Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



links

decay & ruin
Biosphere II
Chernobyl
dead malls
Detroit
Irving housing

got that wrong
Paleofuture.com

appropriate tech
Arduino μcontrollers
Backwoods Home
Fractal antenna

fun social media stuff


Like asecular.com
(nobody does!)

Like my brownhouse:
   hygienic Benghazi
Friday, January 26 2018

bed near the window, Room 405, Ramada Inn, West Hollywood, California

I woke up in the middle of the middle of the night and feared I would not fall back asleep. But then I did, and slept comparatively late, until after 7:00am. The only thing I had to do this morning was get to LAX and begin my journey home.
My roommate wasn't in the room, but I found him down in the lobby doing his thing. [REDACTED]
After saying goodbye to him, I started walking west on Santa Monica Blvd., continuing until I found a nice place for a Uber driver to pull over (just west of the intersection with Palm Street). There I sat on a bench in front of the Yogurt Stop (which was closed) and ordered up an Uber. One quickly appeared on the map, and seemed to go past me and then hang out some blocks away, too far away from me to walk to, though Uber was saying I was supposed to meet him there. Fuck that, the whole point is that Uber comes to you! Evidently that ride canceled and then I ordered another one. This time, the ride for some reason stopped in the parking lot behind Santa Palm Car Wash, but at least this time I could see him. I think he was a little mad at me for the delay, and he didn't talk at all. It was an Uber Pool, and several times my phone announced that others would be joining our ride, but they never did.
My white priviledge worked its magic yet again, and I glided through airport security without incident in Terminal 7. I immediately went looking for food, but Terminal 7 is unfortunately a vegan desert. There was a promising-looking Mexican place, but when I ordered what appeared to be a vegetarian burrito, the woman working there advised me that there was chicken in everything, so I had to keep moving. And so I did, all the way to Terminal 6, which looked familiar. It's a got an obnoxious Wolfgang Puck and a Habitat Burger Grill. But my problem here was the problem I'd had when I'd been here last time: it was morning, when the air fills with a miasma of eggy grease and potatoes cannot be served in the form of french fries. Otherwise I could've gotten a veggie burger at Habitat or a Southwest Vegan Burger at Point the Way Café. But no, I had to settle for some sort of battered fried potato thing with toast that appeared to have been buttered. Neither were likely vegan, but I was hungry and I'm not the sort of vegan who throws food away.
When I made it back to Terminal 7, I noticed Gretchen had posted a direct message on Facebook asking me to call her about Neville. What could be the problem? It was good that she'd at least told me the subject matter to be discussed (I absolutely hate messages that say simply "call me"). When I got through to Gretchen, she said that the problem was lump in Neville's face. It has continued to grow despite the antibiotics, which indicated it probably actually was some sort of tumor. Unfortunately, it couldn't be removed until the middle of next week. Gretchen was kicking herself that she hadn't had that lump removed earlier, but there was no way she could've known. Our vet had done a test which seemed to indicate infection. That was the professional opinion. All indications were that it was something that could be fought with antibiotics. Only after it continued to grow did the lump demonstrate itself to be something more problematic.

My journey home today would be over the course of two flights. The first (and by far the longest) of these was from LAX to Newark, NJ. I'd arranged to have a window seat, and, because I hadn't drunk any coffee (or other forms of caffeine) I was nicely dehydrated going into the flight, meaning I would probably not be needing access to a restroom. Blocking my access to the aisle were an older woman and her husband. At some point in the flight, the husband (I think it was him, though I wasn't paying attention) sneezed violently while eating a mouthful of sandwich. This sprayed food on the screen in front of his face and also into the woman's space. There were also a few flecks of things that ended up on the keyboard and screen of my laptop. I might not've even noticed, but the woman was mortified, acting like it was some sort of hygienic Benghazi. She started spritzing all around her with some mystery bottle of disinfectant and tried to offer it to me as well, but I didn't want it. I'd rather deal with bacterial risk than some mystery chemical that I can't immediately wash off my hands.
I was surprised and delighted to discover that my flight to Albany would be leaving from the same concourse I'd arrived on from Los Angeles. This meant I wasn't in any sort of time crunch and could dine at a somewhat leisurely pace. I sat down at one of those places where orders are all done through a tablet, though of course I was swiping my credit card in the wromg place: the card reader for the table setting to my right (since it made sense for the reader for my setting to be to my right, not to my left). After getting set straight by an employee that these tablets were here to replace, I ordered a beer and a sandwich that mentioned grilled vegetables but no cheese. It was, I suppose, naïve of me to assume it would be vegan, but my excuse was that I'd ordered from a robot. The sandwich was good, but it had a lot of some sort white sauce that was clearly made of mayonnaise. I also had a Lagunitas beer, which I sipped as I dealt with a minor email emergency. I happened to glance at my ticket at some point and note that boarding for my flight would be ending in one minute. Where had my hour layover gone? I chugged the last of my beer and gathered up all my stuff loosely in my arms (not bothering to put it all away carefully) and ran to the gate. I was one of the last (but not the last) people to board the little jet bound for Albany. It was one of those with an aisle diving pairs of seats on the starboard side from single seats on the port. I took one of the latter for the short 35 minute flight at 14 thousand feet (low enough to never fully lose service on my phone).

On the Albany airport parking shuttle, I was the only passenger after all the airport employees got off at the employee lot. Happily, my Subaru started without complaint. Just south of where I-90 splits off to head east to Massachusetts, I cracked open the beer that had been sitting on the passenger floorboard for the past few days. It had evidently experienced serious cold during my absence, because there were chunks of ice floating in it. The beer had also gone flat, suggesting the cap seal had been compromised by ice expansion within the bottle.

Gretchen and the dogs were in the recuperation fort when I arrived home. The dogs were so sleepy that they didn't make the fuss they'd normally make when I've been gone for days. They rolled over and wagged their tails and that was it. [REDACTED]


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180126

feedback
previous | next