Today was, on so many levels, an amazing day . . .

. . . so much so that I have at least two posts in me about it. Part of it here, part of it on "A Mile In Her Shoes" only because it's got a harder edge to it.

So the awesome stuff, I had lunch with my friend Laura from "NPD Unmasked" today as she was headed east. As awesome as she is online pales this in comparison to hanging out in "Real Time" (Not to be confused with the Bill Mahr show) just chatting. I know from reading her blog, that like me, she's been to hell and back. Despite that she's strong, smart, beautiful, and has, in my opinion, made more progress toward healing and growth than I have. She's also got the most awesome puppy named Emily and I got to meet her today too.

For me, today marked some interesting milestones. Not only was I up and out of bed well before lunch time today despite not having slept well at all, I was on the road, as planned just after lunch time for a relaxed drive up to Dayton. I wanted to get there a little early and try and get us a table, figuring that Applebees might be doing a brisk Sunday afternoon. I did get there before Laura and managed to snag a table so we didn't have the siting around waiting thing going on. We wound up spending several hours over lunch catching up, and covering some of the kinds of things in terms of details that neither have use have really gone into on our blogs. It was all at once cool, and at the same time sobering, and well left me in parts angry, hurt and fighting tears. Because I'm sorry, NO ONE of any species should be treated the way her abuser treated her. There is simply NO EXCUSE whatsoever. But I'm not here to talk about that, I'll cover some of that on the other side.

It was, despite some of the horrific portions of both our stories, awesome seeing her and getting to break bread as the saying goes. And in the daytime no less!

After we said our goodbyes, I took a nice, longish drive home. In fact drove past my house and into Kentucy before swinging back up and home. I did this so that now as Jumper One is in great health and has four new tires, I wanted to see what kind of gas mileage I'd get in mixed terrain. On the flats through Eastern Colorado and Kansas, I get upwards of 50 MPG, going up hills and such the load is different and that's going to impact fuel economy. I'm pleased to report however I'm getting 33mpg on the highway in hilly terrain. You know, from a ten year old car, that's pretty awesome! And it's better than the factor specs for this car when it was brand new. You know, I kinda like that. So it was an awesome day for me. I'm exhausted, and hopefully I'll sleep really well tonight, but it's a good kind of exhausted.