Long Day...

Very Long.
Went to bed between 5a-6a last night after seeing the IMAX 3D opening of Alice in Wonderland with Daniel, Tom, Alysia and her girls.
By the way, very enjoyable film though I feel it had some serious plot flow and characterization flaws.
Anyway, I only got to sleep about 5 hours last night before getting up, having two grilled cheese sandwiches for Brunch then heading out.
The drive up to Gainesville was relatively uneventful, but lemmie say, after 5 years without cruise control, including 2 years driving back and forth between Lakeland and St. Augustine every other week, having it is SPECTACULAR. It made two and a half hours of interstate driving, almost fun. LOL, it doesn't take much to entertain me sometimes.

Got my room and was very pleased with the set up, since I had read many mixed reviews. However I was charged $20 more at the desk than what was stated in my reservation (Which when I asked about it later was given a very convoluted answer which I chalked up to taxes and fees, which the confirmation does say aren't included) and I was unable to access the internet before I had to leave to eat and go to my first day of class.

And let me tell you, the traffic... insane. It took me 20 minutes to leave the little hotel corral and make it to a main road, and we're talking like, MAYBE two blocks. Ridiculous.

However once I got to a main road I discovered several awesome restaurants very close by and ate my dinner at a place called Pazza Bistro, where I had a DELICIOUS bowl of Spaghetti with Pesto Genovese sauce and topped with artichokes and broccoli. PLUS a scrumptious Parmesan dressing salad. I ate half and wrapped up the rest to eat after class, and I'm certainly glad I gave myself extra time to get there, cause the streets of Gainesville are twisted, conniving and BUSY. Got turned around a couple of times but made it just in time thanks to TomTom.

Class was fun, we're a class of 18 and I'm pretty certain I'm the youngest student, LOL. The next youngest I believe is 25 but the majority are easily over the age of 35. We even have a bonafide Professional Santa! (He really looks like it too, lol.) I introduced myself as a Unitarian Universalist Pagan (represent!) and even worked up the nerve to ask to be called Aika instead of Jessica.

The class was mostly meet and greet and introduction material, and probably would have been more enjoyable if I hadn't had a low grade headache for most of the 3 hour class. Tomorrow we're gonna start with a meditation/group hypnosis and he made clear that we were going to be doing a lot of hypnosis from both ends and reinforced a strict confidentiality agreement, which when you consider that basically you're sitting in on 17 other peoples personal therapy and get to see their darkest demons up close and personal, it makes a lot of sense. So I don't figure there's a whole lot I can talk about but I can still recount my day, lol.

After class I made my way back to my hotel (is the city ever NOT traffic jammed?) and stopped by Publix on the way to pick up some lunch fixens for the next two days. Of course once I got back things got ugly before they got better. I realized once I got in that I had placed my Dinner leftovers in my grocery bad UPSIDE DOWN and covered everything inside in olive oil, including ruining the bag I had intended to use as a lunch box the next day. After cleaning up as best I could I nuked my pasta and made my way over to my chair. But then the edge of the Styrofoam container snapped and my food fell out of my hand and all over the floor.

Sonoffa' bitch.

I just could not win, and it didn't stop there. My internet was still not working and I had to call the Hotel's IT service to see if they could connect me. And after nearly an hour on with them, 20 minutes of it spent on hold, did I FINALLY get connected. I was probably charged for the internet twice, but I'll straighten that out later. I ate a 4th meal of powdered donuts and Pepsi (meal of champions, I know) and wrote this blog. Sigh.

Can I go to sleep now?
Aika