so i'm back at home. in des moines. yes. got in around 2:30 am. really it wasn't a bad drive. except for the part where a deer tried to kill me. freaking deer. how bad would it have been to completely demolish my car just days after it returned from the honda dealership with enough new parts to make its estimated net worth more valuable than most of my internal organs? very bad. and not nearly as entertaining as totaling a car by making a great dane blow up. if i'm going to hit an animal it needs to be something much more interesting than a deer. more like an elephant or a dinosaur or maybe even an armadillo. although i guess those animals, with the exception of the armadillo, are more conspicuous than deer, making them perhaps a little more predictable and thus easier to avoid hitting with a car. and, in case you didn't know, dinosaurs are extinct and have been for quite some time so really armadillos are the only ones i'm going to have problems with. apparently there are a lot of armadillos in texas. we'll see about that.

so texas is a week away. i'm very excited about that, though i admit it was difficult leaving chicago last night. it didn't really even feel real. it hasn't hit me yet that i'm not going to see ara and helen and jeanna and insert-name-here for at least two months. but it does feel weird today. not being able to meet helen at starbucks and make a run for our people watching couch. not being able to drive two minutes to ara's house. i mean we've been joined at the hip for the past six weeks and it just sort of feels like something's missing today.

time for a nap.