Some trip recap, more to follow.

Trip report, part one, real time. So, after a weekend of near never-ending excitement that included a highly charged, though very intimate party at Ms. RL’s, followed by a leisurely day of sitting by Ms. RZ’s pool reading Ms. Judy Blume’s “Blubber” (it was on my summer reading list) I am finally in the air, heading on the first leg of my trip to San Diego and San Francisco. This involves me spending an hour in Minnesota. That’s about all I can say so far about that. (P.S. I also enjoyed the enlarging of Ms. RZ's breasts. They got quite big, and attracted the attention of boys like nothing I've got to dazzle with.) Providence’s TF Green airport has become a cattle-cade of people on queue for the security check in. I had my boarding pass printed for me by my saviour, Ms. D. So I felt that I could arrive about an hour before boarding. This was enough time on a Tuesday, but I’m glad I didn’t wait any longer. The number of zombies who get to travel by air is simply limitless. They are all so lost, and all they have to do is wait in line. I do enjoy the Homeland Security video on a loop, also the placards with the pledge to keep as secure as they can. Thanks for doing a good job, I’ve made it just out of Rhode Island in one piece, and hope to keep it that way (at least till Alcatraz). There’s a $3 box lunch on offer, which I will obviously pass on. I’m wondering now if there will at all be anything open once I get to the Manchester in San Diego. I’m not too sure what I’ll be hungry for on a drug/drink free night at 2.30 in the morning, but we’ll see what’s on offer and what I feel capable of eating. No doubt it will be a heart wrenching experience. Traveling coach is not a great option when you have a larger laptop. It doesn’t quite fit on the tray in front of me so I’m actually having to type using my lap as a semi-flat surface. I just forgot how to spell surface. Off to a good start. Ok, now the plane is shaking and I feel like the pant load in front of me is going to lean back, so end of part one. We’re going to be late. Not very late, but late enough for the two middle-aged Minnesotins next to me to start getting angry. The husband is reading Harry Potter, the wife some romance paperback in one of those paperback cozy things only someone like her would have. She’s saying that it’s ‘bullshit’ we’re delayed because of, wait for it, thunderstorms. The plane has been bouncing like the one in the commercials for that Snoop Dog movie. Really. The flight crew, this lady with helmet hair, yelled over the intercom for the people in the tail end of the plane to stay seated. She really yelled, and not just once. But it’s all bullshit, you know? I mean, the weather is so predictable and you can always count on the airlines to use it as an excuse. At least that’s the reasoning of the slickless-wonder beside me. Trip report, part 2, real time/autopsy mode. After a breathtakingly poor amount of time to make my connection, in the strange port of St. Paul, Minnesota, I sat on the runway for an hour. An hour in which no member of the flight crew said anything to us. An hour in which the guy next to me fell asleep with his head in the crash position, resting on the seat in front of him. At least no one was reading Harry Potter this time around. There’s a guy a few rows up who might just be 500 years old. Really. He looks like an ancient monument. Grizzled, but tall like the mighty oak. A thick head of silvery hair, combed back classicly. He’s pretty twisted up with a huge black cane. He’s a million years old, maybe he was the young lover of a younger William Burroughs. Maybe. He was in the toilet for about 30 minutes. I assumed he died, but he came back out and sat down. 15 minutes later there was a call over the intercom for a doctor or any other medical professional. They took this old dude to the back of the plane. Did he actually die in the can? Maybe will power alone got him back to his seat, his corpse just cared that much about his dignity. I don’t know. It’s midnight, 33,000 feet up in the air, almost pitch black, half the plane is asleep. Except for the girl a row in front of me flirting with the three guys a row in front of her. She’s pretty limber, sitting with her feet up parallel with the seat in front of her, folded in half. She’s pretty in the way that girls who flirty that easily are. The guys are typical jockish looking Abbercrombie ones. The kind who are used to girls like her doing what she does, and do it right back just as easily. They suddenly look a bit stricken as the call comes for the doctor. It’s a long way down but we’re not going anywhere soon, and what do they do with a body at this height? He doesn’t die, he comes back to his seat to live out the rest of the flight. I wonder if they were going to lie him flat and stow him under the seat. He’s too big for that. The rest of the flight is boring. We land in San Diego at 11:45. It’s closer to three in the morning for me. I have to walk through the airport wondering if my ride will be there. The shuttle I paid in advance for to pick me up at 11:15. I hit the street at 11:58. No shuttle. I know it’s supposed to run 24/7 so I hope it’s on the :15, because that leave me with about a 20 minute wait. Pays off, too, because it comes at 12:16. I get to the hotel by 12:40 and start to check in. My boss has a call in for me so I talk to her for a few minutes to be greeted by the clerk with great news. My room isn’t ready and I have to go to another hotel. At a time when my body thinks it’s nearly four in the morning, when the clock says it’s nearly one, I am shepherded into a cab with a voucher so I don’t have to pay. This is just one fact that will confuse my cab driver. The other, more important thing that confuses him is my destination, four blocks away. He gets us lost and drives up onto the sidewalk trying to take a normal right turn. I figure out wither the other hotel is by the large sign. He still doesn’t get it, he hasn’t even turned the meter off from his last fare. A two minute ride is now nearly $20. I fill in $5 on the voucher and don’t tip him. He was a complete waste of time and could have gotten me killed, I suppose. Also, I feel the hotel owes him a tip, and owes me an apology. My temporary hotel is pretty nice, a boutique hotel with an amazing courtyard. I spend 10 hours there, four of which involve getting some sleep. I wake up at 7 in the morning, forget that I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, which is now closing in on a 24 hour period and walk back to my real hotel. The room still isn’t ready so I’ll have to carry around my laptop all day, plus the new carrier bag I get from the conference with a 250 page manual-type book of power point presentations. Until 3:00. When my room is finally ready. So this is the travel process I endure. And the first thing I eat is a gray version of a hamburger. A ghost of the real thing. But at least it keeps me going until 5 when I get a good meal. And I keep myself up until 11 to get a sense of reality back in me. And now it’s day two of the conference and I feel human again. I’m not learning a single thing, our group is so far ahead of the curve it’s not even funny. At least now I know I could work in any research shop across the country, my knowledge base is so large. I’m going to need an ego check at some point, but this is probably why my boss even brought me here, to get a sample of what my ‘competition’ is. Now I feel more confident about my database building skills. No one else here on my level is doing something like that. Other things I did a year ago are being talked about as ‘goals’ or ‘ideals.’ I didn’t even know, I rock the research world. Fuck it, I really want some pretzels and I’m definitely having some Jack at lunch.