So, I'm in Sacramento!

I got up at the crack of damn dawn yesterday in order to go to Kinko's to buy a disk, since I went out at 10p on Christmas night and they were closed (imagine!), and I needed one to take my completed entries to ftp from Beth's house.

I must have about a hundred unused disks in New Jersey, but did I remember to bring one? Well, I had to forget something, better that than my ticket or wallet or something.

So I had to set my alarm in order to get up, and I have a very loud and annoying alarm that wakes me immediately, but, since I sleep on my hands, both of my hands were completely asleep and I couldn't turn it off for like a minute!

And there was not the smallest sound from the mother's room. My mother, who usually is awakened somebody coughing lightly six blocks away or something, was not awakened by the loudest, most horrendous alarm in the known universe.

"Great," I thought, "She's dead. This will really spoil my trip! Should I go anyway? I mean, the tickets are non-refundable and everyone is expecting me..."

But, when I got back from Kinko's she was up and about, so it must have just been a rip in the space-time continuum.

Anyway, got to the airport, saw a giant line at check-in, sighed and got in it, then realized that I wasn't checking any luggage, so I could go straight to the gate! That never happens to me!

It was Southwest Airlines, who must have hands down the butt-ugliest planes in the known universe. They are brown and orange and white, and I do get that whole desert colour scheme, but this design is clearly from the early seventies and is just so dated.

I mean, they could go with the whole retro thing and have the stewardesses in polyester uniforms and hand out twenty-five year old copies of Tiger Beat and Cosmo, and show episodes of The Partridge Family, then it would be cool and they could triple their prices, but without that, it's just plain ugly.

The weird thing is that there are no seat assignments. None. You get a plastic boarding pass with a number on it, but that just indicates whether you board in group one, two or three. Once you get onboard, it's every man for himself.

It's completely bizarre. It's like riding the bus.

So the flight to San Jose was an hour, and I felt sick every second of the time.

I have no idea, as I'm not prone to motion sickness, but it might have had something to do with the fact that I didn't have enough sleep as I had to get up at the fucking crack of dawn to get that disk.

Anyway, I get off the plane, and there's Lucy! Hooray!

She was duly impressed at my lack of checked baggage, then we drove to her house, me continuing to feel completely nauseous. This did not bode well for a two hour drive to Sacramento, but I was all stoic and stuff. I was a brave little soldier. Or something like that.

The thing that struck me the most was the fact that, well, when I get on a plane I think I'm going somewhere, and looking around, I clearly had gone somewhere, but we were on the 101 Freeway!

The 101 goes right by my house--it's my home freeway! I learned to drive on the 101, and here it was, in this strange place where it did not belong. And the freeway exit were green and white, and the Call Boxes were blue, and it looked just like California!'

Except that everything around it didn't look a thing like California. But it was California. I think that I may think too much.

So, we got to Lucy's house and ate lunch, getting to know each other a little.

I mean, I'm used to this whole "knowing people but not knowing them" syndrome--Lord knows I've met enough on-line diarists at this point, but it's still this mental adjustment in order to get used to hearing rather than reading, and maybe the rhythm of speech is different than what you hear in your head as you read their entries.

The thing with Lucy not immediately apparent from her journal is that she is completely hilarious.

Not that she's not funny on the page--she is--but she has a very dry delivery in her speech that make funny things funnier. She made me laugh until I choked on more than one occasion, and that is not an exaggeration, that's what I do. I have a very hearty laugh, and if I laugh too much I cough, and if I cough too much, I choke!

And it's much more difficult to get me to the choking point since I stopped smoking, so that just goes to show you how funny she really is.

Anyway, we ate, after I petted the cats and the dog, and Dixie, I'll have you know, is just about the sweetest dog ever, and I met her husband and looked around the place, and let me tell you, I want Lucy's life.

I want a nice house (condo, actually, but it feels like a house when you're in it, and there's a backyard) and a nice husband and a nice dog! Where are my nice house, husband and dog? Must be on back order.

Then we drove to Sacramento.

Lucy is an excellent traveling companion, especially if you insist on being carsick, because she tells funny stories and keeps your mind off things. There was much talk of the meta variety, and she got me all caught up on the journal community scandals since I've been offline.

Of which there have been none. What are people doing with their time?

Lucy carefully planned the route in order to miss certain traffic, which cleverly got us smack-dab in the middle of entirely different traffic, so we were crawling along a two-lane highway for rather a while, but I was having a lovely time listening to the radio.

I found the NPR station, where there was a cooking show, then a thing about photography, then a sewing show, and the bit that I loved was that they were demonstration shows.

On the radio.

I mean, they were really cooking in the first show, and you could hear the sewing machine whirring in the background of the last show, and I just thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard.

Lucy made me change the channel, so I didn't find out what the next show could possibly be, but I could only imagine that it was a face-painting demonstration. Or possibly kite flying?

At last we got to Beth's house, and met her and Jeremy and all them bad kitties.

I always think it's hilarious when someone tells you that this cat is shy or this cat doesn't like strangers, and then they proceed to launch themselves at the stranger in question in a frenzy of slutiness.

Well, that was Benny and Lucy. He seemed to like me as well, but Lucy's lap was clearly the most wonderful lap in all the land and he would accept on substitutes.

Then we went out to dinner to a really swell place whose name I don't remember. The food was excellent (great mashed potatoes!), but they had no seats indoors, so we sat outside near the heaters, which worked, but not below the table, so we had toasty warm foreheads and freezing cold legs. Not to mention butts. Those were some damn cold metal chairs!

Then we went home and meta-talked until the cows came home. Or rather until Beth fell asleep while Jeremy played with her hair.

Lucy slept on the new sofabed, and I got to sleep in Beth's fabulous room, with the bed so high off the ground that my feet swung like Shirley Temple's and the flannel sheets and the big puffy pillows.

Beth understands the importance of big puffy pillows.

Personally, I think that the most interesting part of the evening were the hours that the four of us spent together, talking, and there was a computer with Internet access just sitting there in the other room, and nobody snuck off to check their e-mail.

We were all on our company manners.

Today's horoscope:
Hobbies require your attention. Light and playful is the tone for recreation today. Humor, quick wits, and fast hands are assets.

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