We had agreed to wake up at about 7AM on Thursday to get an early start on the day. As she was falling asleep, H amended that to 7:30. I could tell she was tired.
It was getting to be about 8, and H still was still asleep. She had told me that the best way to wake her up was to put a steaming hot cup of coffee in the room. So I made coffee with the French press. It was the first time I ever brewed coffee in my life, but it wasn’t difficult. I just read the directions that came with the press.
Of course, it took time to boil the water. H doesn’t like it when microwave ovens are used on the food she eats or the beverages she drinks; she feels that they don’t heat up things as well. As a physicist (and a moderately decent microwave cook), I think that’s nonsense, but I respected her wishes.
As I said, I made the coffee. I brought a steaming, hot cup into the room, and put it on the bookshelf near where H slept. She didn’t stir.
Well, I couldn’t wait forever. I started to make breakfast (eggs beaten with a little soy milk, Old Bay, and a couple of teaspoons of salsa, cooked as an omelet with cheddar cheese; toast with margarine on the side). That finally woke her up. I teased her a little about missing breakfast, but I’d made enough for her in anticipation.
You’re probably thinking that all of this is taking a while. It is. It’s 9 or so, and we still haven’t showered or dressed.
There’s another task that H had to do: Locate a Coleman trailer dealership somewhere along the way between my home and the site of the Virginia Renaissance Faire. She wasn’t having much luck. My web-fu is better than hers, so I offered to do the searching while she took a shower.
By the time she was out of the shower, I had both good news and bad news: The point of finding a Coleman trailer dealer was to get a new key for her partner’s trailer. The good news was that all Coleman trailer keys were the same; any Coleman trailer key would open any Coleman trailer.
The bad news was that trailer dealerships do not give out such keys. Not even Coleman does so. The advice I had from the web was either to get a locksmith to replace the lock with a brand-new tumbler, or to find someone else with a Coleman trailer and duplicate their key at any hardware store.
Neither was an option just then. As far as a locksmith was concerned, she didn’t have the money. (As shall be seen, she wouldn’t have had the time either.) As for the second option… there was a couple at the Connecticut Ren Faire who had a trailer, but H couldn’t remember whether or not it was a Coleman.
Her alternative solution was to break into the trailer. It wouldn’t be fun, but she felt she could let down one wall from the outside, crawl around, and drag out her stage props. It would not be very dignified, but it would get the job done.
It was time for my shower. Apparently I make good coffee; when I got out of the shower, I found that H had done the breakfast dishes and was finishing off her third cup.
Please note that third cup. It foretells much of what is to come.
Since it was getting so late, and given a 12-hour trip, it seemed to me that we would not be back until 2AM or so. I suggest to H that she park in my parking space in my apartment complex parking lot. That way she wouldn’t have to worry about alternate side of the street parking rules if we were out too late.
By the time we finish searching the web, getting dressed, moving cars around, and other miscellanea, it’s about 10:30. We finally leave. I tell my cats that I’ll be back quite late tonight.
It’s a promise that I would not keep.
Next: Thursday July 24, part 2