Friday, January 9, 2009

Day One-hundred-and-ninety-two: Flea bag motels

In keeping with my New Year's resolution, I'm going to bake the most of my arrival at a flea bag motel in Topeka. It's cheap. It has a TV with not only a picture that works but a remote that told me my room number. Further, the TV has multiple channels upon which I've found one with the National Championship Football game and another with a Roger Moore as Bond movie, "For Your Eyes Only." Then, to top it off the commercials on the two weren't completely synchronized. It also has a mini-fridge, which I'm not using after my use of my previous hotel's mini-fridge resulted in frozen soy milk and sourdough starter.

After leaving the somewhat frozen starter out of the cooler and just in the car and then leaving it out for just an hour or so in the room, I fed it. It had a yeasty smell and bubbled so maybe it is still okay. Finding the grocery store for the stuff to feed it was an ordeal. I finally saw one off the expressway before the exit to get to it and stopped. I drove around one exit in St. Louis following the Prius's Navigation System's instructions. I did find a Schnucks' Distribution Center but the closest Schnuck's grocery store no longer existed. (I really do have to get the data updated.)

Overall, the day was a good road day. I didn't pay attention to the actual distance but I was just this side of Indianapolis this morning and am now in Topeka, a four-state day.

The last time I was in Topeka was when I was on a consulting trip while I was a System Engineer with Amdahl 29 years ago. I believe my lack of memory of the details from that time has more to do with how unremarkable the experience was not a senior moment. Either way, this visit should join the previous one soon. I would never have thought that looking forward to a loss of memory would be something I would be doing in my Life after Layoff. At least it will make all my other stops seem better by comparison.

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