Audit and Audition

This week, I drove halfway across the country for an audition.  A juicy part; a role I really wanted.  I wasn’t required to attend the first round Monday night, but met some stiff competition on Tuesday.  Even so, afterward I felt optimistic: I knew how I’d cast the show and (not that I’m biased) I was in my fantasy cast.  My fantasy casts, however, rarely match the director’s vision.  Fortunately, I won’t have to wait too long to discover how close this particular fantasy comes to the real thing: I meet the full compliment for the first read Wednesday.  I got it!

Two days out of the car, I’ll be working for the same director who cast me, one day off a plane, in The Odd Couple last January.  If I’d gone in Monday, I could have kept the one-day parallel alive.  Maybe it’s sequential: one day the first time, two days the second…..  Anyway, can I (nick of) time my vacations or what?

That said…

A few days before I left Nashville, I sent two boxes ahead of me, via UPS.  On Monday I did not leave the apartment at all, waiting for delivery.  The parallels to my last visit just keep coming -- the packages, however, do not.  Though I was here to accept anything that might knock, ring, or explode, nothing did.  Online tracking, however, said otherwise.

Déjà vu.

Tuesday, when I called to be sure that the second attempt would reach the correct apartment, I was sucked into the automated-system-corporate-customer-service-system-from-hell.  Wanting only to make sure that my personal effects weren’t being delivered to Immature Jock #47 in apartment 22B, I felt I was instead getting a delivery driver into trouble.  If the state of my things when they arrived late that afternoon is any indication, that’s exactly what I’d done – and he wanted revenge.  Ouch.  Joke’s on him, though: I sent very few breakables.

With my goodies delivered, I could finally de-sequester myself for my first San Diego outing.  Thrill-seeker that I am, I went to gas up the car so that I could complete my trip records.  You asked for stats.  Here they are:

Gas: $183.50
Food, souvenirs, & sundries: $124
Lodging: 3 nights = $191.47 (includes one desperation double)

Total time between points A and B: 74 hours
Total Mileage: 2083 miles
Gallons of gas used: 77.7
Miles per gallon, highway, in the new car: 26.8

Average price per gallon:  $2.36
Lowest price: Calumet, OK at $2.169
Highest price: San Diego, CA at $2.699

Beating professional delivery drivers across country by 4 days: priceless.