I’ve gotten a little better with the clothes packing; I generally come home from a trip with everything worn, plus or minus that extra pair of underpants I threw in just in case.

But I still take along too much stuff-stuff: books, magazines, and a to-do list sixteen days long called All the Crap on My Laptop. If I were flying to Perth and back with four layovers and weather delays at each, I wouldn’t have the time to get through the stack of New Yorkers alone, much less all the projects I plan to fill my many, many idle hours of travel with.

Here’s what I ended up doing: walking…a lot. Eating…a lot. Doing that thing you do in motel rooms a lot…a lot. (What? You don’t watch late-night cable and drink bourbon when you’re on vacation? Wackos.)

And in those few waking hours when I wasn’t hanging out with some nice Bloomingtonian or walking the farm or driving around The Half-Blind BF (he lost a contact mid-trip), did I do the work I brought with me to do? Oh, no. I walked around a bookstore, looking for more not-work to do.

So how is it that on the way home, my baggage felt significantly lighter? And that this morning, despite a delayed flight (where yet more work did not get done) which also delayed bedtime until 2 am, I woke up feeling rested and refreshed instead of anxious and fretful?

Yeah. I guess I got my work done on this trip, after all…

xxx
c

Photo by Sidereal via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: communicatrix, Indiana, Midwest.

1. 6 / 6 / (0)6 passed without incident!

2. Failure to wake up at prescribed hour of 7:30 made for exciting dash to first real estate appointment.

3. Airline moving my flight to a new gate with no electrical outlets in a concourse that was a 10-minute walk away on top of the 10-minute walk I’d just taken to change planes after I’d just plunked down $6.95 for WiFi creates great fodder for righteously indignant letter to the company.

4. Limit of two carry-on items made for even weight distribution on long walk.

5. Density and high poundage of aforementioned carry-on items made for excellent cardiovascular workout and strength training.

6. 6 / 6 / (0)6 passed without incident!

7. Approximate number of feet between me and Typhoid Mary on the flight from Chicago to LAX, whose key positioning offers spectacular real-life test of my seemingly robust health.

8. Number of dead mammals my rental car ran over on the drive from Bloomington to Indianapolis, whose key positioning filled me with gratitude for largish frontal lobe.

9. Number that all houses for sale and items at Wal-Mart end in.

10. 6 / 6 / (0)6 passed without incident!

xxx
c

Photo by Mountainbread via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

TOPICS: 21 day salutes, Cheering the Hell Up™, communicatrix, Indiana, List-o-rama!, Midwest.