Location: John and Janice’s house
Miles: 900.9
Everything’s packed except the laptop, and I’m ready to head out. Big, big thanks go to John and Janice for putting me up for as long as they did. I’ve had a great time here and I don’t care who knows it.
One trumpet lighter and with Winnebaggo (I had been calling my giant suitcase my mobile home, but John coined this much better name) looking more svelte as I redistributed my load somewhat, I’m feeling footloose and fancy-free. I honestly have no idea where I’m going to stay tonight. Not even what state I’ll be in. Work looms again on Monday, so I’ll have to find an Internet connection by then – most likely at Buggy’s place.
A little parting anecdote about life chez John. Changing the names to protect the innocent would be pretty useless. Yesterday John had a Job interview for a little educational publishing outfit in Santa Cruz. He spent the afternoon boning up on the company and he got all gussied up. Before he left, Janice made sure he had a little portfolio with working pen and paper, and asked him, “Do you have any resumés printed up to hand to people?”
What followed was well over half an hour of formatting, checking, and printing resumés, until John was properly armed to Janice’s satisfaction. John was getting increasingly antsy to leave during this process. Finally, time running short, he got himself together and out the door.
Janice turned to me and said, “He’s never going to make it in time. He should have left half an hour ago – traffic on Friday afternoons is really bad.”
I do not in any way mean to bite the hand that has been feeding me – I like Janice quite a lot. It’s just a funny story is all.
All’s well that ends well. I walked through the door of the place exactly one minute late. And that was because I didn’t negotiate the “really tight U-turn” into their parking lot correctly. “Really tight” doesn’t do it justice — if I were still driving the International Harvester I’d have had to reverse up to their building.