GeeCee's Not-Entirely-Original Miscellany

Things I'm thinking about trekking around the area for:

• Ignite Baltimore October 16th. Selfishly I wish it was Ignite Arlington. [Edit: No, it's not a pyrotechnics conference. Sorry!]
  
• OpenSQL Camp November 14th-16th. Charlottesville is almost, but not quite, commuting distance for me.
  

Anyone I know going to be attending either of those things?

My goal last year was to use all my PTO and not carry any over, but that failed miserably. I have something close to four weeks of vacation and personal time this year that I'd like to use up, even after using the week that I carried over. I'm not sure that this year's going to go much better thanks to combinations of (lack of) money and deadlines, but I'm planning to give it a shot. To try and stave off my imminent mental breakdown thanks to a particularly stressful situation going on, I've been daydreaming about how I'd like to burn those vacation days assuming time and finances allowed. In no particular order:

• If I thought I'd actually get stuff done, I'd take a week off to clean out/up my house.


• Volunteering for a week at Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah. Since I can't have a dog of my own, this would be a fabulous way to get my doggie fix (and kitties, and bunnies, and horses, and goats, and pigs, and birds) while also lending a hand to one of my favorite organizations.


• A vipassana retreat at the Insight Meditation Society. Can I survive a week of noble silence?


• A road trip, using Roadside America as a guidebook. Cheesy roadside attractions, woohoo!


• Festival season! Bumbershoot, Edmonton, Calgary (Chumbawamba acoustic, Great Big Sea, Neko Case, Leo Kottke, Ollabelle, Sarah Slean, Rufus Wainwright, Hawksley Workman), Cambridge (Oysterband, Bruce Cockburn), Blacksun Festival/ProjektFest, Folks Festival (Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Peter Himmelman, The Ditty Bops, Catie Curtis, Guggenheim Grotto), Falcon Ridge (Dar Williams, Eddie from Ohio, John Gorka, Lowen & Navarro, Marshall Crenshaw), 50 Years of Stax benefit, FloydFest (DeVotchKa, North Mississippi All-Stars, Donna the Buffalo, The Duhks, Scythian), Tønder Festival (Levellers, Great Big Sea, Solas, Karan Casey Band), Nordic Roots Festival
  


• A week in London. Ditto Paris/Rome/Florence/Kyoto/Tokyo/St. Petersburg. And Cuba, if it wouldn't net me a big fine and a lot more hassle than I want to deal with.


• My long-delayed (we're talking like three years) trip to LA to meet folks.


• Portland, OR. If I can make myself leave Powell's, I'd offer to buy pdx42 a drink.


• A cruise (Alaska or Mediterranean). If I'm dreaming, I might as well go for a transatlantic crossing on the QE2.

My 23:10 flight to DC has now become my 01:15 flight to DC for some weather-related reason, apparently. (My sources near Dulles, however, say "Buh? It's been really nice today, it's not raining.") My driving today has been for crap, and I've pulled a couple boneheaded manuevers that could've caused damage to my rental car and/or someone else, thanks to sleep dep; fortunately everyone escaped unscathed, but not through any effort of my own. I had spicy food for dinner, I'm out of antacids, and everything in the entire airport is closed. To quote Beavis and/or Butthead: "This sucks!" I also got the super-special-security-screening, complete with patdown and swabs of every piece of carryon luggage I had. Yay. Good thing I showed up way early.

On the brighter side: I had a really good couple of days, I failed to fall asleep and drown in the hot tub this afternoon, there was a tasty Ethiopian dinner tonight with brian1789, patgreene, cyan_blue, and S. and K., and now I'm headed home (eventually, I hope) to my sweetie and my cat and my very own bed.

Why, exactly, is it less expensive to buy two one-way tickets from Dulles to Oakland and back ($149.80 each) than it is to buy a single round-trip ticket for the same flights ($380)? And why does Travelocity want to charge me $130 in change fees plus ticket price differential when Delta themselves will charge me much less than that (and in both cases, of course, declining to give me additional credit if the new price is lower than the old). Do I shell out for the change fees at Travelocity, or do I just cancel the return leg, use that ticket later, buy another ticket on JetBlue for not that much more and get a much better departure time on Friday (11:45 pm rather than 1:10 pm) and a cushier overnight flight? Must decide tonight.

This past weekend I drove up to Boston to visit wolfy, with a bonus trip to see The Pogues on Saturday night at the Avalon. On Friday morning I got a later start than I'd intended, but I thought that an extra hour of sleep was preferable to leaving early and passing out on the way. At least it was a nice day for a road trip; it was sunny and clear, and the only place the cops were really out in force was Delaware. The whole trip took about 9 and a half hours, including an hour just to get to the Beltway and about 20 minutes to get through that joyous Mass Pike/128/30 interchange, plus a boneheaded manuever involving taking 95 up through Delaware and Philadelphia rather than 295 straight to the Turnpike. Since I was kind of done with being in the car and driving by the time I got to Waltham, we grabbed dinner and then headed back to wolfy's place where we hung out and watched whatever happened to be on IFC. In this case that was "sex, lies, and videotape" (damn, is that a young-looking James Spader) and "Party Monster" with Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green. Seth steals the show right out from under Macaulay, in my opinion.

Saturday involved sleeping in and then heading out for breakfast around 1:30. Killed some time running an errand, and headed downtown to kill some more time before going in to the Avalon; this involved hitting up Commonwealth Books, picking up a $5 volume on the art of Terry Gilliam and drooling over 400-year-old books in the display case. As for the Pogues, I thought this was a better show than the one I saw in DC when they last came through, better energy all around. wolfy sums it up here; "This one's called 'Sunnyside of the Street'" was announced something like three or four times, with only the last time actually being, y'know, that song.

Sunday we slept in again, puttered around a bit and then headed over to have brunch at Doyle's. Turns out that it was only the two of us; I was kind of disappointed that nobody showed up, but it was hardly the worst fate in the world to have had a quiet brunch and good conversations with just the two of us. I finally hit the road back home around 4:30 and managed to pull into my parking spot at exactly midnight, where Chris was just arriving after having gone to the Paul & Storm show that night. It was perfect driving weather on Sunday, and I left late enough that I missed a good bit of the heaviest traffic in lower CT I think. It would've been nice to have company and someone to talk to for the trip back, although travelling by myself meant that I could make or avoid stops as I wanted. Since I'd had a really heavy lunch, I didn't bother stopping for dinner and only made three brief stops all told, including the traditional stop at Vince Lombardi. I keep swearing that "next time" I'll stop in at The Traveler Restaurant off I-84 again (free book with every meal), but on the way up I'm always trying to get in to Boston before it gets too late and on the way back I've almost always just eaten. Ah well. I'm going up to Boston again at the end of the month for a wedding, maybe I'll manage to stop in then.

Yesterday I finally got out of my pajamas at 9:30 PM, and only then because I needed to run to the grocery store. I did at least accomplish something: I assembled a new bookcase and moved two of the other three bookcases in the dining room to another wall so that I can have that whole wall lined with shelves. Now I need to move the fourth bookcase over and sort through all the stuff on them. There are a bunch of magazines that can be recycled and I suspect some of the books can get posted on Paperbackswap or Half.com. I still won't have enough bookshelves put together, but it'll help clear up some of the huge stacks of books in the living room that have nowhere else to live at the moment.

I'm going to be in Boston this weekend for a quick visit. I'll be tired from driving on Friday and have plans on Saturday night, but if you'd like to indulge in a bit of Geeceewatching at close range, we (wolfy and I) are planning to have lunch at Doyle's Cafe in Jamaica Plain on Sunday around 1 PM. Wanna join us?

I am not going to fly from Dulles to Orlando via Pittsburgh. In what universe does that make sense? I suppose it doesn't matter much anyway, because USAir has no flights leaving Friday at a time that doesn't cut into the conference or put me back too late for the GBS show that night.

Why does JetBlue not fly into Orlando from Dulles? If I want to get there from here, I have to go to Newark first. :P

It's looking like AirTran and a sprint from Dulles to Foggy Bottom on Friday.


Oh, and cars suck too: someone just stopped by to tell me that my car is repeatedly locking and unlocking itself for no apparent reason. I guess this means it's time to call the mechanic down the street and see if they have some time to look at it.

Yes, I'm cranky today. Again. Allergies are kicking my ass, even with a bit of rain to clean things out a little. I'll feel human again sometime around, oh, July.

I just registered for php|tek in Orlando the week of April 24; unfortunately talking to a coworker about his Joe Satriani tickets reminded me that the Great Big Sea show I have good tickets for is around that time, which I had totally forgotten about. Luckily for me, it turns out to be that Friday night the 28th and the conference ends around mid-day on Friday. Now I just have to remember that when I try to book my flights and avoid tickets that will get me back in town after 7 PM.

Speaking of GBS, winterbadger, I assume this means I get to meet the fabulous A.? ;) I have the tickets in hand, by the way; they changed their mind about wil-call apparently.

So much for just zipping the suitcase shut and going again:

High in Boston on Sunday: 34 degrees.
High at Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday: 79 degrees.

Time to go do a load of laundry, try to dig out some summer clothes if I can find them, and pack.

United has an e-saver fare from Dulles to Logan next weekend, $147 r/t. Unfortunately, it's for departure on Jan. 14 and return on the 16th or 17th, which is shifted off by a day from what I need.

Right now my plan is to fly up on Friday in early afternoon ($74 including taxes on United o/w via Orbitz, in case anyone else still needs to find a fare) so that I can drop the cat off for boarding and take the train back with nminusone on Sunday.

Note to self: check with Pender about boarding Friday - Monday morning and whether they'll administer medications.

Next up: buy tickets to Orlando Jan. 16-18. Done.