Road Trip!

As if I haven't been on the road enough lately, I'm off again on Sunday (or tomorrow if I move swiftly). Both kids are out of town for the rest of the month and I decided to party (in my own nerdly way). Said partying involves driving to Iowa City. I'm going to digress for a bit before I tell you why I'm going to Iowa, of all places. First of all,a bit about Iowa. I've been immersed in my second of two Bill Bryson books. In case you aren't a reader of travel stories and memoirs, Bill Bryson is originally from Des Moines, Iowa, a city that I can confidently say, I have never set foot in.
Here is what Bryson has to say about Iowa: "Stand on two phone books almost anywhere in Iowa and you get a view. . . . but there was nothing on it except for a few widely separated farms, some scattered stands of trees and two water towers." Amazingly enought, I look forward to finding (and photographing) those two water towers. I have gotten the bug of previous and far greater photographers such as Edward Weston et al. who have taken photos of abandoned barns, small rural towns and run down gas stations. I hope to follow in their footsteps, camera in hand. Plus I'll be crossing the Mississippi and anticipate a bit of good birding if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky at least there will be antique stores. Iowa City is slightly less than 4 hours' drive from Chicago. This should be a fun and easy drive as long as my health holds.
There's the rub. The bad news is I'm still not totally over my GI problems of earlier this week. I didn't want to go into gory detail but I had a minor episode of what in the profession we call a GI bleed. I saw a doctor (actually two) who thought I'll live but couldn't come up with a diagnosis more solid than the one I figured out on my own. This is why us doctors make such lousy patients. We hate waiting for hours to see a physician who is (truly) still in her residency. We get even more cranky when she tells you what you already know which is that she doesn't really know what is wrong with you but you don't need to be in a hospital bed.
Things haven't altogether resolved on the GI end in that the I'm eating, working and ambulatory but what passes in via the mouth isn't passing out the other end. This is leading to me having paranoid fantasies about me developing something truly delightful like projectile emesis while uncomfortably ensconced in an Iowa gas station bathroom. Charming visions of medical conditions that end in -ation, -itis, -osis and so on are dancing in my head. I have consoled myself that everything is probably fine and that I'm sure they have hospitals in Iowa.
The goal of my drive into the not-so-wilds of Iowa is that I have signed up for a writing workshop and am hoping that it will jump start the next step on the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo a good 9 months ago. I am terrified beyond belief at having to submit thirteen copies of the first 15 pages for review by my workshop leader and fellow participants but I'm not letting fear stop me.
So there you have it. I haven't been by your blogs lately. Forgive me. I will get to it when I can. Now I have to go do my homework in preparation for my workshop. Wish me luck.