16 August 2002

I have had better days.

Work: I'm on a new project. One with lots of weird and stupid administrative details, and for which I'm going to have to install and learn the horror that is Oracle Developer on my computer.

(Don't look at me like that. I played with it for a previous project, and I suppose if they'd tried really hard, they could have made it less intuitive and helpful. But it probably would've involved an R&D effort.)

Matt and I were going to go down to K.T. and Kevin's last night to watch Lord of the Rings with them. We set out, and Matt decided that rather than risk the interstate traffic, we'd take the parallel road down.

As we drove, I glanced through the trees at the interstate. "They're slowing down... Ooh, and stopping. Yep, we made the right choice coming this way!"

Hubris, my friends, will bring you low every time.

The alternate road slowed to a crawl as well. After fifteen minutes or so, we heard the traffic report on the radio - it sounded like an epidemic of accidents had traffic snarled everywhere within a fifty-mile radius of the radio station.

Finally, after almost an hour and a half, we got to K.T. and Kevin's. We watched the movie, and then left.

What happened on the way home was all my fault. After reminding Matt that there was roadwork being done on the interstate and suggesting that he consider taking the alternate route home as well, I mused, "Though really, it wasn't all that bad last night."

On that recommendation, Matt took the interstate. Rather naturally, about 50 feet past an exit, with four miles to go before the next one, traffic came to a slamming halt.

This roadwork has, for the past six weeks, caused the trip home to take ten or fifteen minutes longer than usual. Last night we sat.

And sat.

And sat.

And inched forward a few feet.

And sat.

The problem turned out to be manyfold, as it turned out: The traffic was trying to narrow from six lanes (well, four lanes of highway plus two lanes of onramp) down to one. There was a thunderstorm. And there was an accident, only about a fifty yards before the actual roadwork started.

In any case, it took us an hour and a half to get home - an hour and fifteen minutes of that was spent on four miles.

We spent almost as much time in transit as we did watching the movie. I suppose I should be grateful we hadn't gone down to watch a ninety-minute flick.

To make matters worse, I've been fighting weird PMS-like symptoms all week, even though the timing is wrong for it to be PMS. So when K.T. posted her story of the evening, I had to fight this huge wave of jealousy and self-contempt.

(I feel kind of sorry for K.T., actually; this enormously cool and sweet thing happened to her, and she just wanted to share her excitement - and her husband got pissed and her best friend had a jealousy fit. I feel even sorrier for poor Matt, who had to put up with this astonishingly illogical and pathetic bout of self-pity on my part knowing that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.)

Anyway, I couldn't get to sleep until I'd gotten up again and gone downstairs to pet the cat for a while. (And I just want to say that my cat is so extremely cool that even though he usually doesn't cuddle with me, he somehow sensed that I needed a cat last night, and curled up on my stomach while I laid on the couch and purred. It's very hard to feel sorry for yourself when there's a purring cat on your stomach.)

So, I got less than five hours of sleep last night. Which was going to explain why I didn't have much of a journal entry today... Except I guess now I do.

--Liz