the story thus far

I wrenched my shoulder overswimming and now have to take it easy and do exercises according to my physical therapist (a nice Libertarian sort who uses words like “wimpy” and “freaky” to describe my physiology but I have to believe he means it in the nicest way) so I’ve been annoyed and a bit under the weather lately. Add to this that two of my other female colleagues seem to have fluish symptoms of eerily similar description and I’ve shifted from my normal low-grade hypochondria to full-on chemical warfare conspiracy theories. My guess is that I am only right if they’ve been able to somehow lace the toxic agent into the local pollen because there’s certainly a lot of that around and I haven’t had any of my normal Spring sniffles….

In any case, I’ve been tired and achey and taking it easy. I got back from NH only to head back out to go to my Dad’s for Father’s Day and a MetaFilter meetup in Marlboro MA on my way back home. This weekend I’m going to a wedding in Brooklyn and then I swear I’m staying home.

I had some good successes at work today, more Ubuntu happiness as well as more old people with new computers who seem to think I am some sort of super wizard lady when I explain how to open a program, follow a hyperlink or send an email. It’s sort of low-hanging fruit I guess, but it’s fun for me to do I also got to talk to one library about a long range plan that might include an open source library catalog and a media creation center for people to learn how to interact with their web environments. I’d be happy if that happened, but I was happy just to get to say it out loud and have someone seriously listen to me.

When I got home from my friends’ house this evening, there was a phone message from JetBlue — the airline that lost/stole my stuff in Puerto Rico — saying they had forwarded the letter I had sent to their CEO to some central baggage specialist who would be calling me back in a few days. Apparently JetBlue may not want to go to small claims court over $70 worth of cables. I, on the other hand, would love to go to small claims court over $70 worth of cables. I have nothing but time and a burning distaste for getting jerked around over technicalities on stuff like this. I like JetBlue an awful lot most days, but I think they could have handled this with more class.

My only other recent event of note is that I bought a car, on Facebook, from a friend of mine. I need to go to Ithaca to get it, or get someone from Ithaca to drive it here. If you are Ithaca-linked in some way, please feel free to drop me an email.

a few other people

Some neat things have happened in the lives of my friends and family, while I’ve been gallivanting around.

– My lawyer friend Kelly got pissed off at what she thought was a spurious lawsuit and filed a press release when the case was finally dismissed (before it went to trial but after a jury had been empanelled). It hit the AP wire. Way to go Kelly!
– My uncle just had his lay ordination ceremony at the Vimala Sangha in Marin.
– My friend Stepahie who I stayed with in New Hampshire a few nights ago is going to be the new library director in Stowe Vermont, I’m happy for her and happy to have her and her family back in Vermont

I got home from New Hampshire this afternoon to see the DHL guy just pulling in to my driveway. He had a package for me, from Kyrgyzstan! A pal I know from MetaFilter works in Kyrgyzstan. I asked him to send me some stuff a few months back. Today it arrived. The package had a few postcards, a letter, a satchel made from some old rugs and a neat felt hat. The hat and the bag smell amazing, like woodsmoke and trees from other places. I’ll put up a photo at some point, but my camera is out of batteries until I replace the charger that went missing from my bag in Puerto Rico. I did manage to take a few photos in New Hampshire with my old crappy camera. I’m back from the road and have no more travelling work for several months, just weddings and visiting and whatever comes to pass. I already have the fidgets but I think they’ll smooth out over time.

fantasy home

Yesterday was deemed “one of the country’s worst days this year for air travel.” And hey check me out, I made it home! Well, I made it home this morning actually at a time which is late in my world but not obscene. I had a good time in Ann Arbor and even a decent time in the Detroit airport where I was waiting, loaded on to the plane, loaded off the plane, delayed and finally transported home where we had to stay in a holding pattern over Burlington waiting for the wind to die down. By the time I got back, the Thrifty lot place where my car was had closed. Thanks to my cellular telemophone I had arranged with the guys to leave my car in their parking lot, key under the floormat. I got a ride to it from a guy on my flight. I drove home on an empty foggy highway which was lit mostly by the moon. I pulled into my driveway as the church bell struck three, noticed that someone had mowed my lawn while I was away, and went immediately to bed.

I talk a lot about places I travel as not really being my idea of a fantasy. I got home and got out of the car and heard the river rushing behind the house and the peepers making all of their noises and saw the freaky looking moon hanging over the neighbors’ yard and figured maybe it’s just tough to top this.

Here are some links from the past week.

My Ann Arbor talk and photos.
My (similar) Puerto Rico talk and photos

where to begin?

I’d have a photo to show you of Puerto Rico except I don’t have the cable for my camera. I don’t have it because either I lost it or it was stolen/lost from my luggage. Either is about equally possible. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

I know that if you travel enough once in a while all the forces conspire to give you a truly bad trip. This trip is, apparently, mine. That said, it’s not too bad. Here’s what’s been happening. I got up early on Sunday to get to the airport. I don’t like getting up early but I accept that it’s necessary. However, my flight was delayed. Then it was delayed again. Then it was finally cancelled. I was too busy fruiting around on the free wifi to get in line quickly enough to complain, so I got to twiddle my thumbs on hold (yay for cell phones) and figure out my next move. US Airways said they could get me out the next day. Jet Blue said they could get me out in a few hours. These two airlines don’t really talk to each other in a computer fashion however, so it was time to shell out for a new ticket and hope against hope that the conference people would see this as a necessary added expense. As usual, my lack of “What would a normal person do in this circumstance?” sense means that I had far more nervousness choosing this route then I might have otherwise.

JetBlue got me out of there at 4 pm and then stuck me in JFK for a few hours, and on the tarmac in a rainstorm for an hour more. I got into San Juan at 1:45 in the morning — this is totally a normal hour for me, not so much for other people on my flight — and was in bed and asleep at the Intercontinental by around 3. My room faces the ocean. It’s nice. The room they tried to put me in faced the highway and was right up against the elevators. I traded it in. I don’t think I took anything out of my bag there. When I unpacked I realized that my stuff was soaking wet. Not like a little damp, like dripping wet. This was mostly okay. I hung stuff out to dry. One of my shirts may be a little screwed up. When I got back from my trip to Old San Juan today (more on that later) I went to offload my photos and realized my camera cable wasn’t in my bag. Neither was my battery charger. Neither was my dongle, the stupid expensive dongle that I need for my laptop to talk to the projector. In fact everything in the side pocket of my bag was … gone. Solving these problems takes time. I didn’t lose anything I can’t replace, but I do sort of need that dongle for my talk tomorrow. CompUSA has one I can buy, but I’ll have to spend all day tomorrow on busses (or $40 on cabs) to buy one. I was hoping to go to the beach.

I’ve spoken to people at the places where I think I might have left my stuff, in case maybe this was my own fault. My day yesterday was pretty long, I forget things occasionally. I worried that when I told JetBlue that TSA left not one but two “we inspected this!” tags in my bag that they might hand off resposibility to them, but I guess that’s not how they operate. They say they’re treating this like a “pilferage” as if anyone wants my stupid cables. I’m treating it like a “some things fell out of my bag” case, but one that happened on JetBlue’s watch. I talked to my contact here today and he mentioned something about being on “Carribean time” and said he didn’t even know if my talk was going for 90 minutes as we discussed or 60 or even when it started. With this sort of approach, I’m not biting my nails down worrying about it, seems like they’d be happy with a decent puppet show and maybe a few duck jokes.

a nice patch of radio silence

When the phrase “radio silence” doesn’t make me think of Thomas Dolby, it makes me think of a bunch of guys in a submarine turning off all of their soundmaking equipment and engines and floating quietly in the water looking nervously around waiting to see if something bad happens, expecting something bad.

So, I’ve been MIA because I’ve been waiting for some test results from the doc that turned out to be nothing but had a small chance of turning out to be something and I sat around with my noisemakers off for a week, worrying. I am developing a very very annoying [to me] habit of becoming irrational about my health during periods of great stress. Now that I’m back into rational-land [or “illusion of rational” land which will have to suffice] it’s something I’m officially working on.

Or will, when I get back from Boston, and Puerto Rico, and Ann Arbor Michigan, and New Hampshire. I know, I know “Gee, Jessamyn can’t imagine what in your life could be stressful!” Today I can mostly laugh at myself, yesterday things weren’t seeming so funny.

But despite my seeming hibernation, a lot has gotten done. I helped install an online catalog for a public library. I used a reel mower to mow my lawn. I sent out some letters. I almost finished a book. I took a lot of people out to lunch in the past week or two and got taken out to lunch myself. Yay for lunch. Today I get in the car and drive down to Massachusetts. Check me out on this list of fancy people! I hope to be checking in here a little more often. Thanks, as always for checking in with me.

staying in bed this Sunday

I have a heavy heart this week. A longtime friend of the family died on Tuesday. I put a photo of her up on Flickr, but otherwise I haven’t been talking about it much. Pat’s obit is here and it’s more of one than she would have had if she had gotten her druthers. I took a friend out to lunch on Friday.

I deal with grief poorly. Generally I just sort of slosh it around inside of me and usually it manifests itself as stress-related slightly-hypochondriacal random symptoms, and a lot of irritability and sleepiness. So, I’m laying in bed looking out the window at the wet trees in the backyard, realizing I’m not going to mow the lawn again this weekend and trying to make some escape-from-the-house plan before I get bogged down in endless linux upgrades and housecleaning busywork. On the other hand busywork beats moping and both of them beat more typing, so I guess I’ll wrap this up here. If you’re so inclined, it would be nice if you took a friend out to lunch.

today’s rainbow of birds

red – cardinal
orange – mystery orange thing, also baltimore oriole
yellow – goldfinch, evening grosbeak
green – ruby throated hummingbird
blue – indigo bunting
brown – finches
tan – chickadee
black – grackle
white – nuthatch
black and white and red all over – rose-breasted grosbeak