844 miles

That’s the distance (including parking lots and gas stations) from Donalsonville, GA to my home in Austin, TX.

We drove through 6 states: Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.

We drove that distance today in roughly 13 hours (11 hours, 49 minutes driving, the rest was food/gas/bathroom breaks).

I’m glad to be home, even though my apartment is a mess from unloading the car. 🙂

Country fried small-town

I am currently out travelling with Rebecca, in part to visit her aging grandmother, who lives near Donalsonville – a small town in rural Georgia.

This was after a 9-some hour drive from Little Rock.

Dinner for the evening was at the local diner, called “3 Squares Diner.” One order CFS and one chicken noodle soup: $10.

And the CFS was delicious.

I’m going to enjoy this small-town experience. Oh, yes I will.

Fearmongering and megalomania – A young blonde Icelandic woman’s recent experience visiting the US

I came across this article yesterday.

The article talks about a lady from Iceland, and her recent experience visiting the US.

It went fine enough until, upon going through Immigration, it was noticed that she had overstayed her visa on a visit in 1995. At this point her experience turned into something like a horror movie. She was detained, questioned, denied food for 14 hours, denied making any contact (Until they presented her with a phone that could make collect-only calls, but was unable to make international calls, heh), chained, cuffed, jailed overnight, etc.

It really makes you wonder what our society has come to, when for all intents of purpose innocent people, are treated like criminals.

Not that American society at large probably cares – after all, it won’t happen to US. No – we’ll go on and live our picture-perfect lives.

People sometimes ask me “If you dislike America so much, why do you stay here?” I dunno – I ask myself the same question every time I come across situations like this.

Texas Winter

This past weekend I spent the afternoon/evening visiting San Antonio with several of my friends.

Quinceañera

A few of the highlights:

  • Watching Emily and Marianne trying to get a jumping picture.
  • Heather, the bagpiper, running into another bagpiper, and doing some quickie collaboration.
  • The Chipotle Enchiladas at “The ORIGINAL Mexican Restaurant” (Just ask Zach).
  • Being stuck in the parking garage for near an hour getting from level “F” down to “A” and then out.

All in all, it was an enjoyable trip, even though we did get home rather late. 🙂

16 hours and 50 minutes

Yesterday I left home around 7am to go to work.

Yesterday I got home around 11:50pm from work.

That’s 16 hours and 50 minutes of my day that I spent with work-related things.

Yes, it was long. Yes, it sucked. But in the end, we resolved a very large handful of very annoying problems that had bothered us for several weeks. (And caused no small amount of emotional distress on my part. Blech.)

I told my boss I would be “working” from home today. Oddly enough, I’ve done a few things. Finished some troubleshooting I was involved in, send out several emails responding to the (hopeful) resolution of the aforementioned problems, etc.

And now I’m done.