The fortunate part about not knowing what lies ahead of you is that sometimes, not knowing makes it possible to muddle through a difficult situation. Sometimes foreknowledge only makes what is coming more difficult to bear.

So, you wanted to know what, exactly, happened on that mysterious weekend in Illinois? This is the overwhelming majority of a letter that I sent to a couple of people while I was there, regaling them with the weirdness that always comes with a domesticat roadtrip.

Laugh, and be thankful you were you, and not me, during the course of this particular weekend:

Okay. At last, I present to you, my entries composed on my laptop while I was stranded in Arkansas during the ice storm. Enjoy. Laugh. I'll get back to my regular commentary soon; I just thought you guys might find it amusing to see some snapshots of what my mind was like as I was cooped up.

After several phone calls with Jeff, I'm packing up in hopeful preparation for leaving this place. He's apparently as twitchy as I am, and he's going to get all the concrete blocks he can from my parents and is going to try to drive the truck out to get me. If he can get out here to the hotel, then we can go home. I think they left about an hour ago.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to pace around this room. I won't look for him for another half hour, at least. Maybe he'll manage to get this far so we can go home.

Damn that stupid coffee. Not only did I stay up until two a.m., I slept through breakfast. I am really starting to lose my temper here, and being hungry doesn't help. But I did have fun watching contestants get manipulated on The Price Is Right. Great. So I wandered downstairs and raided the vending machine—again. They're out of Pop-Tarts and all of the good chips. It's me and Mr. Goodbar dining together again. When I get out of this sterile carcass of a hotel room I'm going to have a real honest-to-God meal with minimally-processed food. I'm craving vegetables.

I don't want to go downstairs. I want something to drink besides water, though. I just finished watching an episode of "The Operation" about hair transplant surgery, and I really need something else to think about. So I've fired up the mini coffeemaker provided with this room, and made a tiny little pot of coffee. I poured myself a cup of the stuff, and dumped eight packets of sugar and three packets of creamer into it.