At Home with Don Q

Friday, July 27th:

You'd think that reading a peripatetic novel on the road would be doubly satisfying, kind of like slamming scones while scarfing Austen.

You'd think wrong.

It's true that there was a whole lot of traveling going on.  Don Q was gallumphing more or less gracefully down the high road.  I was schlepping through two countries and six states.  He covered less ground (horse, ass, feet) than I did (plane, train, automobile), but he impaled things a whole lot more.  (Don Q's solution to life, the universe, and everything: Lance it!)

I got back yesterday at 2:00 AM EDT.

He, God help him -God help ME- still going.

It's the aimlessness that bugged me.  I mean, I had stuff to do!  Don Q had stuff to do, too, but it was so amorphous (embody knight errantry! Gallantly!) it might as well have been nothing.  And so, even though Don Q and I were both making up our beds anew night after night, and thus ostensibly had something in common, I started to resent him. 

Why did he get to run around speechifying when I had to figure out how to make my Power Point go "whoosh?"  Why did he get to maunder shirtless over the mesas while I drank a lot of very, very bad coffee?

We'll see if he and I get along better now that I'm at home for the luxurious span of a week.

Other notes:

*Lothario!  The word!  Comes from Don Quixote! I mean, hot damn!  Almost (not quite) worth the schlep!

*Are we there yet?