Homeward Bound

We had our last English breakfast (just toast and a crumpet for me... okay, and a banana and two small not-worth-it pancakes) and by 9:15 AM or so we were off to Heathrow by cab (no more trains for awhile!). The check-in station was confusing, but once we got our bags checked by an actual human instead of their machines and spoke to another actual human who allowed Robin to steer me around in a wheelchair, off we went to our gate in plenty of time. Because I used a wheelchair I was able to pre-board, and once again we lucked out by being in a row of three seats with no additional passenger so we could stretch out. This time I watched a few movies (Mandalorian and Grogu, eh; Hoppers which was sweet but frenetic and definitely skewed on the young side; and Encanto which I could rewatch forever) and we ate well, and were back on the ground mid-afternoon in time for our driver to navigate rush-hour traffic and deposit us home a bit after 6 PM. No more dumpster, so the first thing I did was move my car back into its usual spot for the squirrels' acorn target practice. I dumped all my laundry and got out of my suitcases, and did a bit more trundling about to get everything ready for working tomorrow, by which time maybe this head cold will dissipate somewhat?

The Hardest Part

We’re all packed and waiting for the car to pick us up and take us to the airport. But of course there are still last-minute hitches our of our control, like some weird tech issues at all English airports affecting all incoming flights (last we looked ours was still a go) and the landlord sending up the roofers again to vacuum up all the detritus from the rafters, which took over an hour of privacy away from us  Still, I’m hoping for the best and trying to get into relaxation mode  I should sleep pretty well on the flight!

M 

Shredtastic

Still no roofers, although contractors did come by again to dump more stuff in the dumpster. Glad they stayed away, as I had two more international business trips to book for my partners, one in a 3-way phone call and the other - yep, one last change to the India trip. Meanwhile, Robin has begun shredding all our financial stuff from years past that had been sitting up in the now-vacated rafters between our apartment and the roof, as by law we only need to keep a handful of years of records (and the important ones are pretty much all online now). He also managed to put his old Cintiq drawing tablet back in its original box (another bit that had been stored in the rafters) along with various peripherals, and we're well on our way to getting the apartment in good shape to welcome Jonny's cat Mango when he leaves the weekend after we return to retrieve his car and drive it back from Texas. Been awhile since we've needed to make space for a pet! In the meantime we can now reach the steamer and our suitcases easily, which will make our upcoming trips that much easier. I'm as organized as I can be at work, getting ready to send out my reminders to peers and partners tomorrow morning, and feeling my usual nervousness about travel.

Stop and Go

My life has once again become things I need to do before vacationing, the first being to take the car in for its annual inspection by month's end. Alas, the NYS DMV has suffered a major outage for the past few days, and while I believe things are now restored I'm going to have to wait until Friday to take the car around the corner (literally, I can practically see that auto shop from our home) and leave it there for the inspection whilst I go back to working from home. Saturday is the usual shopping and meds, and Sunday we head out to Lawn Guylan to see our friends Phyllis and Richie. But before that I'm having lunch with a former colleague tomorrow, where I will pick her South Asian  brain to make sure my outfit for the upcoming Indian wedding celebration is acceptable. The dress I wanted finally arrived today, looks lovely, and fits wonderfully, so I'm hoping it's okay. Now I just have to finalize plans with my Philadelphia colleague so I can figure out which Amtrak to take and how to get around downtown Philly by bus. Fortunately that's all still a couple weeks away. Unfortunately the end of that trip is only two days before we leave for England. I'm getting a bit nervous about it all.

Travel Log, Part Trois

Almost all done! The one partner who hasn't yet been registered or gotten travel done for the annual partner meeting is out on PTO, and there's nothing I can do about that. At least I'm fairly sure she'll want me to register her and take two of the flight choices I've texted her, but I don't really care at this point. I'm just so tired. I usually log off on Fridays with almost no emails in my inbox, today there were about a dozen when all was said and done (including timesheets of course), but it couldn't be helped. I even had to blow off a colleague just back from maternity leave who wanted an update on where I stand planning an event that I haven't had time to plan, so that's my first assignment for Monday. In the meantime, it'll be baseball, English football, maybe comics reading if my next batch arrives tomorrow, getting back on the exercise bike, and lots of sleep this weekend.

Travel Travails, Part Deux

One day. I take *one* day off, and I spend almost the entire next morning cleaning up my inbox and helping out partners who didn't exactly book their trips correctly, including one partner whose EA was out. Very glad I did so much relaxing yesterday! I'm more than halfway done now with these arrangements for the annual partner meeting, just waiting on two more folks. It can all wait until tomorrow, when I'm back home and comfortable. The other thing I had to do was be a warm body in case inspectors needed me for anything, which meant being on a different floor than usual and having to do more schleppage as a result. I could really use a restful weekend at this point, but there's still tomorrow!

Parts Known

Lots to do in the office today, mostly because messaging has finally come out about the annual KPMG US partners meeting, which is in Vegas this year so that means complications in terms of fare class in addition to the whole thing being master-billed and, of course, our travel agency going through various issues that slow down everything. And that's not even to mention what's going to happen with any oncoming hurricanes! I made some headway, but feel like this is just the start of a multi-day process as other fall trips arise for my 13 folks. Speaking of which, tomorrow's sojourn to Queens has been postponed due to Robin feeling a bit under the weather and the weather feeling under what it should be, if that makes sense.

Mothering Sunday

Today was certainly the better of the two weekend days to venture into NJ weather-wise, but alas not in terms of traffic. Sundays are always tricky, especially going back home through the George Washington Bridge. The wind had me gripping the steering wheel on the way across and down (especially across I-80), and on the way back we were stuck in traffic for about 15-20 min8tes leading to an accident site which gave me ample time to watch Liverpool celebrate clinching the Premier League title, which Robin was able to call up on his phone (I'd seen much of the first half that way while visiting Mom). I also got to listen to about an inning or two of the Yankees game while creeping up to the GWB, and they wound up winning (while I believe the Mets once more pulled defeat from the jaws of victory). I'm more achy than I'd planned on being, so no exercise bike today. Just sleep! And lovely memories of seeing Mom.

Silly Site o' the Day

I definitely spoke too soon. The power steering belt assembly went kaput today. The car started up with weird flappy noises, so I canceled my haircut appointment and belayed the food shopping in favor of taking it back to the auto shop, and the belt came off mere yards from our destination so it was a very tricky final right turn but we made it. Unfortunately the parts won't be in until midday Monday so we had to cancel the trip to Mom; fortunately she got a local friend to help her out with her medical appointment. This is always one of my great fears, not only being without a needed vehicle but being unable to help out Mom logistically when she doesn't have a locally reliable support network and she has to rely on luck (which was on her side today if not mine). We didn't have a huge shopping list so we can get by until the car's fixed (as soon as I pick it up, presumably, Monday afternoon, we head straight for the supermarket) but it's still frustrating as heck, and I can't stop thinking that I should have left it there yesterday and had them do the needed repairs... but there's no guarantee anyway that the parts would have arrived today! And so my brain ping-pongs back and forth, and I can't get it to stop. It's a weird downward spiral, which is very different than turtles all the way down:

Via Laughing Squid. Time for The Ten Commandments now, at least...

Silly Site o' the Day

My second (and last) day at the education/hotel complex was just so much sensory overload! I didn't sleep well last night, up between 2:30 and 4:15 or so, and I'm sure that didn't help. My stomach is still doing flip-flops and the travel anxiety has remained but everything worked out, I caught a trolley-thingie in the Orlando airport so I didn't have to walk to the gate with my non-wheeled overnight bag, and for whatever reason the LaGuardia walk didn't seem as lengthy as it had yesterday. The driver made record time getting me home, and now I just want to sleep, but of course it's back to the (home) office tomorrow to catch up on all the work stuff I haven't done. I'd love to return to the complex when I'm feeling better, and I'd love to spend the next few days detoxing. I definitely won't have time to watch this entire exploration of pareidolia:

Via Laughing Squid. And so, to bed!

Silly Site o' the Day

What a day! It's been a long time since I traveled alone on a plane; I think the last time was when I flew to England and met Robin's folks, so probably well over a quarter century ago. And of course I haven't been on an airplane since The Before Times, so I masked up at both LaGuardia (what a cool airport!) and Orlando, but was able to distance myself enough on the plane (nobody in the middle seat!) that I didn't feel I needed one there. KPMG's Lakehouse complex is absolutely amazing, the food is terrific, the learning sessions very interesting, and you feel very catered to, but all my travel anxiety and walking and perhaps a low-level cold have taken a toll on my stomach, so I probably didn't get as much out of it as I would if I'd felt better. Still, can't wait for tomorrow's sessions and yet another two-airports-and-flight. I've seen lots of cows (in Orlando!) but no gators yet, so I consider myself lucky. Haven't even had the opportunity to kiss a bug!

Silly Site o' the Day

All the tech issues are fixed except for my commuter card not being accepted on my express bus, which means I'll have to be backwards-compatible and try to offload some of the $250+ it contains onto an old-fashioned MetroCard, but I'm not even thinking about that now. Everything else is fixed, except for a very grueling almost-3-hour commute home, and I'm now showered and exhausted and just want to be on my way tomorrow. No time for boy math, even!

Silly Site o' the Day

Technology continues to stymie my ability to work properly, as I keep getting phantom calendar invite notifications on my phone and a critical app on my laptop is unable to see the microphone part of my speakerphone. Hoping that tomorrow's trip to the office will solve those issues, but of course I'm not even thinking about that too much now, what with my trip to Florida two days away. I can't even do girl math. I'm looking forward to it very much whilst dreading it at the same time, and my stomach is protesting mightily as a result. It's a weird sort of anticipation-dread...

Silly Site o' the Day

My last day in the office this week, my laptop's working fine, I've seen most of the folks I've missed including at least half the partners I support, got another Admin Pro Day gift, and today was Take Your Kids to Work Day so I met some lovely children too! And had sushi with Kim, Zed's former pet-parent, in a great place on 52nd Street which just happened to have a street fair going on today. And at 4 PM I took a break to attend a book club meeting! Definitely my happy place. Other than the lunch and child-greeting I tried to be as heads-down as I could today, but I'm still not caught up. I knew this week I'd be sacrificing productivity for socializing, although I admit that, thanks to the 90-minute-each-way commute, my Pokemon GO game has improved and I have lots of new creatures to catalog now. Still, thank goodness I can put down my cell phone and earbuds tomorrow, plug in my laptop at home, and Get Stuff Done. Stuff not involving putting beans in things.

Silly Site o' the Day

OMG, so exhausted after 4+ hours of driving, and not really looking forward to working tomorrow, but it would have been worse to do this on a Friday. The driving itself was okay if you like fog (at least there was no precip and it wasn't cold), and Mom's medical appointment was fine, but I foolishly decided to swing by Delicious Orchards on the way home because I generally like their specialty foods and they have a nice cafe where we could get lunch. The cafe was closed, there was nothing really that caught our fancy (it's like Stew Leonard's without the puppets and I can get better specialty stuff at Garden Gourmet), so we bought some food to eat in the car and used Waze to find our way back to the Garden State Parkway, which took us through some really backwater areas and wound up at the Arts Center, like 16 miles north of where we'd first exited. All of this would have been very nice in, say, September or October. February, not so much. Glad I had my last PT session yesterday, the exercises are really going to help with the tendinitis pain to come. Now I think I'll lay me down. Here are some musings on architectural failures.

Silly Site o' the Day

White Rabbits and happy October! We celebrated by venturing into the New Jersey mountains for my annual college reunion party, which I'm enjoying more and more as I'm remembering who all these folks were and are. It's really helping my long-term recall! I was a bit nervous since this is the first time I've been maskless and indoors since the EA celebration at the office (where I was more or less able to keep my distance), but I knew everyone there was at least double-boosted. And my  hair actually looked acceptable, unlike these folks. The weather was a bit chancy, but nothing insurmountable. We found out upon returning that we can get directly onto the Henry Hudson Parkway northbound from the upper level of the GWB; we've been taking the lower level so long that I just assumed we'd wind up on Riverside Drive no matter what, so that was a cool discovery. Might try it out on Monday, when it's not scheduled to be either rainy nor evening when we return from Mom's.

Silly Site o' the Day

Another round-the-block walk outside to mail out the electric bill (I spent some of the morning catching up on finances), 10 situps on the bench, 2 miles on the bike, and I feel terrific. Energy begets energy, I guess. As long as I don't wind up hurting myself I think I'm on a good path now. We also just finished watching An American In Paris, which put me in the mood for this:

And now, some dinner then more comics reading. A great weekend!

On the Bus to Brighton

Just a sneak preview of the photos I hope to put up on my Facebook page when I get home:



Today we're headed into Lewes so Robin can finally close his British bank account.

Off Across The Pond!

In exactly four weeks from today, Robin and I will be taking our first vacation outside of New York since, well, since a pretty long time. We'll be headed out to England again, at last! We're mostly going to see Rob's Dad (a faithful Pen-Elayne reader; hi Dad!), with whom we're staying, and hope to see his sisters as well (hi Carol! I remember you read Pen-Elayne too!). We're also tentatively planning a day in London, since I will go a teensy bit nuts if I have a week of countryside with no city in between to break it up. :) This time we're renting a car, and I'm a bit nervous about driving on the left side of the road, but my brother and sis-in-law (who have experience with same from when they visited the Caymans) have calmed me down a bit there.

Here's the thing, though -- I do expect to try to update Pen-Elayne daily, but I wouldn't mind a guest host during the time we're out. Anyone want the keys to the blog? As y'all know, it's not like I've been posting a great deal of late as is, so your participation can only improve the amount of new content here! Let me know in the comments.

I'm very excited about going back to see my husband's family again, and am also looking quite forward to shopping in Boots and taking in the view of all the Easter sweets sure to be on display at Tesco.

Sailing to Dreamland

Seen on Maru's blog:



Anyone know a source for this? I think it's lovely and, given the bridge disaster in Minnesota, not a little poignant. Update: Robin found it pretty easily; it's called The Sun Sets Sail and it's by a Canadian artist named Rob Gonsalves. Now my search is for a size big enough to use as a desktop background with no pixellation.