Process beginning...

I'm en route home from DC, worn out to the point I was getting cramps in my right foot and thigh as I drove. I had to stop, once, to walk one off. Then I dug out my tube of Icy Hot and slathered it on there, which helped...to an extent. God, I'm feeling more and more like the 2000 year old man.

Seriously, by the end of the work day, I was a bit shaky and brain dead. The packing site was only a mile from the hotel so I'd initially thought I'd walk it, each day. Even though it's 90+ out, in the afternoons, I know how to keep to the shade and take it easy. Instead, I wimped out and did Uber. Cost about $15 each time, but I didn't care.

I'm staying over in a Best Western outside Harrisburg, because no way I would be able to stay awake the entire drive to Buffalo. It's another 300 miles. Besides, I'd already worked it into my budget.

Something funny -- the hotel I stayed at in DC cost me an average of $340 a night, which is cheap for that town. But I couldn't make tea in my room; I had to go down to the lobby for it. No microwave. No iron or ironing board. A tiny fridge. A bed that was comfy enough but had sheets that were too small for the mattress so were just smoothed over it. A shower with minimal water pressure. And nothing available for breakfast except to sit down and dine in...at a cost.

This BW offers a coffee maker (which I used to heat water for tea), a small apartment fridge, microwave, iron and ironing board, a tub, a bed that looks like it was made instead of simply arranged, and breakfast. For 1/3 the cost.

Granted, one's in a VIP city while the other's in a state capitol, but I am so much more comfortable in this cheap hotel than that snazzy one. I wonder what that says about me.

What's funny is, the opening of APoS-HNH is beginning to work itself into the story. Turns out Brendan's actually a bit sorry to leave Houston. He's made good friends there, but he's also learned the city hides what she truly is, unlike Derry, and family cannot always be relied upon.

I have a feeling this thought process of his, as he prepares to return to Derry, is going to expand and, hopefully, deepen a great deal. But you don't know till it happens.