~Monday~ Last night before going to bed, I called the front desk for a late check-out, and they gave us until 1:00PM. However, we were up and at ’em before 10:00, in fact in time to get downstairs before 10:00 and enjoy some complimentary breakfast. We were checked out and on the road home by 11:30.
We decided to take an alternate route home, taking 58W directly to I-95 in Emporia instead of taking I-264W to pick it up in Richmond and then heading south to Emporia and beyond. That turned out to be a decent route, in spite of some of the scary, Deliverance-type things, we saw along the way: a house dilapidated to the point of slanting inward that had an open-for-business sign on it, a sign for truck driving college, and windows of a house with white snow spray painted words in all of the windows across the front of the house, including the living room picture window that had this painted in it:
| Merry Christm AS |
and yes, the “AS” on its own line was capitalized!
Approaching Roanoke Rapids on I-95, we ran into a most excruciating traffic jam for about 6-8 miles. At first it seemed like one of those inexplicable jams where there’s no obvious reason why people are slowing down. But eventually, we got to a place where it looked like at least one vehicle had careened off the road—judging from tire marks in and about the shoulder. Too, a car was up on a wrecker about to be towed away. Just past that, the traffic picked up to its normal interstate pace.
In the excitement of all that, I missed the exit for 64E toward Raleigh, and with the next exit being so far past that one, I just continued on to the I-95 / 264W exit, and took that. We were back in Raleigh by about 4:30, I think it was.
I’m not at all into animation—I’ve never even seen Shreck, Toy Story, Who Framed Roger Robert, nor any of the animated TV shows such as Family Guy, The Simpsons, and South Park—but I found this 5-and-a-half minute film engaging, if not downright creepy:
Thanks to my friend Abby for linking to it either on Twitter of Facebook.
Joe and I met at Flex at 9:30, where it was fairly festive for karaoke. We played a few games of pool
After a while, Carl showed up—not Cowboy Carl, but the Carl who is moving here from Charlotte and has come to country dancing night several times. He hung out with us the entire rest of the night.
I left somewhere between 11:30 and midnight.