Tournament day! I was up at 4:50am and on the road by 5:15. There was an early morning drama of spilling a cup of water all over my laptop, followed by a very quiet, very intense, 8 minutes of hitting the power button and wishing REALLY hard.

It did eventually boot up, and everything seems to work ok. It’s just now moodier than before, if such a thing is possible.

I had to pick up a friend and drive him to O’Hare so he could catch his flight to Alaska. I was to follow him with my girlfriend next Wednesday. We chatted a bit, but mostly shared in a sort of dozy silence that can only be described as “fuzzy.” It was too early for both of us to really be present in any kind of conversation.

I got him to O’Hare a few minutes after seven.

After threading my way out of the departing flight drop off, I started the trek to Detroit. I’ll be something like 6 hours early. But, I figured this would give me time to do some blog posts, get some reading done, and find some good food. Not to mention the figure out where the venue is and get the competition fees all sorted out.

I’m in a good mood as I drive, I even start thinking of pictures to take for the blog. Traffic is bad (It’s Chicago…) So, in a spurt of creativity I take a picture of it. I’m thinking of titles in my head and generally feeling pretty good about life. In a sandpapery-eyed way.

I’m just getting through Gary, Indiana when I get a soul crushing piece of news.

There had been a scheduling confusion. I made a post about traveling to WKC Nationals on facebook and a friend in Florida chimed in. “Brother, nationals is next weekend.”

Oh.