the material out of which many of my recent plans appear to be constructed? fail.

last night the mamacita and i left for a weekend retreat that was going to be awesome. good place, good food, fantastic friends, etc. we were going to make the (very familiar, pretty, fairly pleasant) 72.4 mile, 1 hour and 35 minute drive together, and it was going to be excellent.

but it was apparently BIBLICALLY-PROPORTIONED RAINING TIME. after four hours, when yet another road was flooded out (we had been forced off the freeway long before that, because of flooding), we realized we needed to call it a night. so we went back into a town to find a motel. the first one was full. the second one was...inaccessible, because a creek had overflowed. i was on the phone with a guy at the motel, trying to make a reservation so that we could get one of the two remaining rooms, and i told him, "oh, [name of street] is flooded. is there another way we can get there?" he immediately replied, "i don't know."

just when we were scoping the best place in the best parking lot to sleep (funny how quickly our "civilized" lives break down in the face of nature, yes?), we spotted an expensive fancy chain hotel. mamacita, who has more money than me (not a particularly difficult attribute to attain) decided we were going to go for it.

so we had pretty good nights' sleep there. i had two dreams: one funny and food-related, and one crummy and make-me-sad-ful. the beds were really comfortable, though. and the soap smelled excellent.