Leisurely

As I type this I'm in a hotel just south of Chicago, IL.  I'm headed home to Rochester, NY to visit with my mom, brother and sister, and my pups.  It'll be a 2,000 mile drive over the 4 days of this long weekend - not all that much fun being on the highway with 34 million cars, trucks, RV's, campers, and crazy people (story here).

I put in a full day of work today before doing my 450 mile drive and it actually wasn't all that bad until I started to get near Chicago.  The heatwave in the midwest is giving way to a storm that looked like driving into the jaws of hell.  Literally.  The temperature dropped from 102 to 72 in less than 45 minutes, and the dark skies full of lightning were actually pretty spectacular (other than I was driving straight into it).

Thankfully, the skies didn't actually open up on me until I was less than a dozen miles from the hotel.  So, here I am...in bed, unwinding for a little bit before getting a good night sleep.  I've got 620 miles to go tomorrow.  I hope the worst of the storms are past.  At least it'll be daytime....

Actually - these distances feel like nothing.  I'm so used to 800 to 1,000 miles in a day that averaging 500 or 600 is actually a pretty short, almost leisurely, driving day for me.  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing - it's just the way it is.

This is a lot of trouble and expense for less than 18 hours in Rochester but my mom is there for her 84th birthday and we don't get many opportunities to all be together as a family.  The last time was a year ago at my niece's wedding.  Anyway, from someone who believes that we do what we need to do to make what needs to happen happen - here I am.

Plus, I'll make a trip to Wegmans to bring a stockpile of stuff back with me.  I suspect that the time will go quickly.  

Crazy.