The combination of a trip to a conference, a college alumni awards dinner, and a church youth group sleepover has made it difficult to give an update.  Here’s a quick, somewhat sleep-deprived, disoriented recollection of the last 3 days.

Wednesday started with a nice scrambled egg sandwich for breakfast, following by some tuna pasta salad for lunch (leftovers of the noodles I made for noodles with peanut sauce on Tues night). Tues night was interesting. Since my wife came down with something, I had to cook for my son, too. I succeeded in not sampling his pasta with alfredo/bacon sauce.

After a busy day of meetings and teaching, I hoped in the car to drive to DC for the Gerontology conference.  In addition to my luggage, I had my bag of food and cooler of milk/veggies/fruit. Stopped at the Midway Travel Plaza on the PA Turnpike for a banana, celery and peanut butter sandwich.

For my trip, I took a coffee mulligan. I didn’t see any way to make coffee without transporting my coffee maker with me, and I was not willing to risk falling asleep and crashing (reasonable, right?).  So, I did spend extra dollars for caffeine. This, of course, just brings up the challenge part of this. What if I simply did not have that cash to spend? So many of us are accustomed to our $3 Starbuck’s that it’s difficult to consider what life is like without that indulgence. Could I have made the trip without it? Maybe.  But, those on SNAP don’t get that choice.

Avoiding the conference food was fine. Walking past several restaurants with delicious smells was harder. Between sessions on Thursday, I grabbed another PB sandwich and some fruit. I gave into a few moments of weakness and joined my grad school mentor, Steve Crystal, for a beer after our paper presentation.

I’ll add more later on the drive back, awards dinner and sleepover…