Tales from Bloomington

Generally my travels are pretty uneventful, one town to the next, one hotel to the next, one library to the next. However, the last two days have had a strange amount of obscure happenings. Tuesday went pretty smoothe - drove to Richmond, lunch with 2 librarians and a meeting with two more librarians.

Wednesday is where the miscellaneous bad luck started. Nothing major really, just minor little frustrating inconveniences. First of all it had not stopped raining since Tuesday. Secondly, I got lost on my 15 minute trip to IU. I missed my turn and just had myself completely turned around in the rain. I have been to IU dozens of time and can generally get around without a second thought, but my foggy brain just could not comprehend which direction I was supposed to be going in. In this mess, I almost cut somebody off on top of that. But, I made it to the library and even found a close parking spot. On the way in the door, my shoe got stuck in the grate at the bottom of the outside set of the library doors - damnit!

After a valuable meeting, I head back to my hotel for a couple of hours before my next appointment and get frickinig lost on my way back to the hotel - how the heck did that happen?!? But, the good news is that I kinda knew where I was at and actually ended up a little south of where I normally go and found other dining options while I was out. Bonus!

The second appointment went without a hitch, but the third appointment my stupid shoe got stuck in the door again. AGAIN!! I was so tired by the time I got back to my room, I didn't want to go back out in the rain to find dinner. So, I wandered across the street with my book and had catfish, a sweet potato, and a massive margarita - ahhh, life was looking better. I met an older gentleman (also from MI) who works for a company that owns funeral homes and cemetaries. I was very intrigued by this and had lots of questions after my margarita. And in my buzzed state went back to my hotel room and back to work hoping that tomorrow would be better.

Wrong! Breackfast - I ate part of my cinnamon roll, a couple of bits of my cereal and they dumped half of my cereal and milk on top of my roll. Granted I only had 5 minutes to eat anyway. So, I cleaned it up and got a new cinnamon roll. I grabbed a yogurt and threw it in my bag for after my meeting. The highight was that it had at least stopped raining and the sun was out. My appointment went great and I headed out of Bloomington and up to Muncie for an afternoon appointment on my way home. I started fussing with my ipod somewhere along 465 and literally missed my exit to I69 Now this wasn't I saw it and couldn't get over, this was I saw 465 West(I was going North) and there was a familiar apartment complex that I should not be driving by. Crap!! I overshot it by 10 miles, now how did that happen!?! So, I got to Muncie and stopped at McDonald's for lunch. First, no shamrock shakes. They had egg nog shakes into March and they can't keep shamrock shakes three days after St. Patrick's Day? So, I order an iced tea. They are out of iced tea in front, so I go back to the counter to ask for some from the dispenser at the drive thru window. Of course, they don't put a lid on it. So, I go back to the drink counter to put a lid on it - poorly! When I picked up the drink I spilled half of the drink. I cleaned up the counter, but figured they can mop up the floor and I was not going back to the counter for more iced tea. I just wanted out of there at this point.

After my smoothe appointment, I risked a blizzard at DQ on my way out of town, since I didn't get to have the shamrock shake with lunch. Just hoping I did not spill it. Other than waiting 15 minutes behind two cars, I finally ate my first food of the day without some kind of issue.

I must have seen 15 - 20 cops between Bloomington and home, but no tickets and a pretty uneventful trip home from Muncie.

Like I said there wasn't anything major, but it was enough for me to want the week to end and just get the heck home. Luckily, next week is a shorter travel week and vacation is the week after that.