Hi, friends!
In a few weeks I fly to Oregon to see a dear friend and I realized today… that I haven’t gone on a plane in 15 months. I was travelling once or twice a month for work prior to the pandemic and I was really in a good groove with how to pack for flights. I had it down. No stress, no issues with TSA, no overloading luggage, etc.
I haven’t even worn makeup in over a year, so all my travel stuff is dried up and expired. I don’t think I’m packing much makeup for this trip, but like I feel like I’m starting at ground zero here.
Anyhoo, I also haven’t packed a suitcase in over a year and like I’m pretty sure my lizard brain is going to have to practice pack probably this coming weekend to remind myself of how not to overpack dumb shit.
Is there something coming soon for you where it’s like ohhhh shit how do I do this like a normal person again???
Eep. I think my next plane trip will give me a panic attack. I’m a bad flyer to begin with, but after all this, it’s going to be a whole new ballgame.
I had friends over for a visit over the weekend and it was our first time seeing non-family in person since the pandemic started. We weren’t exactly social butterflies to begin with, but I swear I forgot how to interact with other human beings normally. But besides my being a slightly awkward host, we had a nice time.
I’m also considerably heavier than last time I flew and there wasn’t a lot of extra seatbelt space to begin with on flights.
Rationally I know it will be fine. It will. But part of my brain keeps flaring up with what-ifs.
There’s nothing particularly recent that I can think of, but once upon a time I used to know how to use a sewing machine. I’ve long since forgotten that particular skill.
It’s been at least 15 years since I’ve used a sewing machine. And I was never really good at it, just like “oh here’s an easy costume pattern” abilities.
I will say unless things have drastically changed, Simplicity brand patterns are never fucking simple to do.
I’m very happy that my husband knows how to use a sewing machine because I haven’t used one since middle school home ec. Pretty sure I’d break it.
I took some sewing classes at a community college, and I cannot say enough good things about them. Granted, this was a California community college, so the tuition was dirt cheap. But the instructors were great, really knowledgeable, didn’t assume any prior knowledge, covered all sorts of info from what kind of thread and scissors to get, to the actually usefulness of 18000kabillion programmed electronic sewing machines, etc.
I used to fly around all the time but not anymore and no matter how much time goes by between flights I am the “master packer”:
I hope you’re going to a part of Oregon that doesn’t want to
create a white supremacist blunderlandjoin Idaho. If so, WEAR FIVE MASKS AT ALL TIMES!For things I soon have to do again but am unsure how to go about is, IN PERSON (as in not virtual), educate dumb-as-fuck CEOs, “engineers” coughs lol@”engineers” the failing CEOs hire out of Uni to save their own asses, CFOs who think they’re financial gurus until they blame the newly hired “engineers” for their “misguigedness” after I ALREADY TOLD THEM HOW WRONG THEY WERE IN THE FUCKING FIRST PLACE IN BOARD MEETINGS, and pretentious as fuck architects, designers, and the monopolised general contractors who pay them to think they know everything…even when what they “know” defies the fucking laws of physics…without doing this:
which is pretty much what I did in several provinces and states and might be why I don’t fly around much anymore?
I thought you stopped flying after “the incident ”?
Yeah not a chance in hell I’m going to that part of Oregon.
The state of Oregon was founded as an exclusionary white space. The people of Portland, Eugene, and Bend who think they’re “the good ones” don’t get a free pass from that history.
You can say that about most of the country though. Parts of Oregon & WA are still awful but Portland even makes the godless Seattle liberals say “ those people are crazy!” & that’s why I love Portland. Bend is just where fed up Portlandiers went to get away & Eugene is where they never got over being in college. All 3 are great places though & let’s hope they have more kids than the rest of the state. Though Astoria is fucking heaven too.
I’ve stated before, I am a hugger & it was easy visiting Hawaii because everyone did. Now we are getting ready for yearly friend get together & I don’t know how to approach it. I hug them every year so? Approach w/ a disclaimer? Wait for them to approach opened armed?
As for travel, first flight back was bizarre. From line spacing in TSA, pull down mask to show agent your face, eating on a flight 2ft from a stranger to being harassed by rental car agent for my vax app clearance. Yes, Hawaii has a vax app you must have or you can’t rent car.
I was just out of town last weekend, and yes, my packing skills are for shit now. I kept unpacking and going, “what the fuck was I thinking?” I used to travel for work every couple of months (probably won’t happen any more — I’ve sort of been promoted), and I had packing down to a science.
Wearing professional clothes — I do go to the office a couple days a week, but it’s been full casual since the pandemic. We’re going back to “normal” next month, and I’ve got to start wearing dress shirts, slacks, and actual shoes again. And yes, weight gain isn’t going to make that any easier.
Yeah next week I have to (1) be in the office again and (2) look professional too
It’s not going to go well.
Congrats on the promotion and non-travel!
Well, it’s more money, but I actually like to travel every couple months or so. It was all domestic, but I got to see a lot of the US I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. So I’ll miss it, but I’m not going to get too upset. Things have been changing so fast at my job I could end up in another position in a month or two.
Posted in DUAN that I’m headed to Hawai’i on Friday. I hate flying to begin with, so this is gonna be interesting.
If you are on Hawaiian it goes by quick, if you are on Alaska, drink a bunch before.
On Alaska. I’ll probably take a prescribed chill-pill.
Chill pill & headphones = moemoe (go to sleep in Hawaiian)
moe = sleepy/tired in dutch
wonder if we stole that word
Could be…
“Old Spanish charts and a 1613 AD Dutch globe suggest that explorers from Spain had sighted Hawaiʻi long before Captain Cook. When Cook arrived in 1778, galleons laden with silver from the mines of Mexico and South America had been passing south of Hawaiʻi for two centuries on annual round trip voyages of 17,000 miles between Acapulco and Manila.”
http://imagesofoldhawaii.com/first-foreigners-to-find-hawaiʻi/
Is there something coming soon for you where it’s like ohhhh shit how do I do this like a normal person again???
i forgot how to normal person a long time ago
traveling is easy tho….long as i have my passport and my wallet…everything else is optional and available where ever i land
anyways…according to my performance review i need to relearn some social skills
apparently i communicate well….when i communicate…lol
*stares silently at teamlead*
I thought the Dutch were kind of a taciturn group and not big on small talk? I wouldn’t fit in very well. Although I don’t know if you remember this but shortly after I joined deadsplinter I mentioned a Dutch wedding I went to. I thought I would be OK because I can speak German and can read Dutch, so I imagined myself chatting away easily. Turns out Dutch sounds nothing like German so they might as well have been speaking Klingon. I remember this conversation because you found it hard to believe that there were any Dutch people left who can’t speak English, and I mentioned that most of the wedding guests could but there was a contingent of older folk and they had all lived in that little corner of the Netherlands that dips down in the south between Germany and Belgium and they might have never had the inclination to learn or even encounter English.
Among the English speakers Life’s Helpmeet and I became fast friends and when they would come over to visit the groom they’d make a side trip to NYC and stay with us, so they are a sociable bunch.
Yes, this is a predawn stream-of-consciousness anecdote. What is in those “take 1 upon waking” painkillers?
I still have an overnight bag packed with mini toiletries and such. I’ll need to update it with a travel toothbrush and replace the contacts with ones that have not yet expired before my inaugural pandemic-era trip (we’re soooo far away from using “post-pandemic”).
I’ve also thought about what I’m going to do when I have to be around co-workers in an office again and pretend I don’t harbour huge amounts of contempt for them. I’d like to change jobs soon, so double that having to go through the initial charade of pretending I can stand everyone and that I’m excited to be there for a few months at least.
Ha. It’s like an extreme version of what I went through after maternity leave. When I came back (admittedly also with some postpartum depression and limited sleep), it was like all my coping mechanisms for dealing with shitty coworkers were out the window. My tolerance was at zero. And that was after 2.5 months – I can’t imagine how much worse it would be after more than a year.
I’m a hermit so the pandemic has been heaven for me but I worry all the time about forgetting how to math without a calculator or excel. I play math games in my head to try to keep sharp but just yesterday I added 40 + 13*2 + 6 and got 52. Good thing I noticed it before I cast on!