magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Up and packed for a four day road trip and flight back from Denver. Arrangements made to have Dan come and check in on Chesterfield. I was going to take an early afternoon train out of the city, meet up with George in Beacon, and set out westward from there. As of 5:30 in the evening he was just getting on the road, out of Burlington, 5+ hours from beacon. Not in any way his fault. Oh, at top speed the truck he was driving was barely breaking 50mph.

'I'd understand if you want to back out of the trip,' he told me.

'I don't know. It's frustrating either way. On one hand, I've been sort of psyching myself up for it for about a week, I'm packed, arrangements have been made, and if I don't go, I feel like I'd be letting you down. But on the other, it's looking less and less like the four-day pseudo vacation that I was hoping for, and more like a non-stop, stress-inducing, cross country chore.'

'Either way,' he said, 'I really don't mind.'

And after weighing the options, 'It's probably best if I don't go. If I had been planning the trip out I would have scheduled the better part of a week. Drive nice, short days. Spend one night at my dad's in Ohio, another visiting Sonali in Omaha. Have plenty of time in the evenings to get at least half a day's worth of design work done.' I checked the weather for him. 'There doesn't appear to be any forecasted lake effect snow, so if you wanted to take 90 from Albany, since you don't have to come down to pick me up, you'd probably save a good 3 hours.'

'I'll probably call you from time to time from the road,' he said. 'To get clarification on directions, or simply to break up the monotony of the drive.'

---

'So, it turns out I'm not leaving town after all.'

'Are you planning on going to Aimee's party then?'

'Yeah, that's what I was thinking.'

'She says people are going to show up around 9:00, at her place in Park Slope.'

When I got there, they were drinking at the corner bar. 'We tried to get the apartment in shape for a party, but only really succeeded in making it an even bigger mess.' And the party stayed in the bar, at a big corner table by the window, eventually winding down to a somewhat unlikely collection of stragglers, finally dispersing sometime after 3:00 in the morning.