We made it to Virginia Beach after a 10 hour car drive yesterday. The drive was fairly unexciting, aside from a 30 mile stretch of road between Huntington and Charleston, WV that I have now christened as “Road Kill Alley”. The deer in that area are either not too bright or just have really bad luck. Along that stretch of road, I counted well over 35 dead deer, along with various smaller creatures. That’s greater than one dead animal a mile, folks. I’ve never heard of an area where the deer population control weapon of choice is a vehicle. Now, I’m not a gun advocate, but come on, people of West Virginia – it’s at least more humane.

Our room is pretty nice. We have a fridge and a microwave, and high-speed internet access, which of course was a must. The breakfast here is amazing – every type of breakfast food you could think of is available.

The one unpleasant aspect is the surprise we had waiting in our bathroom. I saw something hanging on a hook, and couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it a towel? A shower cap? Aaron took a closer look to tell me. Turns out, it’s a pair of underwear. Someone else’s underwear. Yuck.

Not sure what I’m going to do today. I will probably look in the guide book and find something to explore in the area. The weather is great, and thanks to the Hippo Diet, I can just barely fit into my capris, so life is good!

As of tomorrow I will be posting from Virginia Beach for the weekend. Aaron has to go to Regents College for a stage-combat workshop, and I’m tagging along. My mom has once again proven to be Super Grandma and offered to stay at our house with Cordelia for the weekend. It’ll be nice to have child-free nights!

Aaron won’t get to see the area much, but I intend to be out and about sightseeing each day. Anyone live near Virginia Beach?

As many steady readers know, I’m back in school for another degree. I ended up with an A in both Anatomy and Psychology last quarter, and this quarter I was going to take Statistics, but changed my mind at the last moment and switched to Developmental Psychology instead.

I never realized how insanely stupid a bookstore can be until today. As I walked into the store, I was greeted by a police officer. Not exactly what I expected to see.

He told me in a rather gruff voice that since I had a book to sell back (from last term), as well as books to exchange, I wouldn’t be allowed in the store until I sold the book from last quarter back first. Textbooks from last term were prohibited in the store.

Of course, buybacks aren’t being held there, but instead in a little dungeon on the other side of the large building. So I walk to the other side of the building, on another floor, to sell my book back. After accepting my pithy $30 for my $100 book (that’s an entire topic for another day!), I returned to the bookstore to try for entry again.

This time the keeper of the gate lets me pass, after examining my receipt as if it contained the location of WMDs or Bin Laden. But I was told I had to stand in the returns line, and could not move from that line. Could I get the book I needed to purchase? Nope, had to do the return, then get the book I need, then get in another line and wait more. Simply insane.

So while in line, I decided I wasn’t going to stand for this kind of poor planning, and grabbed the next sales associate who walked by. I asked him, as politely as possible, if he could fetch the book I needed for my class. He willingly obliged, and after a few minutes I was still standing in the returns line, but I also had the book I needed to purchase. Take that, line nazi!

Once I got to the counter, I had to face one more hurdle: convincing the returns girl to let me also purchase the book. Luckily, I sailed through this challenge as well, with a little politeness and gratitude. You’d think these poor folks had never had anyone be nice to them before!

Soon I was on my way out the door, with a sly smirk to the gatekeeper cop as I walked past.

I had the beginnings of an intelligent post today, but then I ate a couple of donuts with my lunch, and my brain has turned to mush due to carb overload.

Since coherent thoughts are difficult at the moment, I’ll leave you with this video for today. This is what happens when you flip the viewscreen so a toddler can watch herself on video (the audio seems to be about a second delayed for some reason).