Long story short… we drove straight through from just north of Seattle to 30mi south of Salt Lake City. We decided to go straight through when we learned that a stomach bug was barfing its way through our extended family in Boise, which is where we’d initially planned to spend the night.

I may be barfing all day tomorrow, hung over from the Vivarin-popping I did, but at least it won’t be contagious.

Sandra, Kiki, Link, Gleek, Patches and I are all safe and sound here in Seattle. Sandra will probably say more about this than I will, since I’m still burnt out from the drive — it was about 90 minutes longer than I expected it to be thanks to the posted speeds in Oregon and Washington being between 5mph and 10mph lower than I was counting on. Oh, and there was a very, VERY dense dust-storm at the Oregon/Idaho border that originated from one freshly-turned field. I guess the cloud is guaranteed to be dense for freeway drivers when it originates on a field adjacent to the freeway.

Tomorrow is Schlockfest. Email schlockmercenary-subscribe@yahoogroups.com if you’re in the Seattle area and are interested in getting together in the evening at the Strohl Munitions Worldwide Headquarters. I’m preparing for it by going to bed very, very shortly.

I spent the first 8 hours of the day wondering whether or not I was going to throw up, and gingerly running a couple of errands.

I spent the next 8 pretty sure that I was NOT going to throw up, because the stuff [CENSORED BY THE BUREAU OF TMI] end demanded a couple of doses of loperamide HCl and lots of fluids.

I slept a lot. Fever, chills, aches… I’m feeling better now, but I’m definitely still sick.

The good news is that I think I’ll have this out of my system by the time we need to leave on Monday.

I haven’t been blogging as much as I wanted to at the start of the year. It’s not because there isn’t stuff to write — it’s because other resolutions (exercise, diet, and buffer-fu) have been more important to me, and got prioritized in front.

Oh, and “paint a miniature every week” also got prioritized in front.

In related news, this week I painted a miniature (and I’ll probably bang out one or two more this afternoon — Thursday is my Play-Day), and I’ve already scripted, pencilled, and inked a week. Oh, and then I scripted and pencilled ANOTHER week, which I’ll ink on Friday. Pulling that off will put the buffer at 57, which is 15 higher than the long-standing high of 42 (which I’ve broken several times since January 31st).

Also in related news, I’ve been back on the “only eat when you’re hungry” diet for a few days now, and my weight appears to have stabilized 2lbs above my recent low of 178, and 13 pounds down from my high when I started dieting in January. I’ll go back to low-carbing after this upcoming trip to Seattle.

*sigh*. I need to blog the Seattle trip, but I think that’s a job for Blogunder Schlock.