At two a.m. this morning I heard that dreaded sound of spring; the sound of the cat who loves Mym best heaving up a hairball right beside me on our white duvet cover. So, I did what any sleep-addled person who knew it was too late to get him to a tile floor would do. I threw out my hand to catch it. Mmm, warm hairball. Yay. My hand being of the unwebbed variety, a little bit of this sacred gift spilled over anyway, so I grabbed the Oxy Clean and put the bedding to soak until the sun came up.

I love Oxy Clean. I have yet to meet a stain it can’t conquer.

The cat? He is going to start experiencing the brush. I no longer care that he hates it.

Our “room” by the way, is gorgeous. I’m so relieved. One of the bathrooms is larger than my first kitchen. In fact, the whole thing is bigger than my first apartment. There’s a full kitchen with an island, dining area, living room with gas fireplace, grill on the porch, washer/dryer in unit, you name it. Hooray for the timeshare!

My first class was this morning: Henna – Practical Magic #1, taught by Kree Arvanitas. For two hours, we learned some really fascinating history behind the uses of henna. At the end of the class, she took a few minutes to do a small pattern on each of us. I could hardly believe how quickly and cleanly she worked. Granted, she’s been doing this for something like 25 years, but it was impressive nonetheless. In a brief glimpse into her own personal history, we learned that years ago, when she came into some money, rather than invest it in something practical, she pulled her 12 year old daughter out of school and took her on a tour of Northern Africa for six months. How cool is that!

With three hours until my next class, we decided to hit the food market to stock our kitchen. Naturally, one thing led to another and I skated into class -just- in the nick of time. The previous year, Jill Parker did a routine called Medusa and Machine with her troupe at tribal fest. The audience went nuts. Although I hadn’t seen it, I was intrigued by what I had heard, so I took this opportunity to learn the choreography from her. It was some groovy stuff, but a bit heavy on the neck. Luckily, we have several hot tubs at the resort. I’ll be using one of them shortly.

In order to enjoy a more relaxed pace for Tribal Fest V (and save some cash), we decided to drive up the day before. The Plan ™ was to meet at the car rental place in Van Nuys at 9am (requiring that I get up at 6), make a quick stop at Trader Joe’s, then hit the road by 10 in order to arrive at the half way point (my Mom’s) in time for lunch.

One of the great things about my Prius is the NAV system. I just punch in the address of my destination and the car tells me how to get there. Only, this time, it didn’t work, so I had to dash back into the house and print up directions from Google. It wasn’t until the freeway turned into a parking lot half way to LA that I figured out what was wrong – when the dealership replaced one of my batteries yesterday, they reset the system and wiped out all of my settings, including the one that tells the computer what part of the country you live in (because it can’t hold more than a few states in memory at a time). Duh.

By the time I got to Van Nuys, it was 11am. We skipped Trader Joe’s and I slid into the navigator’s seat so someone more enthusiastic about driving could take the wheel. Luckily, Mom was running behind as well, so turning up for tuna casserole (yum!) at 2 turned out to be perfect for everyone. We took a little time to stop at the local aromatherapy shop to pick up some essentials we had forgotten, then went back on our merry way to northern CA.

The directions were good on paper, but they didn’t account for the sun being in your eyes to the point where the sign you needed to follow was completely obscured until it was too late. By the time we pulled into the resort in Windsor, it was 9:15pm and we were famished. In a small town where the sidewalks roll up at 9.

It was then that Julio came to our rescue. He made a phone call to Johnny Garlic’s and somehow talked them into keeping their kitchen open for us. Woot! Not even bothering to drop our stuff in our room, off we dashed to the restaurant. The food was quite tasty but, as it turned out, I had a bit of an allergic reaction to one of their basic ingredients and won’t be going back with the rest of the gang next time.

Sated and ready for bed, we headed back to our room only to discover that our keys didn’t work. As it turned out, we had been directed to the wrong room. In the wrong building. (Thank god the people in that room weren’t there at the time. Can you imagine?)

We wanted an adventure. I think we’re going to get one.