Alas, neither of us slept as well last night. I guess the crickets/air conditioner ambient sounds from the phone didn't work on us well enough this time. This always seems to happen on the Sunday morning of Atomicon. (Other things always happen to me, too. Despite being careful, I had the usual case of "traveler's complaint," although it was largely gone by the time we left.)

We got our little breakfast bags and had our last breakfast in the conference room; slowly people started trailing in and eventually the room was full. I'd talked the front desk into giving us an extra hour to checkout, so we had good time to pack and visit with everyone, and then about 11:45 I closed everything up, and towed it all one by one into the conference room.

Just as I finished, the staff came filing into the conference room. Charles had had an idea last week: knowing that the coronavirus was going to completely shut down most of the hotel's business, he suggested we have a tip jar in the room and put extra money in it besides any tip we left in the room for the chambermaids. He also bought two "thank you" cards, one for the cleaning staff and one for the hotel management staff, and we all signed them. He did the honors of presenting them with the jar. Moneywise, considering what they are going to face in the coming weeks, it was pretty much a widow's mite, but it was something.


After that, we sat around for about another hour talking.

Ken was sweet and got us a cart, and he and Aubrey helped us load up the truck a little after one o'clock. It had clouded up, so we swaddled the power chair in its tarpaulin and put the suitcases and other things in heavy plastic bags, and then off we went. We bought gasoline at the Ingles supermarket, and then had to stop just before we reached Dawsonville so I could use the bathroom, and by the time we reached the vet's office it was (1) pouring down rain and (2) we were both full to bursting.

And then...snellfrocky! The vet had signs up saying they were doing curbside pickup! And when we got there part of the glass windows were papered over and an outdoor area was taped off! I called inside frantically. "You can spray us with anything you like, we'll wipe down anything you like, but we need the bathroom." (It's tough when you have that over 60s disease, Gottapee.) So they let us in and we tried to touch as little as we could; the secretary even took my credit card number from a distance. They had Snowy all prepped in his carry box, but I still had to empty the water dishes, and I knew the seed was toast; after the ride it would go all over the cage. The young technician who took Snowy back on Thursday was in scrubs and mask, and helped me put a bag over the cage. And then finally we piled ourselves and the fids back in the truck and drove home, where we would end up doing nothing more than dragging stuff into the house and putting up what we needed to put up (James' C-PAP machine, the phones and tablets on their chargers, etc.) and leaving the rest.

Something amazing happened when I had Snowy's cage wiped out, re-seeded and re-watered, and I opened the carry box to transfer him: he not only did not bite me, but he sat in my left hand and let me scratch him behind the ears with both fingers! Wow, maybe he did miss me! [Later: this didn't last long. He was back to biting me by Tuesday.]

We had prudently stored leftover turkey and leftover au gratin potatoes in the refrigerator, and so we had a nice supper of dark meat and cheesy potatoes, and split one of the zepolle we bought on Thursday for dessert.

I love Atomicon, really I do. I am so glad we got to go this year. But it's increasingly hard to travel when we have to drag so much stuff with us, and there is nothing like coming home to our bed, our fans, and my feather pillows!

And now back to "social distancing."

Labels: birds, events, food, friends, health, pets, travel

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:28:00 PM

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