I have stopped in Utica, where I have been detoured due to road construction, and have a few moments to type in here. So, here's Sunday, really quickly.

Russ and I bummed around Ithaca. The weather was actually gorgeous, and the Festival was probably beautiful, but darn it, we woke up after noon. By the time we'd finished breakf... er, lunch... um... dinner... um, whatever you call that, it was past three. (We took a while getting there, as Russ needed to check tons of mail. I read a book -- Yesterday We Saw Mermaids by Esther Freisner. Amazing little thing, really. Very short (maybe a hundred and fifty pages) and very well written, with a good take on historical fantasy.

Anyway, we'd have made it to Sterling by, oh, five thirty, which is way too late to consider wandering into the Faire. So, not this trip, thanks. Instead, we drove around a bit, went back to the room, talked, and then drove up to Frank's place, where I proceeded to systematically addict Russ to Soul Edge.

Which is where Frank and Beckie found us. They had brought "my" guest futon with them as well. Life was glorious-well. Frank, Russ and I played Soul Edge for a long long time, then went out and had food. We dropped Russ off and Frank and I drove up and chatted for a long time and then I went to sleep.

And that was yesterday. Dull? Sure, but very enjoyable. Today, I am listening to new Garrison Keillor tapes and being delayed as I drive to New Hampshire. It seems most of Eastbound I-90 is under the same spell of construction as other places hit before. So, let's talk about today for a bit.

We got up, and went to Andy's Third Street Cafe for brunch with Russ, having about two hours before his flight out. Andy's has metamorphosed into a single's bar after hours, and so the interior now looks like a bar where they're serving brunch. This is not a good thing, as near as I can tell. However, there was a beautiful waitress in a lycra crop top serving us, so I'm personally not complaining. She had a diamond nose stud, very tastefully done.

The waitress in this restaurant is also very pretty, and very sociable. That's pleasant, especially since I got solicited by a prostitute on my way in. She was clean and not unattractive, and I have known (though not patronized) prostitutes before. This one had a warning sign, though -- one a prostitute I once happened to share a meal with in Seattle told me about (that one had been very talkative, and as it was a boring meal for a Kinko's function, I found the life of prostitutes infinitely more interesting). She said "if a girl tries to push you into a date, she's a cop in the best case scenario. More likely, she needs crack or heroin badly, and you'll catch something from her."

I thanked the girl (Rose, her name was, or so she said) for the tip, and decided privately I'd never need to know that. And technically, I still didn't, because even if I wanted to take the young lady up on her offer, I wouldn't do it when I had a six hour drive still ahead of me. But Rose's advice still came to me as I was walking into the cafe and the girl -- red tee shirt, jean shorts -- said "hey, you want a date? Want a fast date? You want something fast?" And she proceeded to describe what a fast date was from her point of view.

I have been in many cities I liked a lot. Utica is not one of them. I asked the waitress about the streetwalker out front, and she rolled her eyes. That seemed to say it all.

Back to the trip, not to Utica. We ate at Andy's and I stared at our waitress, then we drove out to the airport, which I promptly missed three times in the looking for it, despite having flown out of that airport before. Tompkins County International Airport ain't exactly big. We went in and sat with Russ, waiting for his flight and noticing that the advertisements that had dates were all five years old or more. This didn't bode well for economic development.

But then, not much does in Ithaca. The Commons is full of empty storefronts and always has been. There's a slightly run down feel to it, like it would buy some new work shirts when it had the money, but money was hard to come by right now and its wife had been ill and the kids had set fire to the sofa again.

Which is very sad. I love Ithaca. My home town, Fort Kent, doesn't have half the emotional resonance to it that Ithaca, New York does. I want to see it do well.

And after Russ boarded his plane, and I said goodbye to Frank on the Commons, I felt a deep pang -- I wanted very much to stay, even though I knew that part of my life was over. I wanted Ithaca to be successful, and I knew that right now it wouldn't be.

So I rode off into the sunlight, listening to Lake Woebegon and seeing what the world was like, out New Hampshire way.

The waitress just asked me what I was writing, then read it. She giggled, thanked me for calling her pretty, and mentioned she works in a strip club after seven o'clock if I wanted to see more. I thanked her.

I hate Utica. Almost as much as I love Ithaca. And now it's time to say goodbye to both, and to this entry.