On the road again

I hit the highway this weekend for a conference in Chapel Hill. I realized en route that I hadn't attended an honest-to-god rigorous conference in over a year, so I was overdue. Rather than bore you with my enthusiasm about some of the scholars I met there, I'll just talk about the drive.

I completely underestimated the distance to Chapel Hill. It was 7 hours each way. I almost turned back after hour 6, but I figured I was closer to my destination than home, so I kept going. That's a long time for me, particularly a me who has been sleep deprived for the past two weeks. On the road up I was mostly fine--nothing a few dozen coffees couldn't fix. On the way back the MegPod listening station collapsed (DAMN BATTERIES) and I had nothing but radio from about Spartanburg, SC, onward.

While I had some excellent moments with Journey, Night Ranger, and some decent country, the radio of the "high country" of South Carolina (to distinguish itself from the "low country" of Charleston) is inadequate. I did catch my favorite non-alternative radio station from Woof U once I crossed into Georgia, but the dawgs were playing Tennessee last night so the announcers were already drunk and making fun of the drunk Tennessee fans, who were all shrieking things like "Rocky Top, baby!" or whatever their damn saying is. Hey, we may bark, but we're not Tennessee. (I will confess that we are, however, a pitiful team who was up something like 20 points and then lost to these people 51-33.)

I compensated for the silence by catching up on phone calls and eating cheetos. (Cheetos puffs are my absolute favorite nasty snack. I adore them.) Almost every person on the east coast who talks to me on a regular basis got a wacked-out phone call. It wasn't a clean sweep, but it was a good catch-up.

I got famished for something more natural and less orange around 6 pm, and so I rolled into a Wendy's in Commerce, GA. (The Cracker Barrel, my first choice, was packed. I wanted ham, ok??) I tottered in and went to the restroom to wash the cheetos off my hands. And there was where I saw it--the delicate details that mark a restroom as something special.

There were curtains on the bathroom stalls.

I'm thinking of writing a coffee table book called Bathroom Accessories that Amuse Me. It can feature GoodSense and these curtains as well as the other things that make me laugh out loud in public spaces that are usually without amusement.

As a coda, I'd like to recommend against taking a book into a Wendy's and reading said British mystery while munching on a baked potato and chili. You get some looks, and people judge you. Just a safety tip.