summer trip: day one

Miles so far: 387

I'm posting from Bloomington, Illinois, so most everything is working according to plan. This is just random stuff from the past day.

First, I have realized that yesterday I may have overstated the number of miles that we will be travelling a tad. I know my grandmother, who we plan to visit, lives in Scranton. I have not calculated how far that truly is, largely because I don't want to know yet.

Last night I had aspirations of helping Golden pack. Then the baseball All-Star Game came on. Actually, the main problem was that I had no idea what I was doing. I packed one small bag of books and a couple of DVDs for me, and Golden did most of the rest of the work. I did chip in some and I also packed the car. Putting suitcases in the car is an easier job than putting the clothes in the the suitcases, but it is something.

One thing I found annoying about the All-Star Game was that the guide on the TV said it started at 7, but the game actually started at 8. There was an hour of pre-game show before the actual game. Had that actually been on the guide, I would have been fine with it. I would have known what to expect. I also know that you can count on a half hour of pre-game before most major sporting events. The thing is baseball is already a slow enough game. I see no point in extending any baseball game a full hour.

On the first day of travelling, NJ was not the problem we expected him to be. He was actually kind of lethargic in the car. Once we got to the hotel room, though, he let all of his pent up energy loose. NJ wore Golden out so much that she went to bed around 8:30. Before I hear about how I should be helping out more, he is at a stage where if he sees Golden, it isn't good enough for him to be with me. He has to be with her.

We took mostly interstates today, but there was an hour-and-a-half stretch of two-lane state road on our journey. I learned that gas stations on back roads in Missouri and Illinois charge a twenty cent premium per gallon of gas. Me, being the cheap person that I am, ran on fumes until I found a station on the next interstate to save that twenty cents.

Golden is reading a parenting book while I drive. Because of this, she informed me today that we are not supposed to excessively use the word "no" with NJ. Instead, we should use more positive terms to make our point. For example, telling him, "I'll play with you later because the book that I am reading right now because that makes me happy," is better than saying, "No, I can't play with you because I am reading." This is apparently because it helps encourage him to consider other peoples' wants as well. That's going to be a challenge.

I'll close with a picture I took today in Laddonia, Missouri. I actually marked its location on my map ahead of time because I remembered seeing the sign when we drove through the town on the way to Chicago a few years ago. Not only have the town and the state not removed the sign, there are four signs (two north and two south) that look almost identical.If I lived in that community, I think I would try to get into whatever government exists there and find some other way of describing junction on the sign. Since it is on Highway 54, including the highway number somewhere on the sign would help.

My intention was to post this on Panoramio, which is a site where users can map pictures to a specific location and they eventually show up in Google Earth. Someone else beat me to it in just the last month, though. The picture already uploaded is of one of the other signs, but there is little point to have two pictures of almost exactly the same thing in Google Earth.

I am not sure what the specific schedule is for the next few days, but I assume that I will get at least one more post in before the end of the week. We'll see.