New Year's Eve Blogging from the Road

We'd intended to leave Toronto early enough today to get back soon enough to see in the new year in Chicago, but the best-laid plans, and all that. We stopped to get a bite to eat in an Abblebee's in Flint, Michigan, where our main criteria was that we could get seated quickly, It must still be early enough in the evening that that isn't a problem because we had no wait at all.

Although we've had a good time in Toronto, the travel parts of the trip have a bit iffy. On the way up, a screw found its way into our tire and caused enough of a mess that we couldn't fix it by filling it with foam, so we had to unpack the trunk to get at the spare. On the way back, we were going through a particularly sparse area of Ontario when our gas light went on. We drove through a couple of gas stations that were closed for New Year's Eve before we were able to fill our tank. I'm not sure how many miles I've got left when that warning light goes on, but today the car went nine miles further in that circumstance than it ever had before. I'm leary of trusting that result too much, though, because I don't want to be in a position where I'm depending on it only to discover that this was our own metaphorical Chanukah.

I suspect we'll still be on the road when midnight roles around, so we'll give a little cheer for both Eastern and Central time. I noticed before I started writing that this was my 1000th post. I'm somewhat disappointed that it's not something more propitious--I can't even quote Frank Rich for a nice Sunday post, since his column is on vacation for the holidays. Perhaps this is just a reminder that we should find profundity in the mundane.