Sunday, June 02, 2013

lips and teeth to ask how your day went

I'm beyond tired, which I suppose makes sense since it's one a.m. in New York and I'm going to be jetlagged for a couple of days. Also, I didn't sleep well last night, since I've got a cold that will doubtlessly turn into bronchitis at some point (since everything I do turns into bronchitis). But I got up at 8:30ish, took care of some tings, showered, packed - and managed to pack everything into two carryons, which was totally unexpected. I didn't go wild and grab a whole suitcase full of free books at the convention like other people did (mostly because I didn't have any time, not because I was picky or too honor-bound), and I had to leave a couple of the free books that I did grab behind, but I'm really glad I was able to live out of a carry-on for eight days without any real disasters. I always pack the wronge combo of shoes, but at least I wore all the shoes I brought at least once (I managed to squeeze six pairs of shoes into my carry-on, which is one of the prime beauties of having small feet).

Anyway, you don't care about that. Perhaps you don't care about any of it, but I'll keep going. I checked out at 11, went downstairs - and found a ridiculously long line to store baggage. The luggage is actually stored by a robot (named Yobot), which seems awesome in theory (the robot picks up your luggage from where you put it, then moves it to a secure cubby behind a thick glass wall until you're ready to claim it again). But in practice, most people have never used it before and so are really slow, and in this case the Yobot just gave up the ghost and needed a maintenance guy to fix it. At this point I'm totally starving, since I'd been standing around for twenty minutes. So I dragged my stuff upstairs and had brunch in the hotel restaurant, where they put my luggage in their coat check.

The brunch was funny; clearly this place is trying to be hip. It was a fixed price brunch with unlimited drinks and food for two hours, which was utterly wasted on me since I just wanted something tasty and some coffee and a place to sit and work for a couple of hours. But even though it was way overpriced for what I had, the food itself was good, I liked their coffee, and they said nothing about me pulling out my laptop on their fancy outdoor terrace. Of course, I had three mimosas since otherwise the bill would have just been stupid, so I was a bit tipsy when I left...

...which explains how I just got in a cab to Newark five hours early. I'd already decided last night that I would go to the airport early and work, but the champagne made me temptable and almost lured me downtown to go shopping on Bleecker Street. But I ignored the fashionable bitch inside my head and kept my eyes on the prize today. And I'm so so glad I did; when I got to Newark, I was able to get onto an earlier flight (with no change fees) that left at 3:46 instead of 8:46. It was a middle seat, but I decided to take it so that I could get home five or six hours earlier. And I'm v. relieved that happened, because I'm now getting notifications for my original flight, which was delayed by at least four hours and wouldn't have gotten me home until two or three a.m. Thank you, travel angel, wherever you are.

On the plane, I wrote ~12 pages of the secret young adult series that I'm working on, which felt really, really good. Then I got home, unpacked everything (crazy, I know), ordered pizza, and was going to write...but I'm way too tired, and in the interest of not getting bronchitis, I should probably sleep. Goodnight!

No comments: