And the great migration is underway. We're in Akron, where I'm posting from Elisa's parents' place late Monday night. We rolled out Saturday, although not as early as we'd hoped. It took more time than expected to pack the truck, not to mention more space within the truck. We ended up putting in, and putting our friends through, a good eight-hour work day. We started at 9:00 and finally sealed off the truck at straight up 5:00.

Then the question was, do we still set out for Akron as planned, or wait here and leave Sunday morning, or go and stop partway there? It's about a six-hour drive to Akron. We'd been working ourselves to death all day, stressing ourselves to the point where we were snapping at each other, and the sun was going down. On the other hand, I really, really didn't want to wake up the next morning and have like 350 miles to drive. So we set out, and drove straight through to Akron. Got there a little before midnight. It started to rain as we were entering Ohio, and by the time we approached Akron, it was spattering heavy, wet snow onto the windshield. (There would be two inches of snow on the ground the next morning, though it didn't last very long.)



All in all, Saturday totally blew.

About the best that could be said for it was that Lazslo travelled considerably better than we expected. We had kitty downers, but we couldn't really give them to him Saturday, so we went without them. He wasn't thrilled, meowed a lot for the first hour or so, but eventually he settled down and went to sleep. Then he'd wake up and protest a bit when something happened to disturb him, stopping at toll booths and rolling the window down, for example. But he really did pretty well, and to my amazement he seems to have adapted instantly to the Modugnos' house. He explored, but never seemed freaked out by the newness of it. Took right to it, claimed the leather chair in the living room for his own and settled in to run the place. Good for him. Maybe we won't have to drug him after all.

Sunday was kind of a blur. I was exhausted, moving like I was seventy, and of course dumped head first into a sea of Modugnos to sink or swim. I mean they're really good people and all, but damn there's a lot of them. And they all talk at once. Eventually I had to retreat to the back bedroom and catch some more sleep. There was much sleeping.

Today I was a little better. I'm feeling pretty normal now, ready to set out tomorrow for Madison, about the only time I'm likely to be there as WisCon is unfortunately pretty much out now. We had a quiet birthday thing. Canadian money from the in-laws, very cute, and a multi-tool from Elisa to go in my handy bike messenger bag. I'm going to be so cool on the west coast. No, really.