Well, we made it to St. Louis in one piece. The trip down, thankfully, was uneventful. I slept and finished a book (Chris Roberson’s Paragaea). Good times.

After getting here we dicked around the area for a while, including stopping at some mall so my mother and sister could get their shopping fix attended to. Then we checked into our hotel, which is pretty nice. Things have been made easier by us having separate rooms that are adjoined to each other. Lindsey’s and mine has two double beds, the parents has one king. Makes it so we aren’t all sitting on top of each other, but I’m sure by the end of the trip I will be ready to smother Lindsey.

I sat out by the pool for a while, enjoying the hot weather and starting another book (William Gibson’s Neuromancer). It’s kind of weird reading a noirish book about computers and cyberspace (fun fact: Gibson coined the term) set in an atmospheric and dark future while sitting by the pool on a bright and sunny day.

Very antithetical. I also had the pleasure of getting pissed off at fucktard kids and their even bigger fucktard parents. Swear to god, never have I so desperately wanted a bucket of rocks by my side to “handle” the situation than I did right then. Okay, that’s a lie. I’ve wanted to before. Quite a few times, actually. But that doesn’t diminish just how aggravated I was.

About that time, I developed a bad headcahe (what a coincidence), which lingered throughout dinner until the evening. It’s actually gone now, I just realized. I’ve been distracted by writing, so I didn’t notice. (I didn’t feel like being cooped up in the room so I grabbed lappy and went into this little breakfast area by the pool. Wrote a thousand words or so in a story, and checked my mail since the hotel has its own wireless network.)

I think I’m going to head back to the room and read some more of my book, since the headache has disappeared. Tomorrow we’re going downtown to go up into the Arch and do other shit. Should be interesting.

JAB