As I crossed the state line I realized I'd missed the grand turning-out of the lights, the unknown but somehow pre-determined moment when all of the good citizens of Alabama realize it's time to go to bed, and turn out all the lights. There hadn't been many lights in Tennessee, but in comparison, Alabama was utterly dark. I took the state line exit onto the back roads, and did not see another car (or an open gas station) for the rest of the drive.

The plan: drive from Huntsville to Atlanta. Obtain Gareth, whose current sojourn in the States has not yet produced the need for a rental car. Drive Gareth back to Huntsville, so that he can have some face time with the locals over a three-day weekend.

Message window, Gareth, yesterday afternoon: "Greg has proposed I-20 exit 51a at 7:30pm EST - there's a McDonald's there apparently."

So much not to say, see.

On Sunday morning I found myself curled up next to Jeff and thinking, "When did this stop being home?"

What was it over the course of four years that did it? There are too many culprits to select just one: friends, cats, mortgage, jobs. All. Nothing. Everything in between.

Quests are bad. Not bad as in "world-ending" bad, but as in "my friends will all need antacids and my spouse will be praying for pizza tonight" bad. Quests usually involve my blowing nearly half a tank of gas on the back streets of Huntsville, with addresses scrawled on sheets of paper and a eerily determined look in my eye.The last quest was to find a restaurant supply store in Huntsville that had some very specific equipment I needed. Half a tank of gas and one rainy afternoon later, I came to the conclusion that there wasn't a single restaurant supply shop in Huntsville that had what I was looking for. Afterwards, I came home and received a very thorough list of complaints from Tenzing and Edmund, namely:

1. that the owners of the house, namely Tenzing and Edmund, were left alone in the house for a period of five hours, and

By most people's standards, I don't think you'd call today a day of rest. There's nothing quite like realizing for the seven-millionth time that making dinner for fewer than eight people really isn't that big of a deal, but, really, it isn't. Dinner for five (like tonight) - a cakewalk. I could practically do it in my sleep at this point.

Got home at 4:30 Central time today, having driven since six a.m. Eastern time. (For those of you unfamiliar with US time zones, that's eleven and a half hours total.) Traffic in Chattanooga and Huntsville was worse than metro DC, due to the number of bad wrecks I saw today.Rule #1: if you are driving a truck, and you are hauling a heavily-laden U-Haul trailer, it is most definitely in your best interest to obey the little road sign thingies when they yell things like "Sharp Curve Ahead - Slow To 40 MPH, You Dumbass." Mr.