Vacation Eve
I don't have as much to report on today. Nobody got fired or died in the past 24 hours, so that seems like a good development. Hooray!
I suppose I could start today's Daily Lunch Update by noting that this will be the last of such updates for some time: no standard DLU again until at least Wednesday, March 11, which will be my first day back at work after today. In fact, there will be likely very few regular posts outside of the Twitter digests in the meantime. I'm guessing there may be a few here and there, but they are bound to be very sporadic: any time I have as downtime in which I can work on such things, and I have access to wifi, I'll be focused on editing and uploading the many, many photos I'll be taking, as well as drafts of my email photo digests I hope to send as the trip is going along. My aim is to send separate ones by city: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide. Hmm. Should I do yet a fourth separate one for Kangaroo Island? I only thought of that just now. We'll be there the better part of two days and it will be our only real exposure to wildlife, so . . . I think maybe I will!
That would leave Sydney by far the longest coverage of time in one such email, what with five days there. Should I split that into two separate emails? Maybe! It really depends on how many photos I just can't live without not sending that I have. On the other hand, I could perhaps do one Sydney email with something like 18 to 20 photos in it, and then limit all the others to between 10 and 15 photos. Who knows? We'll just have to wait and see how things go!
Even the Twitter digest posts may be sporadic, to at least a degree. That will also depend on when I am in a place with available wifi and can use Shobhit's laptop. Squarepace just does not make this easy at all, posting with the use of html (which copying those over from LiveJournal, which I still do every morning, entails), so I really need the use of the laptop in order to do it in a timely manner. Of course, you can also just follow along on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
I did look into paying a temporary charge to AT&T so we can get cell service while we are there. The cost is both stupid expensive and only per device. We might have still considered spending the $70 cost for a minimum of one month's service if it applied to both our devices concurrently since we are on a family plan, but that is evidently not the case. So, just like when we go to Canada, we will be keeping our phones on Airplane Mode and only connecting when we are in range of wifi. This will thus exclude a lot of our time out and about, and certainly the fourteen and a half hours flying from San Francisco to Sydney on Monday. (It'll be Wednesday morning in Sydney when we land.)
Shobhit has a lot of work shifts between now and when we leave: tonight, tomorrow night, Sunday morning and afternoon. I intend to do laundry Sunday morning so I have all the underwear I need for two weeks. We decided we're just going to pack clothes for that many days so we don't have to worry about laundry while we're away. There's going to be a lot to wash when we get back. But, we are taking two suitcases plus two carry-ons, the latter mostly as a precaution so we have necessary supplies for a few days in the event our luggage gets lost. I actually tried to advocate for doing carry-on the whole way but Shobhit vetoed that, and in the end it really is for the best because the gift I am bringing for Uncle David and Mary Ann is too large for a carry-on bag anyway.
We have lots of stuff already set out in the guest bedroom ready to be packed. And once the laundry is done on Sunday, we will then do the actual packing. Our flight from Seattle to San Francisco takes off at 3 p.m. on Monday, and I hope to God it is not delayed. Still, we very deliberately gave ourselves a pretty wide range of time for that layover, as we are scheduled to land in San Francisco International Airpott at 5:10 p.m. and the flight to Sydney then does not take off until 8:30.
In retrospect, at least now I am really glad I did international flying for the first time last year when Danielle and I flew to Toronto, landing first in Vancouver B.C. I'm sure there will be differences in Sydney but at least now I have a general sense of what to expect, what the process basically entails. We are bringing stuff we will have to declare to customs officials, though: meal packets and some alcohol. We've already found the Australian government web page that indicates we can bring such things—we just have to declare it. We are landing so early in the morning on Wednesday (it'll still be Tuesday Pacific Time) that there won't be any rush anyway. We'll have plenty of time to deal with all that.
So, last night then? Shobhit had an evening shift again. I was going to see a movie but the listed showtimes changed and became shit choices, so I decided to postpone that movie until the weekend. I will still see Portrait of a Lady on Fire after work tonight though. Anyway, I made the last can of soup we got from QFC—I thought it was minestrone and was disappointed to see it was lentil but I made it work—as well as grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. There were only two slices of regular bread left and I did not want to buy another loaf this close to leaving, so I just made Shobhit's on a hamburger bun. I also added a layer of sliced jalapeño to his. I left his sandwich in the microwave and the rest of the soup, to which I added more jalapeño and salt and pepper and even more water for volume after I took out my own portion, on the stove, for Shobhit to eat when he got home from work. I was awake when he came in the door, but only barely, and I fell asleep only moments after.
Before that, I finally watched the last six or so episodes of the final season of BoJack Horseman. I really loved it. This final season was not quite as hilarious as previous seasons, but it was as poignant as the best of them, and I think they stuck the landing really well. I am forever deeply impressed by the narrative depth given that show, which has both human and animal characters in it. I might even regard it as the best animated TV series ever made. I never saw anything else that so deftly combined humor and drama. And one can never get enough of their brilliant use of Margo Martindale in bit parts in several seasons, including this one.
Anyway, that sucked up most of my evening, which made it an evening very well spent. And after pounding several natural remedies at work and then getting to bed by 10:00, I got a nice, solid and by some miracle uninterrupted (thank you, Guru!) seven hours of sleep, so I woke up well rested this morning and feeling better than I did yesterday. I have not at any point felt genuinely sick this week, but for a couple of days it felt like a cold were trying to sneak up on me. As of tonight, I will stay up until at least midnight, and sleep at least until 7:00 tomorrow morning. My goal is to shift both those times forward an hour tomorrow night, and another hour Sunday night, and yet another hour Monday on the plane. If my plan works and I can stay asleep for at least seven hours on the plane, then I should manage to wake up between 4 and 5 a.m. local time in Sydney the morning we land. Surely I'll still zonk out way earlier than practical that evening, but I still want to do what I can to mitigate that effect.
[posted 12:26 pm]