Forest or trees?

I didn't get to sleep till after 4am and slept till 11:30. Off and on. But somehow that helped me sort things out in my head for what to do. Especially after looking at the ridiculous flight schedules for Southwest Airlines and JetBlue. They are not working those things up for people to use.

So I'm leaving everything set up to fly home after LA. Then I'll fly to Chicago the next day. I finally reminded myself to keep it simple, and that worked out best, overall.

And I decided to get a car while I'm in Chicago. I'd been planning to do taxis and Uber, but I may need to head over to a UHaul to get some special-size boxes and want the flexibility. I also found a hotel that's about a 15 minute drive from the site instead of settling for one within walking distance. Costs $39 a night to park...but it's like that in every large city, now. Even the Motel 6 by LAX charges for parking.

I got notice that my bankruptcy hearing is at 10:30am in Buffalo, making it 7:30am in LA. It'll be middle of the week. I'm told it won't last more than a few minutes, while that packing site is only about 20 minutes from the hotel, so this is doable since I don't start there till 9am.

That freed me up, emotionally, to finish chapter 16 of The Beast Dines Out and post it. I'm not doing my usual rewriting on this because it's just rolling along. As of now, Dirc and Irin have escaped the lab, found ways to get to Las Vegas and rebuild enough money to feed and clothe themselves.

It helps that Dirc's already been through the Las Vegas type situation, once, and knows where to go to make things happen. But now the Beast has returned because it's found Dirc supplied it with the best supply of sustenance and wants to start the contract up, again.

This is where Irin comes in and negotiates a better deal, but with diamonds as payment instead of gold. Since he knows a guy in Carson City who'll handle them for the boys. And diamonds area LOT more valuable than gold.

So...forest is culled and I can see the trees, again.