The drive to Spokane is not a particularly pleasant one.

It's long, it's boring, and it's filled with more nothing than a person really wants to deal with. So whenever I have work there, a wave of dread washes over me. Don't get me wrong... Spokane's a terrific city... I just hate the drive.

But there is a reward at the end of this tedious journey. Because Spokane is where the Best Pizza in the Universe can be found. The mind-numbing hours of driving through vast open spaces isn't so bad knowing that a couple slices of my favorite pizza ever will be waiting for me. It's pretty much all I can think about the entire trip...

David's Pizza's Masterpiece... The DaVinci!

But there would be no pizza waiting for me today.

After nearly three hours of mind-numbing boredom, there would be no reward for the drive.

As usual, I don't pass GO, I don't collect $200... I don't even check into my hotel room... I head straight for David's Pizza only to find...

This...

It's gone.

It's just gone.

And as I sat there in my car staring at the mounds of dirt and rubble that used to be one of my favorite places on earth to eat... I just didn't know what to do with myself. Life had suddenly become meaningless and impossible.

Apparently they will be opening up at a new location "soon," but that doesn't do me much good now.

Now that I am abandoned and pizza-less.

Now that all I have to console me are memories.

After getting off work at 1:30am this morning, I drove back to my hotel half-dead. Not from the hour, but from having to work in-between work while working on work. It wears on you after a while.

So I get to my room, flop on the bed, then take out my disposable contact lenses and drop them on the nightstand so I can toss them in the garbage in the morning.

Then, after an unknown length of time, I suddenly remember that I don't have any replacement lenses or eyeglasses with me. Shiiiiiiiiiit! Adrenaline pumping I lunge out of bed and scramble to find the lamp. I somehow manage to retrieve my shriveling lenses and run to the bathroom where I oh-so-carefully attempt to rehydrate them with the saline I had bought earlier. Are they going to be wearable in the morning? Who knows. All I can do is let them soak overnight and hope.

I then headed back to bed so I could...

... STAY AWAKE ALL NIGHT ON AN ADRENALINE HIGH WORRIED THAT MY CONTACTS ARE RUINED AND I WON'T BE ABLE TO SEE TO DRIVE HOME.

And how was your night?

Eventually I give up on sleep and roll out of bed at 5:30am.

Heart pounding, I make my way to the bathroom and put my contact lenses in.

The are not at all comfortable, but they work.

So I get caught up on still more work for the next six hours with my scratchy eyes, then call in an order for a giant-size Da Vinci pizza from David's for my drive home. Yes, I've been eating pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner... but it's the best pizza in the universe, so what can you do?

Half with tomatoes to eat now. Half without for later so they don't get slimy.

The 3-1/2 hour drive home was agonizing*, but delicious...

Mmmmmm... yummy road pizza!

And so here I am. In eyeglasses at last. Blogging about my day.

Because I just can't help myself.

   
* Seriously, agonizing. I'm trying to recall a worse road trip I've ever taken, but I can't think of one. 3-1/2 hours driving through the middle of NOWHERE with burning eyeballs on NO sleep while physically and mentally exhausted? All the pizza in the world isn't going to fix that, no matter how amazing it is.

Things did not go especially well for me today.

It all started this morning when I woke up and realized that I had packed my reading glasses instead of my glasses glasses for my trip to Spokane. Blind as a bat, I stumbled to my suitcase for a fresh pair of disposable contact lenses only to find... nothing.

My worst travel nightmare had just come true.

I was sure I had packed a bunch of lenses, but they were nowhere to be found. This meant I was, for all intents and purposes, blind. I would be unable to drive. Unable to work. Unable to do much of anything. About all I could do was call my office back home and have some lenses FedExed to me, then sit in my hotel for another day waiting for them to arrive.

Disaster.

How in the hell could this have happened? I travel professionally! I am way past this kind of amateurish bullshit!

Except I have been working day and night for the past two weeks and am completely exhausted both mentally and physically. Something eventually had to give and, unfortunately, this was it.

So what do I do now?

The only thing I could do... completely disassemble all my possessions. Unpack every last item from every last piece of everything I had. Sometimes I stick a spare lens somewhere "just in case," and now was the time to hope against hope that a stray contact would somehow be found. And it was. At the bottom of my suitcase rattling around with an old camera memory card.

Half-blind would have to be good enough.

But luck favors the foolish, and I managed to find another stray lens tucked in my notebook pocket after I got to work.

So it's all good, right?

Of course not. Work was extended another day. And while I had extra clothes packed "just in case"... I was fresh out of lenses. Which meant I had to go buy a lens case and some saline so I could re-use my only pair. All I can hope is that I don't accidentally drop one down the sink or something.

But it wasn't all bad news today. I did get to have the best pizza on planet earth...

That just about makes up for everything.

Even when the power adapter for my laptop blew out.

w00t! It's the last Bullet Sunday of 2009!

• TQ 2010. The moment we've all been waiting for has come. Jenny has announced the venue for TequilaCon 2010...

I am sooooo looking forward to another awesome TequilaCon event!

You can read my wrap-ups for TequilaCon 2009 here... TequilaCon 2008 here... and TequilaCon 2007 here.

   
• Kindle 2. I bought my mother a "Kindle 2" electronic book from Amazon. I was waiting on Barnes & Noble's "Nook" because it looked a little niftier in pictures, but the reviews were less than stellar so I went back to the Kindle. The device itself is pretty sweet, and a lot easier read from than I had expected. Sure it would be nice if the "e-ink" display had whiter whites for better contrast with the "type" but if you have decent light, it's not bad at all. Bumping up the type size seems to help. In any event, my mother likes it quite a lot, which is all that really matters...

You can buy new books directly from Kindle easy enough (assuming you have a 3G signal... shopping over EDGE is painfully slow). The good news is that new e-books are released at the same time as the hardcover, but cheaper. As an example, the latest James Patterson release "I, Alex Cross" retails for $27.99, can be bought on Amazon for $18.33 (including tax & shipping), or delivered to your Kindle instantly for $10.79 (including tax). But the best news is that you can get free sample chapters of most books to decide if you want to buy them or not, which makes shopping for Kindle more like shopping at a book store. Overall, I'm impressed. Like most electronic devices, I wish Apple would overhaul the user interface to something more intuitive, but it's all good.

   
• Totino's. I left work at 3:00 because I was tired and hungry and couldn't stand the thought of sitting at my desk one more minute. Despite a rumbling tummy, nothing really sounded good... EXCEPT A CHEAP-ASS 99¢ PIZZA FROM TOTINO'S!

So few foods can give you 46% of your daily fat content, 36% of your saturated fat, 6% of your cholesterol, 24% of you carbs, and a whopping 56% of your daily cholesterol requirements... all in one convenient box! Genius!

   
Annnd... I'm spent. Assuming I don't die from my poor nutritional choices in food, I suppose I'll be back tomorrow.