Outbound airport babblings

[9:25 am]

Sitting in the Portland airport. We planned to get here about two and a half hours before the flight, to be safe. We scurried around getting ready, and were ready (including my having read all the overnight LJ postings) - way early. So we left. Between kinder traffic at that time and all, early doesn't begin to cover when we got to the airport. Our flight leaves at 11:15, but not only are we at the gate, I've ready several chapters of a Fiona Patton book, grown restless with it, wandered through the gift shops....

Scott is happily ensconced with Free Zone. The back cover of the book is too much weirdness in one place for me, and from what Scott says, the book really is that weird.

We stopped at the Made in Oregon store before we came through security. I got a deck of Multnomah Falls cards for Crow, continuation of an in-joke that has been going on since college. I think pulling the 7 of diamonds and delivering it to her separately from the rest of the deck might be a degree or two of overkill these days, especially with what is actually a decent deck. But I am planning to make a point of telling her that card's included.

Security was (happily) boring. I didn't set the gate off, and despite all the digital camera stuff, my backpack did not get searched. (It did get run through the x-ray twice, however....)

I am debating hwat to do with my time. I could read more, but I was finding it hard to stay submerged in the story - no fault of the story, just restlessness. I could draw, but there's nothing around that I really want to draw. I could go on babbling indefinitely in this entry, but since I've run out of things to say except for what I could do, I imagine it would be better if I didn't draw it out too much.

I meant to print a short story I'm dabbling with so I could work on it, but I forgot to. Still, I remember where I'd left off; maybe I could write more of it. Or write up descriptions to place online when I get back, or more characters I'll never play, or....

[10:30 am]

Scott and I wandered down to the airport bar (Red's) for onion rings & a turkey sandwich split between us. A bit early for lunch, but we were hungry and we are about to head across two timezones anyway. I tried to draw him reading (more from boredom than interest, which didn't help), but he moved during it and I didn't recover well (okay, I should have just started a new drawing).

I've read more of the book. It seems interesting and well-constructed, but it's just not engaging me the way I wish it would.

The flight's still on time and boarding will be soon if it stays that way. I'm not sure if I'm excited or not; I'm in travel limbo, the state of airports and planes, where you exist more between things than in them, a bit distanced from both where you have been and where you are going.

Overexcited children, bah. But boarding's beginning, so time to put this away before they let our row on.

Somewhere between Portland and Chicago.

[12:45 pm]

Right. I'm now bored again. I've read more, drawn (badly) an airplane wing (since it was there: the ultimate sign of boredom, I suppose), written a room desc (have to type it in when I get back, just what I needed, more things to type in, right?), and described a character I know nothing about except her looks, which I made up on the spot. I don't really feel like reading more, nor just now like being creative. Unfortunately, this destroys most of my list of Things To Do In An Airplane.

Actually, I normally nap on flights. But I wasn't very tired, so the arrival of the snack/lunch woke me. United's are pretty good, and anyway I'd be really muddle-headed when we arrived if I slept that much, so I don't really mind - but I am so in mental limbo right now.

We get to Chicago at 5 pm (a little over two hours from now; I'm still using Pacific time as I write this). Then a little plane up to Milwaukee, just a quick flight that.

I'm looking forward to seeing people. Lots of memories with these folks, and the great majority of them good.

[1:15 pm]

Another foray into drawing, to stave off insanity. Mine, anyway. Poor Scott has been very patient about being asked to hold still. It helps, of course, that his activity of choice on a plane is reading. I want a darker-brown pen. Other than that, I'm reasonably pleased.

Well, that and now I need something to do again. If I were at home, I'd have all sorts of options - from chatting online to cleaning; from LiveJournal to clearing more weeds in the back yard.

And I'd probably still be restless and flighty, but maybe more graceful about it.

Maybe.

In Chicago. MORE airport babblings.

We're in Chicago. (Gee, that was hard to guess from the title, wasn't it?) We had a half hour to get from C to E - not horrid, but not ideal either, since it means switching terminals. Fortunately, they've set that up better than it sounds; we hurried only to wait. The flight leaves at six, ostensibly, and is only about 40 minutes - just a quick flit up to Milwaukee from here. I say ostensibly because they're overbooked and trying to get people to take a travel voucher and a ground transport ride up, and I've seen delays from sorting out such situations before - but they have a little bit to resolve it in yet.

Flying into Chicago was interesting - over what I would class as visibly high-end property, forested, large houses, set well apart & back from the road. A lot of swimming pools, but there were a lot of those even as we got closer to the airport, the houses smaller and closer together.

Had a lovely (ha!) bout of allergies on the plane - I forgot to take my claritin today. Oops. Mostly settled down again now, though.

I'm trying to ignore the fact that we're across from the bookstore. This is not really very hard, since I don't want to read, it's just that I always go look through books. Plus, we haven't very long before boarding is supposed to start. It wouldn't be as easy if we were across from a restaurant; I'm not hungry, but I am tempted by smells (we walked past popcorn to get to the gate). I'm quite content as it is but I don't think I would be if I were smelling food right now (well, decent food - I can think of some things that wouldn't make me want to move).

Noticing flaws in the picture I was pleased with, but it's still at least decent, and a bit of cropping would help many of them since they're at the edges. Hope they sort out the flight soon and we can board.

Stress, stress, stress. Anticipation stress.

Wow. We have hit and recovered from the "I need to hide in a quiet unchanging room" phase. Before even going to the con.

This hotel is...scary. No, really. The elevators have sliding inner doors, the floor doors to them are pull-open. One was being worked on as we first arrived (but is now in use; the one we used then appears to be broken now). There's an out of service sign sitting to the side on each floor whenever they're both working - they don't take them away, just set them aside.

There are open bits of construction, with danger strips (red plastic thingies) over the wall space (but just two - and these are pretty big, maybe 6-inch, maybe more, holes going down and up floors). The room is small, carpeted in mottled brown, aged. The chair is a bit torn; the radiator is old and has peeled a bit; the closet has no door.

The suite Isaak's group got is better. We ran into Emily on her way in and I was treated to an hour of hyperspeed Emily conversation while Scott spoke with Kelly (who was already in the suite). That was wonderful. I've missed Emily.

Emily has a job that is in many ways more stressful, and certainly sillier at times, than mine. Her speech was very hyperkinetic and fluttery (she was up at 3:30 this morning, at work at 5:00 am, put in overtime and then drove up - so this was impressively beyond her usual hyper mode).

It occurs to me that Emily and Seanan in the same space might be amusing. However, I'm not sure if they would both survive it - or if the rest of us would.

I've missed Emily. It's good to see her again. And speaking of, we're going to go back up to the suite and see if Crow's around to torment with cards yet.