These generic ones are hard to close and not watertight (are any?). Soggy cheese is gross. Seriously.

I am often pleasently surprised by streets, even little ones, having labels.

75mph typical speed limits on interstates outside of city limits. 65 in cities, usually.

Non-city streets with 65 mph speed limits outside cities.

Needing to use my brights to drive at night.

Excellent signage.

Historic markers. As far as I can tell, every town has one, plus lots others between towns.

Cattle guards.

Cities spreading out, not up (this is a thing I _really_ like).

Large stretches with no buildings at all.

Brilliant green grass like that seen in pictures of Ireland is as dramatically out of place here as it was during my visits to Australia.

Heat-based water mirages make it look like the road ahead was eaten by The Nothing when going uphill with nothing between the road and sky, and the sun behind a cloud.

There are many well-placed restrooms along my trip.

Gas in the middle of nowhere is astoundingly overpriced.

Ok, 40 more miles to go.

Did not drive through roswell, although I did pass it.

Pet Promise no longer making pet food is problematic with a picky cat who believes his current dry food attempt is Not Food.

Really cat, we're trying! We didn't want Pet Promise food to go away, either.

I don't want to move because it might wake the puppy, who was a lot of effort to convince to sleep!

Ah, baby animals. :)

Thankfully, my laptop was in the room, and deyo was able to get it to me with the puppy remaining willing to sleep.

We spent the long weekend w/metahacker's mom, canuckmum, and do thanksgiving (observed) plus birthday stuff for multiple people w/his family.

Was a very busy weekend, unfortunately involving giving my cold to both metahacker and galaneia, the latter of whom is now miserable.

I was quite nervous about my first thanksgiving with his family. It went well, though. Long day. Very long day! But there were tasty foods (I now want a recipe for sweet potato pie, even though I will probably fail to ever make it. It was so tasty!), many conversations and helping with necessary big groups of people chores, and a large variety of presents. Including for me, to my surprise. (to be fair, i did have a birthday recently) I got a broomstick skirt from his mom (I have a fair number of said, so if that was a guess, it was an _excellent_ guess), a couple pieces of nifty art from metahacker (I did know I was getting something unclear and possibly card-like from him), and a lovely knit lap blanket from galaneia which I must post pictures of. Although I'm not sure the colors will photograph well.

I'm really impressed with the sneakiness with which she got me to pick a pattern for it! Neat viney plant growing pattern thing! Sneaky girl is sneaky!

I did notice she was knitting a bunch, but she knits a bunch anyway. And I did notice that she wanted to finish something in time for gift giving, and she jumped a few times when I came into a room unexpectedly, but at no point did I ever more than briefly wonder why. Nor did I have any clue what she was making.

Ok, yes, I'm perhaps a bit oblivious. :)

Good thanksgiving. People are still clearly a bit baffled by the whole situation, but they are also clearly trying to actually get to know me. Which is good. :)

It's never good when my dreams involve me being exhausted and trying to find somewhere to sleep. *sigh*

Bus drivers that don't stop make catching a bus difficult. Taking too long to realize that they did try to stop for you halfway through an intersection and you have significant trouble walking in front of cars at a green light is just frustrating. And I do poorly at arriving at a recurring event late, so not trying the next bus, and voicemail message left for the only person to whom this would have mattered.

It's hard enough (but usually worthwhile) to psych myself up to go to new social things without my transportation leaving me behind. Ah, well. Will try next week and see what I can do to be a lot more obviously waiting (I was sitting & reading until the bus was nearby, and I doubt people are usually there at that time) next time.

Still absurdly frustrated/upset, though, all out of proportion to what happened, or I might have tried to push past the significant extra difficulty involved in arriving late (and in a place I do not know). Instead, I hide until I calm down. Then, I don't know what. Having my plans change on me last minute isn't a thing I am terribly good at handling.

Sometimes headaches are very strange things. The ones I get when I sleep poorly are the strangest I ever get. They pretend to be sinuses, but migrane meds are the only thing that touches them.

Today, though, the pain was confusing and not only pain. True, there's pain, and a lot of it. But there's also... A discomnnect between my eyes and my brain, completely screwing with my hand-eye coordination and making reading actively difficult. It's like things simply are not where they appear to be.

If I weren't also light sensitive and in a fair bit of pain, this would be entertaining in its strangeness.

At least my mood has lifted from this morning's, many thanks to metahacker.

I have no shoes, a park with a nice stream, lovely trails, and lots of trees.

Ok, the no shoes is because I needed to escape the neighbor vaccuming his porch Right Now. And my feet are not up to walking on pebbles.

But good park, even with Mosquitos which seem to be everywhere anyway!