scrubjayspeaks

Hi, hello, yes, I am absolutely done with travel for at least five years. I just spent the week in a hotel in order to attend a robotics training seminar for work. The training was super interesting, and I fully intend to carve out time for me to do interesting thing with the robots at work now.

However! I am reminded again that I hate traveling, I hate staying in hotels with no ability to cook my own food, and I hate being away from home for more than an afternoon. Constantly having to eat restaurant food does hideous things to my body. Even if taking it back to my room at least avoids the anxiety of eating alone in a room full of strangers, that means all my food becomes a lukewarm mediocrity. The pillows are weird! The soft water lacks the proper mineral content to give me the showering-with-sandpaper experience I am accustomed to! None of my animals are with me, and I can’t do anything if something goes wrong with my mother!

*roaring and gnashing of teeth* *old man yells at cloud*

I’m such a homebody, it’s a wonder I haven’t put taproots down from my ass by now.

Also, the power once again went out, this time probably due to the wind downing something. Even though the last time was caused by human error, so this hardly constitutes a pattern, it’s hard not to think this bodes ill for what the summer heat waves will bring.

There was a sporting field of some sort visible from my hotel window, in which there were a dozen Canada geese hanging out. I got to hear them, and a single duck overhead, honking a few times on the way to my car.

Lewisia: no new pieces written, time to play catch-up

Day job: I don’t know how to calculate this (＠_＠;) nine-hour lecture sessions + two days of six-hour drives + being semi on-call the rest of the time since these were work days and not PTO = ???

Cleaning: replaced one of the wiring disconnects to install a new battery for the electric fence

Gardening: succulent club meeting, garden club post, phone consultation with another club member to coordinate our tech upgrades, moved a big planter into place to receive incoming sunchokes

Reading: System Collapse by Martha Wells (my entertainment for the long drive, finally caught up on Murderbot audiobooks, still need to read the little side stories)

Watching: MURDERBOT~~~! I am so goddamn excited to have this as a show as well.

Listening: Even In Arcadia by Sleep Token (wasn’t aware of this band until Anthony Vincent/Ten Second Songs did a cover of Bastille’s “Pompeii” in the style of Sleep Token and found myself smitten, it reminds me of early Dir En Grey with the mix of pop/rock and metal elements), This Wasn’t Meant For You Anyway by Lola Young (one of those rare times when I listened to the radio, heard something new I liked, and managed to track it down afterward, “Messy” roped me in and the rest of the album is pleasingly in that spirit)

Clock Mouse: 1167 words, and the protagonist has officially acquired a name 🎉

hey

hey

you know what's really fun about flying?

Being fat and having to worry about where you and your belongings will fit and how many dirty looks you'll get and how best to cram my existence into the smallest footprint possible.

Listen, it has been somewhere between fourteen and three thousand years since I last flew on a plane. I'm just taking a backpack because that is all I reasonably need for a four-day trip.

Less reasonably, I am desperately trying to get meaningful information about where this carryon bag will fit and what unspeakable things will be done to it when I'm not looking. I am measuring it many times. I am squashing its sides into various configurations that might be deemed acceptable. It's not large! I mean, it's kinda poofy? But it's just, like, four shirts and a pair of jeans? Why is this so stressful?

At this point, I'm giving up and taking a smaller bag with me that I can put things in once I'm through security. That will be my "thieves, THIEVES, I'm surrounded by thieves" bag, in which I can keep my cash and tablet and snacks. So then I can put my backpack into the overhead storage and hope that no one feels compelled to steal my belt or underwear.

My GOD, I was not programmed to be travel compatible.