Setting aside old tapes

Years ago when I lived in Germany, two friends took a quick trip to Paris where they were mugged. The muggers told them that the reason they mugged my friends was because they were American. That’s always stuck with me, and not in a good way, so Paris has never been a place I wanted to visit.

Delta doesn’t fly into Bangalore but one of their partners, Air France, does. So I was on an Air France flight from Bangalore to Paris last week, and ended up having probably the nicest flight attendant I’ve ever had. Since I’ve flown at least 75,000 miles a year since 2010, and plenty more in previous years, that’s saying something. But he was fantastic. And of course he was French*.

On that long 10-hour flight, I found myself reconsidering my opposition to going to Paris, and long story not so long, realized it was time to ditch that old tape. After all, I’ve definitely seen that India is not full of people like the Ferals, so why would Paris be filled with muggers who hate Americans?

I have no idea when we’ll go—this has been the year of home maintenance and repair, not travel—but look for us to make it over there hopefully in 2016.

*He told me a couple of hours into the flight that he was pretty good at identifying where people were from. He pointed out one he'd known was Italian, and another who was British. But, he said, he'd thought I was German. I laughed and said that I'd lived there three years so maybe that's why I seemed German. 

Jet lag is a funny thing

Much like altitude, sometimes I have zero issues with jet lag—in fact, usually I have no problems—but sometimes? Well let’s just say I can be in a fog for a bit.

I got back to the US Thursday evening. I thought I slept well that night but FitBit disagreed. Apparently I was awake 20 times and restless a record-setting 43 times. Wow. Friday night, I woke up around 2 AM and that was essentially it for me for sleep. I dozed a bit but never fell fully asleep and gave up at 5. You can tell from the multi-colors below that I didn't actually sleep much (the dark blue indicates when I was asleep).

Yesterday—Saturday—Kent and I had a massage in the late afternoon. We picked up sushi on the way home and by 6 PM I knew I was not long for this waking world. I managed just barely to stay up until 8 PM and I think I was asleep within 15 seconds of Kent turning the light out (he stayed up later, like a normal sane adult would).

Then in the middle of the night, I struggled to wake up, almost the way it feels when you’ve swum down lower than you can safely handle. I was convinced I’d left my 3-1-1 bag at home and that I would have no way to wash my hair or face or get cleaned up. I managed to open my eyes and could not for the life of me recognize where I was. I’d say it took me a good half minute to sort out that I was at home and so was my 3-1-1 bag.

I hoped it was 2:30 when I woke up, figured it was probably 12:30. Actually it was midnight, so I took a sleeping pill and went back to sleep.

I feel far more normal today, although still fairly low energy. Maybe I’ll be back to normal by Friday—just in time to have that sinus surgery and get all discombobulated again.

Day 26

I’ve been thinking about all the traveling Kent and I have done over the last year, and really over the course of our relationship. I know traveling abroad has always been a popular activity, even well before commercial flights were around. But the time and money involved to go from, say, the US to Spain would have made it impossible for us to take the trip in October.

Likewise, for the last six years we’ve gone to wherever our younger son and his family live for Thanksgiving. Sure, we could technically drive there in the time we have available to take off from work. But what a very short time together that would be.

So yes, I’m really thankful we live in a time with airplanes and that we can afford to get the tickets.

I'm so tired

I’ve written before that my friends and co-workers think Kent and I are insane for our four day Crazy Trips™. These are the trips we take to another country or away from North America. Generally we leave on a Friday, land on Saturday morning and go like gangbusters until Sunday evening, when we fly home again. The Crazy Trips™ have to meet some criteria in order to work for us: Delta has to fly there, and we need to be able to get there with just one plane change (not always so easy when you live in the middle of the country). To date, we’ve gone to Rome, London, Montreal and Honolulu using this method.

Last week, though, we flew to Barcelona for a more extended stay. Getting to Barcelona from Kansas City requires two plane changes (which ups the odds of encountering travel delays) and obviously takes more travel time in general. But we knew we wanted to have a special trip for our anniversary so we considered the time well spent.

But oh my golly. I am so extremely exhausted and it’s not from jet lag. I adjust really fast to the time zones. No, I am flat out beat from traveling 24 hours there and 24 hours back again and just not getting enough sleep. As much fun as we had (and we really did have a great time) and as many interesting things as we saw, it’s still been exhausting.

Truly I find the Crazy Trips™ far less tiring. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go blow my husband’s mind and take a nap.

Veni, vidi, vici

What a fun trip! We unexpectedly got upgraded to first class the entire trip—including the overseas route—which meant we could actually sleep from JFK to Rome because the international first class had the beds that lie flat. Plus the food was good.

If you ever go to Rome, you should know that much like Boston, Rome is a walking city. And just like Boston, the sidewalks and streets are as likely to be made from old cobblestones and very uneven. Good, flat walking shoes are a requirement unless you want to take bus tours. We prefer to walk so we caught the hotel shuttle into the city after we’d landed, cleared immigrations and gotten cleaned up at the hotel.

Last time we were in Rome, neither of us fully grasped just how many Roman ruins there are in the city. Sure, we’d seen the Coliseum but only at night, and we never did get over to any of the other ruins. I can’t tell you the name of these ruins but as you can tell from this picture, they go on and on. We didn’t walk down through them but instead kept on going and found the Coliseum, this time in rainy daylight. After that we split a bottle of wine and had pizza for what ended up being both lunch and dinner. Let me tell you, the house wine in Italy is pretty tasty.

We also ended up seeing the changing of the guard at the President’s palace. The band played in the rain for the whole ceremony and then played a little concert. I was freaked out that the oboist marched with his oboe and wondered how many reeds he’s broken doing that. I never marched with my oboe, I played piccolo when we marched.

I am quite proud I stayed up until 7 PM that night although I slept the next 13 hours.

             

We had two goals on Monday: see the Sistine Chapel and find two fabric stores we’d read about online (Fratelli Bassetti Tessuti and Fatucci Tessuti).

I’d foolishly thought that a rainy Monday in November would reduce the number of tourists at the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel but boy was I wrong. All I could think was how awful it must get in the summer, what with the crowds and the heat. I also thought it was worth braving the crush of people. Pictures don’t tell the entire story of any part of the museum or of the chapel. Fortunately we didn’t need to see St. Peter’s again because that line was over two hours long—the line for the museum and chapel was at most 15 minutes.

We did find the fabric stores and I’ve never been so overwhelmed in my life. But I wasn’t leaving Rome without some cloth, doggone it, and so I got two meters of a lovely lambswool woven fabric that is just wonderful to touch. It’s a sort of purple/wine color and I’ll make a skirt out of it. Kent picked up an orange and black houndstooth woven wool (trust me, it does not look garish or Halloweeny at all); he's got plans to make a long-sleeve shirt. We wandered around some more, had more pizza and wine and then headed back to the hotel.

So that’s Rome. I’m not sure when we’ll do another quick jaunt like this one or the one to London last month. Maybe in the spring after we move.

Oh right, I didn’t tell you about that yet, did I? Stay tuned.

Let's go to Rome

We are off for another short trip, this time to Rome. We went there the day after Kent asked me to marry him and got to see pretty much everything except the Sistine Chapel (couldn't see it because we got to Rome really late due to massive snow in London).

Rome was in the grip of a crazy, record-setting cold snap then and we froze our butts off. This time it's supposed to be in the upper 60s/low 70s but rain the whole time. Oh well. Apparently we aren't supposed to see Rome in good weather.

See you on Wednesday.

There’s no place like home?

We had some friends (husband and wife) over Saturday night and at one point the conversation turned to the Midwest. Seems he feels obligated to go to Oklahoma to visit his mother, with whom he isn’t particularly close, and to bring his wife since they’ve never met. But he doesn’t want to go to Oklahoma and thinks they’ll have a rotten time because it’s Oklahoma.

I suspect his reluctance stems more from the less than stellar relationship with his mother. But he’s chosen to focus his distaste on Oklahoma. Among other issues, he complained about all the narrow-minded and bigoted viewpoints he thinks they’ll run into when/if they go. I think he thinks people just start out casual, social conversations with huge political stink bombs and let things devolve from there. I found it so strange. I think reluctance to visit—not move to, but just visit—a particular location is really weird and pretty narrow-minded.

One of the best things about my last job was the traveling I did to parts of the U.S. that I would normally never think about visiting. I went to Sheffield, Texas*, Tomah, Wisconsin, and Guernsey, Wyoming along with other places you might have actually heard of. And while I wouldn’t want to move to any of those three towns, I saw some incredible scenery and met some really nice people. I know myself well enough to know that I enjoy living in a more urban environment than those towns offer. I’m still glad I got to see them, and if I had a chance to visit other, similar places, you’d better believe I’d go.

*Sheffield is so small, it doesn't even have a Chamber of Commerce web site!

Regional differences

I’ve just spent two of the last three weeks square in the middle of the country. The first week I was in Little Rock, Arkansas and this week I’ve been in Texas—far western Texas to be sure, but technically still in the Midwest. Just don’t tell any Texan that, I’m pretty sure most of them still believe Texas is a separate country.

What I realized over and over again is just how friendly Midwestern people tend to be toward everyone. I know surface friendliness isn’t the same as genuine friendships—but it’s really nice to be greeted by smiles by people who aren’t afraid of having a conversation with a stranger. I’ve missed that openness these last three years. I’ve missed it a lot.

This week I also got to enjoy something else that’s a rare commodity in Boston—sunshine. Lots and lots of sunshine. It’s cloudy this morning in San Antonio but the rest of the past week I enjoyed nothing but pure sun with hardly a puff of clouds in the sky. I’ve practically gorged myself on sunshine.

I’ve loved both of those things—sunny people and sunny weather. But this part of the country isn’t home any more, although truthfully Boston isn’t home in the sense that I love and miss the city. But it’s where Kent is and where the kitties are and that’s what makes a place a home for me these days. So back I go to joyless people and dreary weather which are more than made up for by an amazing man and three nutty cats.

Compare and contrast

Boston temperature today: 61F
Sheffield, TX today: 95F
San Antonio, TX today: 91F

To paraphrase Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other.

Off I go tomorrow morning on a 9AM flight to San Antonio by way of Detroit where's it's currently 51F.

Small town living, part two

Last night I stopped by the Sinclair gas station for a bottle of water. The check out clerk, a woman probably in her mid-twenties, knew that I was flying home to Boston tonight and asked when I had to leave for Texas.

The thing is, I have no idea who she is. But she sure knew about me!

Small town living

I’ve been in Guernsey, WY since Sunday evening. This is a small town with just over 1000 people, so the restaurant options are pretty limited and really, you don’t get different options at the different restaurants—mostly you just get different versions of the same thing. So I’ve had a hamburger every single day and frankly I’m done with hamburgers for a while. While I’m not a vegetarian, I also don’t look at meat as the point of my meal.

Monday and Tuesday, I stopped by the tiny grocery store and picked up a bean and cheese burrito to microwave for dinner. But last night I thought I’d get something from Crazy Tony’s which is half a block from my motel. I had lunch there during my visit last September so I knew it was a smoking bar/restaurant, but I figured I’d just get something to carry out.

The entrance is very close to the bar and when I walked in, there was an elderly lady at the end, an elderly man next to her (I think it was her husband), another older man and then a middle-aged man. They all swiveled around and stared at me and for a moment I wondered if I’d wandered into a bad Stephen King movie but no, they were just curious about me. They all knew for a fact that I wasn’t from around there.

I placed my order and the men kept staring. Finally I said “Gentlemen, you sure are staring a lot!” and one of them said, “Well you are a pretty woman!” I thanked them and waited for my salad, trying not to cough from the smoke. One finally said he hoped I would sit down and have a drink—I thanked him and said I just couldn’t handle the smoke.

And in fact, when I got back to my room all my clothing reeked from that short exposure. How on earth did I stand it before??

Breathe

I’m not quite halfway through this crazy three-week run. The work itself is going well but the trips are killing me. Last week’s bout of bleeding blisters sort of set the tone for the trip—and that was on day one.

Last Friday, I should have gotten home about 12:30 am, which is really Saturday but would have given me two nights at home. My flight from LIT ended up being four hours late so I missed the last flight from ATL to BOS. I didn’t get to my hotel in Atlanta until 12:30 am, which is of course when I should have landed in Boston. I was booked on an early flight Saturday morning, which meant I got a three hour nap. I’ve just now gotten caught up on my sleep.

If all goes well with my flights, I should get home about 11 pm Friday night. Then I catch a 9 am flight Sunday morning to San Antonio and have a four and a half hour drive to get to that program site. I won’t get home until Saturday evening due to distance and lack of flights. But I’ve got Sunday, May 8 marked as a day of utter rest on my calendar.

On the road again

Today I leave for Arkansas. I get back again around 12:30 AM next Saturday. I should have enough time to do a load of laundry, which is good because the next day (Sunday) I fly to Wyoming.

I get back again around 12:30 AM, again on Saturday. I should have enough time to do a load of laundry, which is good because the next day (Sunday) I fly to Texas.

Are you seeing a pattern?

I will get back from that trip around 8:30 PM Saturday.

Cats are glaring at me, cat sitter is all arranged, husband would be sighing at me only he left yesterday for Ireland, and I've got my 17" tote packed for the week.

Slightly obsessed with bags

Not handbags, nope, those don’t really interest me in the least. Oh I have a few but I don’t really much care about them and when we flooded (holy cow almost a year ago), I guarantee you I didn’t give them a passing thought. They all survived as it turned out, despite being under water.

Laptop bags are a different story. I am irresistibly drawn to the laptop bag section of any store that carries them. I look at them online, in magazines and catalogs and I’m always positive that this bag, ah this bag will be The One That Solves My Laptop Storage Issues. I have plenty of bags I've tried and discarded (usually to Goodwill or to someone who wants it). Here are the ones that are still in the house:

I have a Franklin Covey pseudo-messenger bag that looks like an oversized purse (got it at Costco so at least it wasn’t pricy). I like the interior but the bag has two handles and one is always falling off my shoulders. Plus I've realized as much as I like the look of a messenger bag, I find them very awkward to carry through airports when I'm usually walking fast or outright running. So it sits in a closet waiting for us to take a picture of it so we can sell it on Craig’s List.

I have a Targus backpack laptop bag that is pretty close to perfect (you can't tell by the pictures but this bag has annoying yellow pulls and the logo is yellow, too). I can shove everything in there, all cords and mice and extension cords plus my toiletry bag and my Kindle and still have room for a water bottle and my wallet. I’ve used it for almost four years and love almost everything about it. The flaws are few but they are fatal. First, when it's full, it doesn't really fit under the seat in front of me because it's too wide. Plus it looks like it belongs on campus.

I found another very strong contender at Levenger (the Higher Ground Laptrap) and managed to get it on sale for a ridiculously low price. Again, I love most things about this bag including the way it looks. However, it's a messenger bag (note to self, never ever buy another messenger bag), and I can’t fit everything in well because the pockets don’t expand at all; there’s no way to stuff anything in there. It's a great bag if I need to haul a laptop between home and office but it's fairly useless on my trips.

But I think this time I really have found the perfect bag. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Booq Squeeze Bag. Even though it’s a backpack, it looks clean and tidy with not a hint in the world of college backpack to it. And the interior slots and spaces are amazing. Even if you aren't obsessed with laptop bags the way I am, click through to the link and check out the pictures of the interior.

I’ll be field testing this bad boy on Wednesday when I fly to Hawaii. Stay tuned for an update after I get back.

The sandwich box

I got this sandwich box when we lived in Kansas City; we’ve been what a former boss of mine called lunch bringers for a long time. But the sandwich box doesn’t actually work all that well. The bread doesn’t stay fresh in there, and peanut butter tends to rub up against the sides of the box and make a sticky mess. While it’s not good for the environment, I prefer to use a sandwich bag.

I took this box along on one of my business trips a few years ago. I put a half sandwich (in a baggie, natch) and some carrot sticks in it and had a decent enough lunch that day when I was traveling. I gave myself permission to toss the box if it became a pain in the butt during that trip but as you can see, the box made it home. I’ve taken it on probably a dozen trips since then and each time I think that trip will be the one where the box doesn’t make it home. I came this close :: to tossing it in New Jersey; I’m a little surprised I brought it home.

Now I’m off again—Seattle this week—and I’ll be taking it with me. We’ll see if it makes the journey home. Chances are good; I go to Hawaii next week. Hawaii is a very long trip and healthy food is nice to have.

Right this second, the cats are circling my suitcase in the living room. I had to get up at 2:30 AM (did not know there was such an hour) and in the interest of letting Kent sleep, all my things are out in the living room. The cats are not pleased. Fortunately Kent's in town this week so they won't be entirely alone. They have Pinky.

Frequent flier

The next three weeks will be a whirlwind for me. I am (unexpectedly) heading to southern New Jersey for all of next week, returning on Saturday. Then I leave for Seattle on October 5 and return on the 7th. I conclude this little bit of jetting around by flying to Hawaii on October 13 and flying home the night of the 15th although I won’t actually get home until the 16th. I’ll have two weeks at home before I head out again, almost certainly back out to Hawaii.

I just got a new smaller suitcase. I’m a pretty good packer, although truly ultra-light packers would sniff at some of the things I bring and that I use a roller bag. But the bag I was using—a 21” suitcase which meets Delta’s carry on standards—was a little bit too big and my things would fall down in the suitcase and wrinkle more. So I got a 19” bag instead.

We’ll see how it goes. I prefer to carry what I need and no more; the difference for this trip is that I also need to bring a great big honking binder, so the new suitcase may not get a debut until the Seattle trip.

Whew

I’ve been gone three out of the last four weeks and the first crazy rush of business travel is over. I cannot tell you how glad I am the next trip has been postponed. I was scheduled to leave for Hawaii this Sunday, hold meetings Monday and Tuesday and fly back Tuesday night. In other words, I’d have spent as much time getting there and back as actually on the ground working. I find it really weird that getting to Hawaii from Boston will take about 19 hours, while getting from Kansas City to Beijing, China took 25 hours.

And I think this is the year I end up needing reading glasses. Some days, everything works pretty well, although generally my eyes struggle first thing in the morning when I’m using my Netbook. Along about midday, everything pulls together although I prefer a lot more light when I read. I used to wonder why my mother complained about it being too dark to read in my house—I get it now. But just when I’m ready to make that eye appointment, I’ll have no problems reading, I’ll thread the needle on the first try every single time and I’ll decide to wait.

If you have reading glasses, what made you go ahead and get them?

A very random list

I wrote this last week while I was in Wisconsin. I’d never been there before and found it to be remarkably like the Kansas City area in terms of geography. I’m sure the winters are more extreme, and maybe the summers are hotter. I felt positively nostalgic when I saw typical Midwestern sights while I was there—I saw billboards for Love’s truck stop, the Black Cat Fireworks stores and I stayed in a Holiday Inn that probably hasn’t been redecorated since the 1960s. I took a video just so you could see the horribleness of the room, but apparently I deleted it. The room had both a king size bed and a Murphy's bed and the ceiling was in three distinct pieces like a modular home. Very odd.

Wednesday night I had dinner at Ed’s Tee Pee Supper Club. Seriously, that was the name. I was really surprised to walk into the restaurant and see people smoking there. I guess I’ve lived in Boston long enough to forget about smoking in a restaurant.

Friday as I headed south to Madison, I almost hit a turkey as it took off flying low over the road. I’ve never seen a wild turkey flying and I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing—almost to the point of hitting the damn thing.

I’m glad I got to visit a part of the Midwest I haven’t seen before. I was also very glad to get home again. I’ll be gone for two weeks this month so having a week at home first is refreshing.

This list is pretty random and consists mostly of things that make me go “huh?”

• I don’t get smoking as something pleasurable.
• I am completely baffled by couples who share a Facebook page. You really need to be that enmeshed?
• The same thing is true for email addresses. Come on, they are free, get your own.
• I will never understand sports fans who so hate another team that they threaten physical harm to the players or the fans—and seem to mean it.
• I don’t get people who relocate to be near grandchildren. Are you that positive your children want you that close by? And what happens if they move?
• Why do people wear pajamas out in public; for example, to run errands or go to class?
• Why does one of my cats drool when he’s apparently very happy?
• What makes someone think it’s a good idea to hold a personal telephone call while in a public bathroom?