What did you do today?

At 10:30 pm PST yesterday, I put down A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and tried, again, to fall asleep. (I have read this book many times. I always forget how funny it is.)

At 1:30 am PST, I got up. This is a time my mom refers to as “O’Dawn Hundred.” This refers to any time more than an hour before dawn when my mom has to wake up and is not happy about it.

At 1:50 am PST, I left my mother’s house in Spofford, New Hampshire (don’t bother looking for it on a map, I was there and I couldn’t find it) in her LOL-mobile. (see entry http://stupidcool.blogspot.com/2004/09/not-urmoms-vanity-pl8.html)

At 3:15 am PST (38 degrees F), 6:15 am EST, I arrived at Hartford arrive at the airport. 3:25, I am through the check-in line.

Then I walk… out of Connecticut, out of the US, and into a different hemisphere, where the end of the security checkpoint line was.

At 4:15 am, I leave the checkpoint, with some clothes still on my back.

I was boarding the plane at 4:20 am, notably without my intended breakfast purchase.

The plane sat on the ground waiting for the rest of the passengers sitting in Siberia, AKA, don’t go that way for security, go left instead of right, and then straight about half a mile. (I think all of Connecticut was leaving.)

We arrive late to Chicago, 7:30 am PST. (As I wait to deplane, the women behind me starts talking about returning to 'Normal' meaning a town in Illinois. But, it made me think of the probability drive in A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. We discussed the book while waiting to deplane.) I now, strangely enough, do not have time to pick up breakfast being that we are a half hour late. I rush to my gate, through the stoner O’Hare Tunnel. The PA is singing the “Final Boarding Call” song.

I get on the plane, continuing my conversation about A Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy with someone carrying the book, who I lose about row 25. I walk another 28 rows. I get to my row, 53, and there is someone in my seat. (The only time this has ever happened to me before was when I was on the wrong plane. I tried to explain then, that I was on the right plane and everyone else was confused, but they didn’t believe me.) Seats were juggled and I wind up on the same plane but without my window seat, crushed between two people instead. The person in front of me also reclined all the way, better to test me for claustrophobia.

Having rushed on board without breakfast, sitting on the runway for an hour, when I could have been in the terminal shopping for a nice warm breakfast burrito (or the Illinois equivalent) made me irritable.

Luckily, they said they would be selling food aboard, assuming take off happens.

Take off happened.

I am a funky sleeper in planes. I cannot sleep upright. I sleep with my arms crossed on the tray table and my head down. This comes from years of dedicated practice in school. When the person in front of you all the way reclined, this position is very uncomfortable. I always have this image of the person in front of me leaning back a little more, and breaking my neck between their seat and my back, against my seat. Charming thought.

So, we depart. Food is served perhaps an hour into the flight.

Do you think they had food for the 53rd row?

No.

There were out.

So, I arrive in San Francisco, late, imagine that, hungry, and with just enough time to find food.

Skip forward, food found, plane found, sky found, runway found, Santa Barbara found.

I get to my house at 3 pm PST. (Now nearly fourteen hours from when I woke up.)

I get home, to my extra thirsty plants. (Housemates did not water plants. I told John who was leaving town after me but after Jayne got back who was supposed to water before I returned.) I was actually hoping for rain. Checked for it everyday. Rain is a much easier form of watering the plants.

Where was I?

I get my book bag and go to class.

Class ends at 8 pm PST, nearly nineteen hours after the beginning of this rant. It is 40 degrees out. (It is November. I was in New Hampshire, 38 degrees, now I am in California, 40 degrees. It should not be the same temperature.) I am shivering on a street corner buying a 2 GHZ 1G computer, from a classmate, like a desperate drug attic. (It is a solid computer, at a fall off the back of a truck price.)

Now as haggard as the day should of made me, it merely made me realize how much I missed traveling, which I used to do for business. I strangely, though hungrily, enjoyed the day and that is cool.

Anyway… It is 21 hours later… and I am writing you. I am not sure why.

Perhaps just for a promise of things to come, stories of New York City….

I promise they will be funny or at least interesting and definitely shorter.

Cool: Erroneous Laws of Nature

I, as a Californian currently in New Hampshire, have found much to my surprise, that although it is only 45 degrees here in the day... I have not solidified and shattered.

LAX to O’Hare: A Well Enforced Party

When seated in the middle seat in the last row of a sardine can, um airplane, the forecast calls for an unpleasant, or at least physically tight flight.

Then again you could be traveling with a group of forty Italians.

Prior to departure, everyone switched seats at least once.

Once in the air, we posed with flight attendants.

We took pictures, in perhaps 300 of the different variations possible with forty people.

We blew up toys.

As many of us as physically possible, at one time, stood in the aisle and talked to each other and the few people not in aisle.

We all tried to stand on the left side of the plane at once.

We stood in the aisle and told jokes to the masses.

We shot video and interviewed lots passengers.

We exchanged LA tourist paraphernalia and magazines.

We sang songs during descent and burst into an Italian sports-like cheered at landing.

Who needs a movie when there are forty Italians on a plane.

And as that strange scene played, I talked to the armed FBI Agent next to me.

As flights go, it was the most random collection of stimuli.

A Full Service Bank

So, I am sitting in my car at Washington Mutual, at 7pm. I am looking for my account number so I can endorse a check and deposit it.

While I am searching through my car (the logical place for storing all financial information), an attractive eighteen year-old girl, in her pajamas, uses the ATM. (Not a nightie, but a realistic version of pajamas, pajama pants, tank top, sweatshirt that zips up in front and flip-flops.)

She walks back to her car.

Emerging from another car, is another, perhaps twenty, slender woman, her hair also twirled up in a disheveled manor, also wearing pajamas, pink spaghetti-string tank top, pajama bottoms, Tevas.

While she is at the ATM, another shows up and uses the second ATM. Nice tan, she had a gap between her tank top and yoga pants showing a flat stomach and a back tattoo, no shoes.

And another.

And another.

I am sitting at the Washington Mutual feeling very old (at 28) and very over dressed (in shorts and a t-shirt) for a 20 year-old’s pajama party that looked like a who’s who of hot sorority girls. Not a single woman seemed to know another.

I would have loved to see a guy watching this parade.

It was surreal.

Now to break the charm, I am guessing a yoga class just got out nearby.

Cool Things Like Wiskers On Kittens

Cool: Running into my sister at a club.

Cool: Watching my friend Lopaka dance. He is really quite good. More importantly he has such a good time you can’t help but smile.

Cool: Super low tides where you can find critters and sea things hiding in the tide pools.

Cool: The butterflies flocking to their winter home in the grove down the street.





Cool: This tree amongst the California green.



The end.

Did you look in the fridge for your cell?

One of the problems with cordless items, is you can never find them.

One of the problems with living alone, is you have no one to blame when you can’t find something.

One of the problems with not having (what is now referred to as) a ‘land` line, is it makes it very hard to call yourself to find your cell.

And lastly, one of the problem with fridges being well insulated...

(Sean says: At least it will be nice and cold.)

(Also from Sean, this link regarding both original costumes and politics: http://photo.demonhood.com/halloween04/62_G)

Giving In: Politics

I have been trying to keep politics out of this forum because it is divisive and not really appropriate.

I am giving up.

Bush won the necessary electoral votes. He was elected by the republic. Bush won the popular vote. If the US was a democracy, he still would have won. The people elected him. “The people are morons…” says my Mom.

Anyone who has ever worked in a technical support job would overwhelmingly concur with this statement, politics aside.

So I saw something fascinating today, which is the real reason I write, a bumper sticker that said: “Secede Now.”

I live in California. The memo I got said we were waiting for “The Big One” before we secede. (The Big One is a statistically likely huge earthquake that in some dramatizations results in the physical separation of California from North America, at which point my memo says we will politically secede.) I guess we are moving up the timeline.

I have heard it said that the country is more divided now than during the civil war. (More divided is one of those phrases that has absolutely no meaning. I am going to assume more divided means more equally divided, in contrast to more factions or a more heavily weighted faction amongst the factions, or perhaps more practice in dividing, maybe by repeating forth grade a few times.)

Since America is divided, that makes this the best time to conquer it. I will get right on that.

My favorite comment: It is a good thing Bush won, after all you don’t want to piss off gun-wielding constituency.

Imagine the consequences if gun ownership were a factor. Everyone would have guns. Then it would take only one politically motivated gun exchange in say a Dallas bar to make civil war would be a real possibility.

The irony of it is, it is politics and government. The majority of us think it is fairly useless and ineffective anyway.

I hope that Kerry supports are much more satisfied with Bush’s second four years than with his first.

Stupid: People waiting nine hours to vote.
Stupid: A divided country three years after an event that should have unwaveringly unified us.

Cool: Entertaining bumper stickers and comic comments. (It is not nearly as significant as what is stupid, but you take the cool where you can get it sometimes. And hope for more.)

Cool: Political Halloween Costumes http://photo.demonhood.com/halloween04/62_G

Original Costumes

Most original costumes I saw this weekend:

* Boxed Wine

* Two people dressed as grim rippers each carrying matching president or presidential candidate signs on a pole. Beneath the signs were little signs saying, “Support Evil.” http://photo.demonhood.com/halloween04/62_G

(Points were given out for originality and are not necessarily reflective of my political opinion; the relevant opinion is that I found it funny.)