Last week I was supposed to fulfill one of my New Year's resolutions to take a trip somewhere other than Indiana. But unfortunately my plan to head to Denver didn't quite work out the way I had intended it to and I ended up flying straight home to California after my friend's wedding in Indy.
But the condensed trip still helped me make some progress on another resolution. Though I get a little stressed out by air travel - the packing, getting their early enough to make it through security screening, worrying about catching connected flights - the one plus to spending hours in airports, on runways and on planes is that it offers plenty of time to read.
When I travel, I try to bring a mix of reading materials - a couple New Yorkers, which are always plentiful in my house, a lighter magazine like People and a book or two. I rarely get through all the reading materials, but it's nice to have options. This time around, I was low on People magazines since I read those at the gym so I packed two copies of the New Yorker and a random book I found in my room. See part of what prompted resolution No. 1 to read 10 books this year is that I have a cardboard box full of them in my room - gifts from Christmas and birthdays over the last couple of years. I grabbed one out of the box that seemed like it would be light reading and stuffed it into my carry on bag.
When I got through security at the airport, I pulled the book out to kill sometime and that's when I realized it was going to be bad. "A Version of the Truth" is written by two authors, Jennifer Kaufmann and Karen Mack. Now, call me conventional, but I prefer my novels to have just one author and one voice. The pair wrote another book together and I wonder what their process was. Did they trade off chapters? Or did one write the first draft and then the other go through it, adding to it.
The book was not very well-written and it wasn't all that entertaining. But it did offer a break from the in-depth articles in the New Yorker. So I kept reading it. It's one of those books I would have put down after a couple chapters if I had picked it up at home. But being as I had about 12 hours in airplanes and a few more in airports, I kept chugging through it.
The book is about Cassie Shaw who is a 30-something widow who is glad her mean, alcoholic husband died three years earlier. Now it's really hard to find a character sympathetic who wishes her husband dead and then is actually glad when he dies. Even if he was a jerk, she should have had some more complicated feelings than just being happy about it. Cassie doesn't have much going for her. She barely finished high school. She lives with her mom, who is kooky as can be, and she doesn't have a paying job.
She suddenly decides to take things into her own hands - but not by any self-improvement, higher education means. She just lies on a job application and says she has a college degree. She gets hired in the psych department of a college. The more time she spends around the college, she begins to want more out of life - like nice clothes and a good-looking boyfriend. But she is still in the woe-is-me mode for most of the book and it gets old really fast.
The actions of the characters is not believable and a lot of their behavior is inconsistent. The most annoying thing in the book is Sam, Cassie's African gray parrot who not only talks, but seems to converse with Cassie as well as any guests she has. Her conversations with the bird were just one step too much for me. But I nearly finished the book while I was traveling. I only had two chapters to go when I arrived home so I figured I might as well finish it to its very predictable conclusion.
Hopefully the next book I read for the resolution will be better.
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label air travel. Show all posts
Monday, May 31, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The practice of packing in a rush
I've always had a system for packing that ensures I don't forget anything I need no matter how long or short the trip. I make a list of all the essentials and then cross each item off as it goes into the bag.
Part of what has changed is that I am a lot more judicious in what I bring with me. I remember the first trip I took far from home, to Ireland, I had a back pack and two huge rolling bags. I couldn't control my luggage on my own so I think the hospitality of the Irish for helping me lug those things around. It's easy to remember what you need when you just take it all with you. Now I pack just what I can handle on my own. But the other thing is that the last few times I've needed to pack a bag, this system has gone out the window because I am in a rush.
Yesterday is a perfect example. I had to catch a 6:45 a.m. flight out of San Jose with Indianapolis as a final destination. Now I'd spent months thinking about what I needed to bring and how to pack a bridesmaids dress without turning it into a wrinkled mess.
My ideal plan was to pack it in a garment bag and bring it as carry on. But then last weekend when I went to buy a garment bag, the cheapest one I could find was $100. It didn't seem worth it for something I would probably only use once in my life. Instead, I decided I should borrow a garment bag. The problem is the people I know don't travel - or they don't travel with nice clothes. My mom asked a co-worker who said she might have something, but then the co-worker forgot to bring it in for two days.
So the garment bag arrived at my house yesterday afternoon. I unfortunately, did not arrive home until a few hours later. Wednesday is the day the paper goes to press and as the person designing it, I need to stay until it is done or I would have just taken off an hour or two early to get a jump on packing. The paper was done about half an hour before deadline, but I needed to leave notes for a student intern who would be helping while I was out and then I had promised to pick up dinner at the farmers market in Hollister.
By the time I was pulling off the freeway into town, it was almost 7 p.m. And then I suddenly realized I forgot my wall charger for my cell phone at work. My office is a half hour drive, one way. And my phone, as a mytouch, lasts barely a day without being charged. With a flight leaving at 4 a.m., I didn't have time to go to my office so I decided to go to the nearest T-mobile store and just by another charger. $35 later, I was set.
By the time I got home, ate dinner and took a shower, it was almost 9 p.m. before I started packing. I used the technique of rolling all my clothes to fit more in the suitcase. Actually, a few days ago a friend sent me a link to a slideshow from the New York Times of an airline flight attendant packing a carry-on bag for a trip. The airline I flew, Delta, charges for checked bags so I was hoping to avoid it. Plus, I am kind of a control freak and the idea of leaving my bag in someone else's hands and hoping it gets to my final destination really makes me nervous.
So everything was in the garment bag and ready to go when I went downstairs to print out my boarding pass. I figured I should double check the measurements for carry on. And then I realized the garment bag is way bigger than the allotted space per passenger.
In the end, I decided to use my trusty carry on, which has pockets for my shoes, a little case for toiletries and seems to hold just enough clothes for a few days. Based on the slideshow advice, I put the bridesmaids dress in the bottom of the suitcase, piled in my heavy items to lighter items and then folded the dress over all the stuff in the middle. I definitely had plenty of space in my suitcase.
By the time I finished packing it was nearly 10 p.m. and I was just hoping I hadn't forgotten anything. The last time I packed in a rush, I forgot tweezers, a razor and shaving gel. Other family members forgot toothpaste and deodorant so I wasn't alone in forgetting things. But luckily it was at my cousin's wedding in San Jose where half my family was staying so I was able to swap the necessary items with other immediate family members for the things they had forgotten.
So far this trip, the dress came out a little wrinkled but nothing an iron couldn't fix. And as for forgetting things, I think I've got everything I need. The only problem is I may have inadvertently mixed my neutrogena face wash in with some conditioner and vice versa. See, I had my shampoo, conditioner and face wash in little travel size containers from the last time I traveled to Indianapolis for the bridal shower/bachelorette party. So I just left them in the bathroom for this second trip. But last night I decided to fill them up a bit more. All three items contain white liquids and the only way to tell them apart is that the shampoo has a little more sheen to it, and the conditioner and shampoo are scented while the sensitive skin face wash is unscented.
When I took a shower tonight, I couldn't tell the conditioner and face wash apart - the consistency of both seemed off, leading me to the theory that I filled the conditioner bottle with face wash and the face wash with conditioner. If that is the only issue I discover over the next three days, that won't be too bad.
Part of what has changed is that I am a lot more judicious in what I bring with me. I remember the first trip I took far from home, to Ireland, I had a back pack and two huge rolling bags. I couldn't control my luggage on my own so I think the hospitality of the Irish for helping me lug those things around. It's easy to remember what you need when you just take it all with you. Now I pack just what I can handle on my own. But the other thing is that the last few times I've needed to pack a bag, this system has gone out the window because I am in a rush.
Yesterday is a perfect example. I had to catch a 6:45 a.m. flight out of San Jose with Indianapolis as a final destination. Now I'd spent months thinking about what I needed to bring and how to pack a bridesmaids dress without turning it into a wrinkled mess.
My ideal plan was to pack it in a garment bag and bring it as carry on. But then last weekend when I went to buy a garment bag, the cheapest one I could find was $100. It didn't seem worth it for something I would probably only use once in my life. Instead, I decided I should borrow a garment bag. The problem is the people I know don't travel - or they don't travel with nice clothes. My mom asked a co-worker who said she might have something, but then the co-worker forgot to bring it in for two days.
So the garment bag arrived at my house yesterday afternoon. I unfortunately, did not arrive home until a few hours later. Wednesday is the day the paper goes to press and as the person designing it, I need to stay until it is done or I would have just taken off an hour or two early to get a jump on packing. The paper was done about half an hour before deadline, but I needed to leave notes for a student intern who would be helping while I was out and then I had promised to pick up dinner at the farmers market in Hollister.
By the time I was pulling off the freeway into town, it was almost 7 p.m. And then I suddenly realized I forgot my wall charger for my cell phone at work. My office is a half hour drive, one way. And my phone, as a mytouch, lasts barely a day without being charged. With a flight leaving at 4 a.m., I didn't have time to go to my office so I decided to go to the nearest T-mobile store and just by another charger. $35 later, I was set.
By the time I got home, ate dinner and took a shower, it was almost 9 p.m. before I started packing. I used the technique of rolling all my clothes to fit more in the suitcase. Actually, a few days ago a friend sent me a link to a slideshow from the New York Times of an airline flight attendant packing a carry-on bag for a trip. The airline I flew, Delta, charges for checked bags so I was hoping to avoid it. Plus, I am kind of a control freak and the idea of leaving my bag in someone else's hands and hoping it gets to my final destination really makes me nervous.
So everything was in the garment bag and ready to go when I went downstairs to print out my boarding pass. I figured I should double check the measurements for carry on. And then I realized the garment bag is way bigger than the allotted space per passenger.
In the end, I decided to use my trusty carry on, which has pockets for my shoes, a little case for toiletries and seems to hold just enough clothes for a few days. Based on the slideshow advice, I put the bridesmaids dress in the bottom of the suitcase, piled in my heavy items to lighter items and then folded the dress over all the stuff in the middle. I definitely had plenty of space in my suitcase.
By the time I finished packing it was nearly 10 p.m. and I was just hoping I hadn't forgotten anything. The last time I packed in a rush, I forgot tweezers, a razor and shaving gel. Other family members forgot toothpaste and deodorant so I wasn't alone in forgetting things. But luckily it was at my cousin's wedding in San Jose where half my family was staying so I was able to swap the necessary items with other immediate family members for the things they had forgotten.
So far this trip, the dress came out a little wrinkled but nothing an iron couldn't fix. And as for forgetting things, I think I've got everything I need. The only problem is I may have inadvertently mixed my neutrogena face wash in with some conditioner and vice versa. See, I had my shampoo, conditioner and face wash in little travel size containers from the last time I traveled to Indianapolis for the bridal shower/bachelorette party. So I just left them in the bathroom for this second trip. But last night I decided to fill them up a bit more. All three items contain white liquids and the only way to tell them apart is that the shampoo has a little more sheen to it, and the conditioner and shampoo are scented while the sensitive skin face wash is unscented.
When I took a shower tonight, I couldn't tell the conditioner and face wash apart - the consistency of both seemed off, leading me to the theory that I filled the conditioner bottle with face wash and the face wash with conditioner. If that is the only issue I discover over the next three days, that won't be too bad.
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