere twelve hours after I left my hostesses' house in the Western Addition, I was back home at monshu's. An hour of tale-trading later, I am well and truly ready for some quality shut-eye.

Details to follow presently(*). After all, it's not like I'm going into work today.

(*) If my back allows, that is. All that time sitting or standing instead of sleeping has fucked it royally, alas.

Leaving is hard...

1:32 p.m. PDT Leave friends' condo at Divisadero and Turk. Walk two blocks to McAllister.
1:36 p.m. PDT Catch the #5 Fulton to Downtown.
1:48 p.m. PDT Arrive at Civic Center Plaza; go shopping in the farmer's market.
2:02 p.m. PDT Descend to BART station. Search for (a) working ticket machine that (b) will accept my bills.
2:07 p.m. PDT Succeed in adding $1.40 in value; descend to platform.
2:12 p.m. PDT Board Fremont train.
2:35 p.m. PDT Arrive at Coliseum station in Oakland.
2:36 p.m. PDT Board AirBART.
2:55 p.m. PDT Arrive at Oakland Int'l and join security line.
3:06 p.m. PDT Reach terminal. Promptly buy myself a tall one at the pub at the top of the stairs.
3:28 p.m. PDT Finish beer; vainly wander terminal in search of souvenir shops.
3:55 p.m. PDT See boarding notice for flight to Denver; rush to gate to take advantage of my low sequence number. (I'm flying Southwest.)
4:25 p.m. PDT Take off precisely on time.
6:51 p.m. PDT (7:51 p.m. MDT) Deplane at Denver and scuttle in search of next gate to take advantage of my even lower sequence number for the flight to Chicago.
6:52 p.m. PDT (7:52 p.m. MDT) Discover that our 8:20 p.m. flight (MDT) has been rescheduled for 9:10.
7:40 p.m. PDT (8:40 p.m. MDT) Board plane to Chicago.
8:10 p.m. PDT (9:10 p.m. MDT) Push away from the gate and taxi for aeons.
8:16 p.m. PDT (9:16 p.m. MDT) All planes at Denver Int'l grounded due to "weather".
8:47 p.m. PDT (9:47 PM. MDT) Ground order lifted; continue taxing to runaway in order to queue up for takeoff.
9:04 p.m. PDT (10:04 PM. MDT) Takeoff.
11:22 p.m. PDT (1:22 a.m. CDT) Arrive Chicago Midway.
11:29 p.m. PDT (1:29 a.m. CDT) Rush to ground transport terminal only to discover Orange Line is no longer running.
12:03 a.m. PDT (2:03 a.m. CDT) N62 Archer bus to downtown arrives; driver hustles us aboard because he is "running late".
12:34 a.m. PDT (2:34 a.m. CDT) Arrive State St and Jackson downtown to transfer to N151 Sheridan.
12:48 a.m. PDT (2:48 a.m. CDT) Pregnant junkie girl asks for advice on taking CTA to Halsted, cadges change for telephone.
12:55 a.m. PDT (2:54 a.m. CDT) N151 arrives; driver mistakes me for homeless person and nearly drives past.
1:46 a.m. PDT (3:45 a.m. CDT) Arrive Berwyn el station.
1:54 a.m. PDT (3:54 a.m. CDT) Arrive chez monshu.

Fading

I'm so disoriented right now, it would probably be as easy to stay up as it would to lie down, but it behooves me to do the latter if I'm going to get myself onto anything resembling an ordinary schedule. Sadly, the vacation afterglow dimmed awfully soon: I was hardly up this morning but I had to deal with financial crap and a health bombshell that I'm not prepared to talk about yet. Oh, and the 12+ hours on the road brought my back right back to where it had been before I left Tahoe.

But I don't want this to obscure the fact that I had an awesome vacation--two, in fact. My only regret for the first one is that we didn't get out of the hotel more; for the second, it's that I didn't really get to see anyone more than once unless I was staying with them, and some people I didn't get to see at all. The lesson seems to be that anything below a week is too short a time to spend in SF.

With the exception of time asleep and the odd waking hour here and there, I spent every moment of the last twelve days in the company of people I'm fond of, some extraordinarily so. Given that, any moment I spent at a farmer's market, in a museum, sampling excellent food, or just wandering around was basically a bonus. Thanks again to everyone who made my time away from Chicago a study in awesome, particularly my dad and stepmom for putting me up gratis in Tahoe and Blondie and the Fabulous Girlfag for doing the same in SF. Also Blondie's best bud for making sure I got my culture in and sfopanda, foodpoisoningsf, sliv_1, and the Bartman for driving me around and seeing I ate well.

Everyone I extended invitations to, y'all need to visit us in Chicago real soon! (And by that, I mean give us a couple of months to settle in first. October is looking like it could give August a run for insanity.)