Travel day

I am in California right now for work. I left our house at 10:15 this morning and got to my hotel around 6:20 Pacific time, roughly 10 hours later. It was a long day. Hannah was mad at me for leaving and almost refused to hug me goodbye, and then she didn' t want to talk to me on the phone. That made me very sad, but I understand. She doesn't get why I had to leave and I'd be mad, too. Besides, I don't like it, either. However, California is sunny and has palm trees, and even if I am here for work, there are worse places you can be forced to go (Exhibit A: St. Louis, which is my least favorite city I've ever visited, with apologies to the people who live there and actually like it).

Anyway, here are some amusing/interesting things that happened today.

• My flight landed at LAX 20 minutes EARLY, which I was sure meant I was in the Twilight Zone. But then my connecting flight was 30 minutes late, so the space/time continuum must have righted itself.
• I noticed that many women travelers at LAX were wearing heels. High ones. I cannot figure out why.
• I heard a girl having a VERY LOUD conversation on her cell phone where she was apparently telling a friend that her boyfriend had finally said, "I love you" for the first time. I resisted the urge to congratulate her.
• I ate peanut butter pretzels, which was a treat since we don't have peanut butter at home.
• I had a fish taco for dinner that was awesome. The shrimp taco, not so much.
• My rental car is a bright, electric blue PT Cruiser. At first I thought it was the dumbest car ever - I actually laughed out loud in the rental parking lot - but after I got in I decided it was SO CUTE and I've now fallen in love with it. I am certain I have the most unique rental car of any of my coworkers. Even the dashboard is electric blue. I have to remember not to speed.
• My plane was full of little kids, who were all pretty well-behaved, actually. I had a horrible stab of homesickness because the little girl in front of me was watching The Backyardigans on her portable DVD player.
• I actually did homework on the plane and worked till my laptop battery almost ran down. It was a bit tough to do anything without internet access, but I got a pretty good outline of my thoughts. It helped that the in-flight movie was dumb so I didn't want to watch it. (I can't remember what it was, but it had Keanu Reeves in it, which should explain well enough. It even looked stupid with no sound, which is never a good sign.)
• I bought a new book, A Serpent's Tale by Ariana Franklin, to read at LAX because my laptop battery was almost dead and I'd read both my magazines, and I had a long layover. It's very good and will probably keep me from doing any more homework on any more planes. :)

And now, to bed - because I have to be ready to leave at 7:15 to drive the Electric Blue Love Bug (which we've already christened my rental car) to get to work!