July 22, 2009: Last Full Day at Home

It is another crazy day in the world o’ Scott.  Today is my last full day at home for an entire week.  That is worrisome.  I always get stressed out when I am going to be traveling for any length of time because there is always so much to do and so many things to forget before leaving and then you are stuck away from home without the things that you need.

I got almost no sleep again last night.  Went to bed around midnight or a little later and was up by four in the morning because I couldn’t sleep.  So, again, I just went down to the office to get to work since I was already up so early.  If you can’t sleep you might as well be productive.

My BlackBerry Tour arrived from dad’s house today via UPS overnight.  I managed to get the box opened but did not really have any time to do anything else with the phone other than to look at it quickly.  It looks quite nice and I am hopeful that it will work well for me on this trip.  Just one more component that really can’t “fail” on me without causing a serious problem.

I worked all day.  It was quite busy.  I did get a little time in the afternoon to hang out with Dominica.  This is the last that we will really see each other for a week.  Liesl slept most of the day so we did not get to hang out very much.

I was really exhausted by evening and went to bed around midnight.  I really need to catch up on sleep before the crazy drive begins.  I am hoping that Francesca will agree to take the western route through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Oklahoma rather than the middle route through Kentucky, Tennenness and Arkansas.  The middle route is one that I know all except for a portion after Nashville.  It wouldn’t be bad as I would love to see Memphis and Little Rock and to drive through that region but so much of the drive would be “repeat” for me.  But the western route is almost completely new to me the moment that we are out of Columbus, Ohio.  I have been to Cincinati but this route will take us, instead, through Dayton and then into parts of Indiana and Illinois to which I have never been even though I have been to both states multiple times previously.

The real excitement is driving all the way east to west through Missouri, which I have never see at all, including crossing the Mississippi in famous St. Louis on i70.   Then driving north to south across Oklahoma which I also have never seen.  I will enjoy the trip a lot more being so much farther from landscape with which I am so familiar.  I tend to fall asleep when driving over the same roads again and again but I also tend to be very, very awake when travling to new places.  When I first drove from Ohio to Alabama it was all new and I could have just driven forever taking in all the new sites as I went.  Hopefully this trip will be like that.

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