4am is an entirely inappropriate time to be up.

'specially when:
a) I went to bed at 12:30
b) I'm up this early to drive to Long Island. And back, a few hours later.

Update, 5:12:
And it sucks when the person who arranged the 5am departure time, who planned to be at my house at 4:45, needed a call at 5:12 to wake him up. He says he'll be here in exactly 5min. :P

*rrrrgh*

I don't know which is worse.. the sheer lack of practical usability of Rand McNally's / MapBlast's directions (i.e., they're dead accurate in terms of distances and ramps and such, but fail to offer such useful information as exit number or route number, half the time--it's not in the database, neh?--and they use the same maps/algorithms), the horrendous street/highway signage in and around NYC, or the lethal combination of the two..

That said, here's how my day was supposed to go, given that Mr. Glasgow was available about 9:30am-noon, with a meeting elsewhere at noon:

5am: Leave Ithaca

~10am: Arrive in Valley Stream, NY

~noon: Leave Valley Stream, NY

~5pm: Return to Ithaca

Here's how it went:

5:30am: Leave Ithaca

5:30am-noon: Travel to Valley Stream, losing the route no less than three times on the way, particularly around the GW Bridge and Cross Island Expressway.

12-12:15pm: Meet with the moderately irate and not terribly sympathetic Mr. Glasgow, get demo of the material we wanted.

12:15pm-5:55pm: Travel back to Ithaca, only losing the route slightly once.

5:55pm: Return rental car, handle final paperwork, get cab back to campus.

For fuck's sake.

(If you do the math, that's ~12 hours of traveling for 15 minutes of visit.)