jim_p

I usually wake up at least once during the night to pee. Have done so since I was a child, Saturday night/Sunday morning I woke up a second time, thought about whether or not I needed to pee, decided I didn’t. And then, something in my back brain said, “Get up anyway.”

( Bloody TMI )

When I did finally wake up for realsies, I threw another load of laundry in. Basically my favorite T-shirts that I’d worn this week and some more bath towels. I had breakfast, Then I basically alternated between slowly pulling things out that were on my packing list and puttering around on the internet. I can’t say that I got more housework done. But I did get two weeks worth of clothes packed in my largest suitcase (which isn’t even that big) without having to unzip that extra inch of space that suitcases come with now. So proud of myself for that.

I headed out the door at 2:00 exactly. Which was later than I’d planned for, but still with plenty of time to make my 6:00 pm flight. I dropped off the mail at the post office, and stopped at Wegmans for a turkey sandwich. I’m glad that I’d checked in early, because it turns out that my flight left from Terminal C, which is NOT the international terminal (E) at Logan. I got through checking my bags and the security line wasn’t bad at all. I wasn’t sure what to expect, since Congress still hasn't passed the Federal budget and TSA only just started getting paid again because they found some slush fund to pay them out of.

I had plenty of time to hang out at the gate and look for the one coworker that I knew what on my flight. But I couldn’t find her, despite her distinctive curly hair. I finally texted her and asked if she was there yet? Turns out she’d left her phone in her Uber, and was going to be running really late. I told her not to be shy about asking to jump the line at security, people are usually really kind to anyone who is running to catch a flight. When we started to line up to board, I thought I saw a familiar face. It was my Engineering manager, but I wasn’t sure, because I was still thinking of him with his winter weight beard, but he’s now sporting a much shorter summer weight beard. And he didn’t immediately recognize me because I was masked up for traveling. My coworker did just make the flight! She thanked me for the tip about jumping the line, she said she might not have had the confidence to do that without my suggesting it.

The flight was six hours and it was pretty meh. I sat right behind my Engineering Manager, and my coworker was in the same row, we had opposite windows. There were two obnoxious ladies behind me that I was pretty sure were already drunk before we got on the plane. One kept her light on, doing some kind of reading or work almost all the way through the flight. And the old man sitting behind me couldn’t figure out how to secure his tray table, so I had to endure two long bouts of him slamming it into the back of my seat at different times during the flight. About the only good thing was the middle seat was empty, so I had plenty of elbow room. Usually I’m freezing cold on flights, because they have the A/C cranked, but this time, despite wearing short sleeves, I was too hot. Don’t know if it was because I was wearing a mask and rebreathing my own hot breath? And TAP Air Portugal's drink cups were about half the size that I’m used to getting, so I was hella thirsty by the time we landed, despite having asked for a juice AND a water each time they came around.

I watched The Fall Guy, with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt on the flight. I’d been wanting to see it, and it was a delightful, if silly, action/love story. It also starred Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Avengers’ Quicksilver), Hannah Waddington (Ted Lasso), and Winston Duke (M’Baku in Black Panther). They went with both interpretations of “fall guy” in having our stuntman hero fall a lot and having him fall in love with our heroine. I never watched the TV series back in the 80s, but they used the same name for the main character. It was on during a period in my life where I watched very little TV. I had to look it up, apparently Lee Majors was a stunt man who had a side gig as a bounty hunter? I might have to see if that’s streaming anywhere. I didn’t want to watch another movie after that, but couldn’t sleep. Since I still had the soundtrack running through my head, I went ahead and just started rewatching it.

They’ve instituted some new security protocols in Europe in the past week or two, but everyone was having trouble at the automated kiosks, so we all ended up going through regular customs with human customs agents. Luckily, at 5:30 am there’s not much of a line. I still don’t use ride share apps, so I was glad that Kristian had Uber on his phone. I’d downloaded Bolt, which is more popular in Europe, but I was happy to have someone else deal with transportation. It had been dark when we landed at 5:20 but the sun had come up by the time we got through customs and collected our luggage. We arrived at our hotel very early, but the events team had checked us into the hotel a day early, so we were able to get right into our rooms, despite arriving before checkout time. I drank a huge amount of water, and went down for a nap almost immediately.