I’m thrilled to report that Powerpill is finally back in action. The cough still persists, but whatever, other than that, I am feeling great. Seriously, “normalcy” is awesome! And now I’m back and ready to tackle the to-dos in full force.
For MLK weekend, John and I made a quickie trip back to Maryland. Since we weren’t around during the Chistmas/New Year holiday, this visit was in order. We caught up with a lot of the family– took a couple nieces to Chuck E. Cheese (and I actually had fun shooting the hoops), then met others for painting at a pottery studio. Later, the whole family (minus 3 people) plus my parents met up one night for dinner. John’s sister flew in from Irvine and I gotta say: thank goodness for her. She is a big-time doer. All those activities with the kids? She coordinated and organized. And though I’m not a big fan of kiddies, doing ANYTHING outside the house is so much better than farting around, lounging in the lazyboys chitchatting and watching the mailman run his route. Seriously. Sitting around only makes me more lethargic, so I welcomed my sis-in-law’s approach. John would never pull that kind of energy: he doesn’t organize activities; he doesn’t make phone calls… Both families are healthy and well. I dropped in and visited with the gramps. They’re going on a Caribbean cruise this week, leaving out of Baltimore I believe. Dunno how they have the stamina for all this traveling. Dad says they’re also planning a trip to Shanghai for the Expo! That’s like a 16-hr. flight! And my gramps are in their mid-80s. Insane. I’ve already started getting soft with just the east-west coast flight.
Speaking of which, we took the red-eye, because I am determined to be able to conquer that flight. You know how there are always those biz types on the red-eyes? Decked out in their suits, with the makeup, high heels, everything done all perfectly? On arrival, they’re like the first to get off and it’s as if they were leaving the house after a restful night’s sleep in their own bed. I dunno how they pull that shit off! I imagine them getting their rental car all efficiently and shit and heading straight to the office for a presentation. I’m not in the corpo world, but I’ve decided that I need to master that kind of endurance. So before our flight to DC, I read up on jetlag and all the flight secrets. Hydrate. Don’t eat. On arrival, DO NOT SLEEP until 11p local time.
Theoretically, the red-eye should totally be doable, especially because I crash on the plane. In practice though, as soon as I get to my destination, I am wiped and I totally crash out. This trip, it took all the strength in the world NOT to fall asleep as soon as we got to his my in-laws’ house. John’s family was talking about Shakira or something in the living room, and I drifted off into lala land right there on the couch. But that was just a 10-min nap. I don’t consider that sleeping. 🙂 Anyway, we did manage to make it to 11, and the next day, we were right on eastern standard time. Awesome. The next few days felt pretty good too. So next time the challenge will be to travel all decked out. Maybe I’ll even ask for an upgrade in my suit. People say at a minimum, you’d better be looking spiffy if the airline is going to just give you an upgrade.
The flight back was ok, but damn, it was fucking long! Told you, I’m getting soft. The real kicker on this return journey was that I didn’t use the lavatory at all. By the time we were in that half hour critical time of landing, I was about ready to explode. And with this new muffin top, sitting in the seat made the pressure over my bladder unbearable. But I was in that special period where no one is allowed to leave the seat. So I just waited and focused on breathing. Well, had we landed on time, I would have made it. Would have been very close, but I would have made it. But no. Thunderstorms, rains, winds– they forced us to circle in a holding pattern. Fucking A. 30 minutes later and still no word on when we’re going to land. And then I thought about all the dumbfucks who poke around while de-planing. Fuck, relief was probably a good 45 minutes out of reach. I tried stretching up and back. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I pictured myself getting UTI and that was it. I pressed the flight attendant button. Dude got out of his ejector seat. I explained that I needed to use the restroom. Yes, it was a goddamn emergency! John said as soon as I got to the aisle, I ran so fast. Whew. Let me tell you… next time, I will use the bathroom mid-way. Jesus Christ.
But back to my jetlag thing… yeah, we made it back to SFO, stayed up til 11p, and the next day, I headed back to the office all well rested and energized. See? I’m finally getting it!
In other news, I did two big activities this weekend. First, I went to that Spanish meetup group, and what do you know, it was awesome! About 8 people– all with different levels but I found a few in my range and it was so fun. We chatted the whole hour away. And the good thing is, this meetup gets together every other week, so it’s going to be frequent practice for me. I’m already motivated to cram so the next time I see them, I can start using past/future tense. Yay, that was such a pleasant surprise.
The second event I attended was the CrisisCommons Crisiscamp at the Yahoo campus. John went with me– basically, it’s a meetup with a bunch of tech people working on various projects to help with the disaster relief efforts in Haiti. The event organization was very similar to an un-conference/coding bootcamp style… a little too unstructured for my taste, but I was happy to do some data entry for their people locator tool. So overall, kind of a dud, but we still were able to help which was good.
Next week, I’m thinking of organizing a group to check out a new badminton club. Need to exercise more in the new year.