Thankfully, travel to Pittsburgh on Saturday was much smoother than my flights earlier last week, and I’m enjoying my time here so far. It’s great to see Matt and some old friends, and also check out a new city.
There’ll be a full-fledged Craft Day on Sunday – drop a line if you’ll be in the Seattle area and want an invite.
I had a whirlwind trip to Rochester, NY for work yesterday and today, and it will go down in my personal history as some of the least pleasant travel ever.
Yesterday, we flew through Newark (a.k.a. the seventh ring of hell). We did ultimately make it to Rochester, though, but not before spending two hours on the runway in Seattle and the balance of the four hour delay in the terminal in Newark. Given that five other flights at neighboring gates in Newark were cancelled, I’ll count myself sort of lucky.
Today’s flights back took us through Detroit – nearly as malodorous as Newark, but without as many air traffic delays (we were only an hour late today). On the completely, 100%, no-way-in-hell-you’re-getting-a-different-seat full flight from Detroit to Seattle, I got to sit in the middle seat, next to a nearly spherical woman. She had trouble standing or walking, and definitely couldn’t sit in her chair without overflowing both into the aisle and into my seat. She kept trying to make small talk while nearly cutting off the circulation in my arm and scrunching me up against the surly woman sitting by the window. Don’t be too jealous.
Since I just got in a little while ago (around 11 PM), and I have no clue what day it is, what time zone I’m in, how long it will take me to fall asleep, or if my coughing is a result of illness or a physical manifestation of my feelings towards the airline industry right now, I’m thinking I might not go in to work first thing in the morning. And I’m keeping my fingers crossed things go better when I head to Pittsburgh on Saturday to visit Matt.
A few of us started up the West Coast edition of Craft Day this afternoon. I’m looking forward to more crafting in the coming months, especially as the weather gets worse in Seattle, and also to making more progress on the now 6 year sweater. Good thing it’s for me and that I haven’t gained or lost any weight in that time.
WiFi is up and running chez moi. Let the downloading commence.
Rif and Anna sent me an awesome shirt in the mail over the weekend. I’m wearing it today as it expresses my satisfaction with last night’s election results:
Got news today of a high school classmate’s four month, 6,500+ mile bike trip across the US – makes my road trip seem downright wussy. Check it out at Bike America 2006.
I also got to check out a Sony eBook Reader today. It may be the future, but they need a little design help – it’s ugly.
It’s that time again. I speak, of course, not just about the election, but about obsessively checking Electoral-vote.com hourly for updates on the election. Things are looking pretty alright at the moment, but it’ll be a tense day tomorrow. And, of course, don’t forget to vote.
In other news, I’m rejoining the modern age this week and getting DSL at home, especially important given the large number of rainy evenings and weekends in my future. Gone will be the days of dialup and painfully slow downloads – hurrah! I will miss being able to use dialup as an excuse not to do work at home, though. Everything has it’s price, I suppose.
Progress continues on the robot arm – I’m almost ready to have a circuit board made. I’ll post schematics and pictures soon…