Eeny, meeny, miney, moe, which-way-do-you-want-to-go?

I pride myself on being self-sufficient, levelheaded and generally able to take care of business. So it was with a little bit of smugness that my mom and I arrived in Purchase, NY to attend a concert a full half-hour before we expected to arrive. We found the SUNY campus and located a flower shop and navigated expertly to Alyssa's apartment to meet up with our party all with no help. I temporarily relinquished the keys to Ken, Alyssa's brother, who got us to dinner and the concert with "minus 1 minute" to spare. We stepped into the conert hall as Alyssa hit the first note of her first song.

After a short reception following the concert, it was with heightened confidence that I took the wheel and began a desperate search for a Starbucks. With no gourmet coffee in sight, we pulled into a strip mall and changed out of our concert clothes in the none-too-immaculate bathroom of a Dunkin Donuts. After getting our fix of medium joe-xtra cream-no sugar, we hoofed it next door to the Carvel ice cream place we'd had our eye on when pulling into the parking lot. The nice Indian gentleman was just locking the door as we sprinted to place our order. He didn't cave to our advances and we had to go without.

We hopped on the highway and within the first 15 minutes, I saw a rest stop that had none other than a Starbucks. I carreened off the side of the road only to find out that there was yet another Dunkin Donuts and a Starbucks that was already closed for the night. My mediocre java had to do, and I just chugged it down.

After driving unventfully for approximately 2 hours (the trip takes a little over 3), I realized that we had come dangerously close to Albany, NY. As the sign to Albany said 38 miles, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach realizing that we had missed our turnoff to Route 17 about 1:45 ago. Apparently in my quest for a Starbucks, I had gotten a little distracted at the point of the very clearly marked turnoff-- and missed it.

My survivor instinct came to the rescue and I pulled out the handy-dandy Atlas I always laugh about John putting in my van. I found that we were way too far to turn back and continuing on to Albany would add another 2 hours to our trip for sure. Instead, we opted for the back road "short cut" that my dad and husband would be so proud of. We took Route 23 (which I can testify takes you through every dinky, no stoplight town in NY) all the way over to Oneonta and then back south to Binghamton.

Rather than hitting the sheets at 12:30 like we anticipated, it was more like 2am! To help the recovery process from the little mishap, we hit Van Horn Jewelers Saturday afternoon to make a few little consolation purchases!