I’m charging my 3DS. I have my favorite travel shirt, the one with the *HUGE* breast pocket (large enough to hold a CD case) washed and it was dried with a fabric softener sheet. I have a book of Sudoku.
And, 29 hours later, I’m going to be halfway across the world.
It seems silly to complain about being on a plane *SOOOOOO* long when, not so very long ago, any trip to the Middle East from Colorado would have taken *MONTHS*… but, I guess, I’m pretty silly. Without getting into issues of how people traveled for months, how did people make this flight before handheld games, I wonder. Alcohol, probably. Let those in charge of the flight get you sloshed up and you wake up groggy in your eventual destination and you get a cab to your hotel and sleep it off.
The easy part is the working. You go to work. You have a list of problems that you promised to take care of that is longer than a team twice the size could take care of… then you just aim the managerial portion of the team in the direction of the various people in charge of schmoozing and get to work in peace. Not merely working 8s or 10s, probably working 12s. Not *THAT* big of a deal… it’s not like you’re likely to get back to the hotel and get dressed to go out and shake your butt on the dance floor. So since your options are working in a lab or not working in an alien hotel room, it’s pretty easy to pick “working”.
Then, once you got farther down the list of problems than your bosses reasonably expected you to go, it’s right around time for you to pack up, turn around, and get on a plane again.
I admit: one of my favorite moments of the last few trips was stopping in Germany and going into a little restaurant in the airport and ordering a real sausage.
Then spend a mere 20 more hours on a plane and find yourself back home. And saying “holy cow… it’s chilly. Don’t you feel chilly?”
But before that happens, I have to pack. So that’s what I’m going to be doing on Friday night. Saturday morning spent with Maribou at one of our little breakfast places (“seriously, don’t get the red chili if you’re going to be on a plane.”). Then… well, the magic of halfway around the planet in about a day.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
Running our club’s annual fencing tournament on Saturday (longest continuously running annual tournament in Colorado). The format is peculiar, so this afternoon I need to make sure the klutzy custom software I wrote for handling it still works.Report
The rest of yesterday got hectic, so I went in without checking the software. For unknown reasons, it wouldn’t talk to the printer at the tournament. Writing out the bout tickets by hand doesn’t take much additional time. At least it did all the time-consuming calculations properly.Report
Safe travels, just remember to pack both your Iranian and Saudi flags… just in case the Emir doesn’t make it to 1000 years.
And more food posts. We raise goats and its near harvest time… so always in the market for new/ancient preparation ideas.Report
Completely unrelated to anything, Colorado’s blood supplies must be running low. I donated this past Monday and today I received e-mail saying my donation had been dispatched from the bank to be used by a patient. The normal interval before use is two weeks. Probably lots of blood loans being made to SE Texas and Florida.Report
Michael Cain, just a short note to say thank you for giving blood. according to my wife the doctors gave me 47 units last Jan. I don’t know what a unit is, but am assuming it is a lot. so here is a giant thank you for donating your blood to the world.
Sorry about typos. I am working off my wife’s lap top and am more than a little messed up with my muscle memory reaching for the nonexistent mouse.Report
DEX! Good to see you!Report
Jaybird, It is good to be back. Be careful around the sand people.Report
One imagines I will spend most of the weekend alternating between: being in a funk of deep sadness because I already miss Jaybird; being anxious (that part usually only lasts till I hear that they’re safely arrived at their hotel); and being gleeful, running around the house exclaiming things like “Mine, all mine, no sharing with anybody for two whole weeks!” while the cats stare at me with a mix of pique and confusion.
I would much rather share with Jaybird than not, but the hermit part of me who prefers to be alone always wants to take a staycation while he’s gone and just spend 2 weeks not talking to anyone. Not.One. Person. Except maybe some food delivery people, and they’d get grunts, nothing else.
That’s not what I’ll do though :).
Gaming Saturday night, Outlander Sunday night, and chores and reading and goofing off the rest of the time. Possibly not a lot of sleeping through the night till I adapt to being the only one in the house. So probably some naps as well.Report
All things contingent on baby not showing up until after the weekend.
Work on rebuilding the stairs, which was of course never going to be just a three day job. Mostly Mr. T is doing that one – he’s the handy one in the house. The contribution from the rest of us is mostly of the ‘here, pull on this’ variety.
There’s an arts festival thing that Fledermaus will be dancing in if she’s not in labour. There’s a roving bike ride party thing I might go to saturday night, and a dance party in the park sunday morning I might go to if I didn’t go out the night before.
And there’s a frost advisory, so I guess we pick all the green tomatoes this evening.Report
@dragonfrog I’d somehow missed that you all are expecting, not sure how. Mazel tov to your household!
And I have to say, sentences like “There’s an arts festival thing that Fledermaus will be dancing in if she’s not in labour. ” do nothing but bolster my admiration for her :D.
Good luck with all the things.Report
Thank you! It’s a good and busy time.Report
We can haz baby!
Lovely little baby boy, born at home, relatively quickly as these things go. All are well. Fledermaus was on stage at 3:30 pm sunday, and a mother for the second time at 5:20 am monday.Report
@dragonfrog Huzzah! Delighted to hear it.Report
Congratulations!!!Report
Congratulations.Report
Current thought process:
Okay, I’ve got my passport, got my wallet, WAIT WHERE ARE MY KEYS oh yeah, I gave them to Maribou when she dropped me off at the airport because I won’t need them until I get back… got my pills, got my CPAP, got my international driver’s license, WAIT WHERE ARE MY KEYS
Every thirty seconds or so.Report
@jaybird Breathe, baby. They’re upstairs in the basket, safe and sound. (Just in case hearing it from someone else helps.)Report
That may be the absolute worst part of traveling. I have a built-in (like, pretty much at the cellular level now) three-pocket-slap process to check for my keys, phone, and wallet, and any negative response generates immediate angst until the higher-level processes can chime in and explain.
As silly as it would be to carry around keys that I’m not using, I think maybe next time I’ll just keep them with me anyway — it’s not like I ever lose them.Report
I so empathize with that. Phone in one front pocket and NOTHING in the other is a constant source of “Something’s wrong.”Report
This is why I wear a purse (fancy leather hip sack type for me) – all the things are in one place and it’s either attached to my waist, or not.Report
I am in the hotel. It is just after 2AM. Everyone is wide awake despite only sleeping fitfully on the plane over the last 30 hours or so.
I am going to take a shower and then a nap. I am probably going to wake up at 7 and be unable to go back to sleep, if the last 4 trips are any indication.
TL;DR: Not dead.Report
I celebrated my birthday with some lawyer friends at a German restaurant. One of the last remnants of Yorkville.Report
That sounds like Heidelberg. I know it well.
Happy Birthday!Report
It was Heidelberg. Thank you.Report
Happy birthday @leeesqReport
Happy Birthday! @leeesqReport
Dude, happy belated!Report