I’m not a big fan of packing, and cleaning, and all the other tasks associated with moving. As a result, I tend to procrastinate when confronted with them. Add to that a big complicated task like making a short movie — a task that will absorb as much time as I allow it to — and the desire to keep my normal tasks of writing and maintaining software (the latter a dismal failure lately), and you end up with night falling less than twelve hours before departure, suitcases empty, house a jumble, and the clock ticking away.
Add on top of that an editor anxiously waiting for the data from the last day of shooting and the master audio, a task that ended up sucking down a couple of hours of my time, and it’s fair to say that my exit in the morning was not the cleanest one on record. I stopped downstairs to tell the landlord that the big pile of clothes was for charity (Angelo will be picking it up), and that Soup Boy would be in touch. I forgot to mention that the garment bag was hers for the taking, that the hair trimmer set was Soup Boy’s if he wanted it, and that the bag at the top of the stairs was trash that would not fit in the can outside.
I was in Atlanta when I realized that I had left my leather jacket in the kitchen. Bummer. I really like that jacket. Apparently That Girl does also. I was wearing it when she first saw me.
But time waits for no panicked, exhausted, scrambling packer, and it didn’t wait for me, either. Goodbyes were brief and then the car arrived to whisk fuego and me to the airport. “Whisk” in this case meant stop-and-go traffic; it was like Prague was giving us one last reminder of what California would be like, one last bid to have us stay. Sorry, lovely city, but it’s time to move on.
Airports are airports, and while Prague’s is less of a hassle than some, it’s not different enough to warrant much comment. My bags were a bit over the limit but thanks to the traffic jam the agent didn’t have time to make me pay extra. So that worked out.
On the plane, over the water. In the seat behind me was a 14-month-old baby, and I cringed when I sat down. Still, I’ve had some experience with that demographic lately, so I resolved to be tolerant. fortunately, the kid did really well, with a minimum of fussing and only the occasional seat-kicking. It was the five-year-old in the seat in front of me who was the problem. Lots of energy, nowhere to go, piercing scream. Lovely.
Atlanta was routine; a period of standing in line to be screened by various agents of the government, then a wait until the plane was ready. From there to Albuquerque, and a hotel. It was a long day, eight hours longer than most days, but fuego and I managed to stay up long enough to have dinner at a diner that served green chile. The plan was to meet with family members in the morning, to recover my car and go up to Los Alamos for the evening.
Only, with all the communication and plan-making flying around, apparently none of the messages sent to my sister and brother-in-law, the keepers of my car, included the date of our arrival. They were out of town. Hm. A bit of a wrinkle, that. Fortunately the parents had an extra key for the house where the car was. Unfortunately, it was 100 miles away. We went up to the ol’ homestead and fuego and I prepared for our road trip, and I got to see my beer slave.
It all worked out in the end, obviously; Saturday morning found fuego and me in a convoy heading out into the desert. I’ll tell you about it soon.
Welcome back to the states
I keep forgetting to put up the Trip Track I did. I never remember when I am somewhere with free WiFi…soon, however, soon.
The trip track would b a good supplement to the next episode I put up, since it will be about the road and the wind. I think I’ll keep the Bars of the World Tour officially open until after the cruise, but the episode following the road episode will introduce the next big adventure in the Muddleverse. Stay tuned!
Hey, did you get the emails about labour day weekend? Good things afoot!
pL
I try very hard not to be pedantic. I understand that, especially in literary circumstances, it is permissible to bend or sometimes even break the rules of grammar. In the case of run-on sentences (especially the subspecies comma splice), in particular, I can accept them as a part of Jer’s inimitable style.
On the other hand, no matter how much I love my brother, I simply cannot allow an egregious pronoun case error. Jer said “Saturday morning found fuego and I in a convoy heading out into the desert.”
Sorry, that doesn’t work. You don’t say “Saturday morning found I in a convoy …” You say “Saturday morning found me in a convoy …” Thus, when you form the compound, you must use the object case me and not the subject case I.
This is a frustration that I face with my students. Because they have been corrected so many times about sentences such as “Me and my brother went to the store,” they believe that the subject case is always the correct one to use.
Please don’t perpetuate that myth in your blog.
One of the dangers of posting rough drafts is that partially-edited sentences (sentences where I change something but fail to propagate the consequences of that change throughout the work) get through. Thanks for pointing out the error; it’s one of my peeves also.
Pet Piv!