jetlag. lots of jetlag. after getting a broken two hours of sleep in the 24-hour period it took to get back from istanbul, i woke up at 6 am on tuesday (6 hours of sleep), 6 am on wednesday (5 1/2 hours of sleep) and after passing out last night at 9:45 pm, woke up at 3:40 am (6 hours of sleep). while 6 hours is not the worst you can do for a night of sleep, it's doing nothing to help catch me up on sleep, and i am just getting more and more out of it this week. oy.
anyway. i am going to type up the entries i wrote at the beginning of the trip. they may be very boring. you want to remember that i was traveling and trying to occupy myself.
WORST TRAVEL DAY EVER CONTINUES
4/10/06 10:18 pm (Los Angeles)
so, i'm sitting on the airplane that will take us to new york, and the state of mind that i am experiencing is often colloquially described as mildly freaking out. after a harrowing ride on the super shuttle (my mom started to get really uncomfortable and nauseous while we were waiting for some kid who then got pissy and bitchy all the way to the airport because the driver made some crack about how he was late), and a very lengthy and frustrating ordeal to get my mom checked in without a doctor's note approving her to fly (my sister had it and was running late), it turned out that, despite the fact that the fourth person my sister talked to at american airlines today said they had cleared everything up and paul's ticket was okay, indeed paul's nonrefundable ticket had been refunded, it was a completely booked flight, and they wanted him to repurchase a ticket at a last minute standby rate as if he hadn't prepurchased at all. yeah. they finally show up to the gate an hour and a half later, but they at that point are both standby (apparently my sister's seat was given up in this process), and at the end of the standby list to boot. my sister at this point gave me all the connecting airline, hotel, and cruise information in case she and paul DIDN'T MAKE IT TO ATHENS WITH US and that is when i started to worry.
anyway. this just became moot because while i was sitting here writing this (i preboarded with my mom), my sister and paul just got on the plane and then a flight attendant brought me some champagne (i was carded).
whew. now we just have to pray that delta doesn't strike.
pointless travel update
4/11/06 6:20 am (Athens)
i am officially sick of being on the plane. BUT, i'm very grateful that we ARE on the plane (headed from new york to athens), meaning that no strike occurred to make getting on our cruise ship more difficult. so i'm not complaining.
we got into new york at 6:30 am, had a crappy breakfast buffet at a nearby ramada and slept a few hours of our eleven-hour layover (which we had because american airlines forced us to fly much sooner than we'd scheduled). we were so tired that i only have a fuzzy memory of it and it all seems like a bad dream.
my mom and i flew business class to new york, which i had never done before, and i have to say that i LOVE the reclining seets, extendable footrests, and leg room. i also had an excellent fruit and cheese plate, and they randomly brought a large cup of heated fancy mixed nuts. (consequently, now in coach i feel like i'm shoved into a padded cubbyhole.) meanwhile my sister was in coach next to a guy so big that when she wasn't looking he raised the armrest and flooded into her seat. AND, later when she glanced over, she realized that he had apparently gotten hot and raised his sweater up to his neck, with nothing underneath, so that she was next to his bare, hairy chest and gut. yeesh.
anyway. we got back to the airport and onto this flight without incident. i think we are all a little worried about how less mobile my mom is right now, because i'm not sure how much walking she'll be able to do (she's been in a wheelchair). it's also sobering to see how people are treating her. you always see people going out of their way to give extra good service in a really nice way when they see someone they feel bad for because they can tell they, you know, have cancer or something, and while we certainly need and really appreciate the attention they are giving my mom, it makes me sad to realize that it's my mom that they are treating that way, and that it's my mom they feel sorry for because she has cancer. i know i shouldn't be having these depressing thoughts as we head off on our vacation, but here and there reality keeps worming through the denial i have cloaked around me.
sorry for the long (and depressing) entries about boring travel details. i've had (so far) over 28 travel hours to fill. sorry. oh, but i LOVE my new, shiny, black ipod. i need to stop playing with it, though, the insanely bright screen is both blinding me and draining the battery, which is now showing red. okay. bye.
champagne, jet lag, and deja vu
4/12/06 10:18 pm (Athens), 12:18 pm (Los Angeles)
i am sleepy. i'm in that sleepy, content space where i know i'll be able to go to sleep soon, am already between the sheets of a clean, comfy bed, and have a good book to read.
we are finally in athens. the rest of our delta flight passed uneventfully. my mom's flight attendant took a liking to her and came back to coach to give us frequent updates, travel tips, and a bottle of champagne so we could celebrate getting to athens with my mom. my mom somehow has this amazing effect on people. the woman kept saying how my mom is so wonderful, has this great glow about her, and is surrounded by this positive aura. it's like when my sister and i went to get my mom's drycleaning and the drycleaner refused payment and insisted that we let him and his wife know if they could do anything for her, from cooking to shopping to taking her to doctor appointments because she is their "best best best best best best best best BEST BEST BEST BEST FRIEND!" it was very sweet and touching, but we were like, "how do you develop a relationship like that with your drycleaner?!"
i am tired. after we checked in we ate at the hotel restaurant, which was much fancier than we were expecting, so i felt a little out of place in my cargo pants and hoodie. but they were very nice and the waitress nodded very approvingly when i ordered the moussaka. after that we were going to clean up and head out while my mom rested, but my sister was exhausted and i do not have the marathon museum stamina that paul has, so paul went off to museums while i read and then slept awhile. when i woke up my sister, mom and i headed out to cruise the acropolis and check out the placa. my mom is still feeling pretty poorly, but we bundled her up and borrowed a wheelchair from the hotel, and she had a good time.
athens is very clean. it also just feels... hmm... educated? sophisticated? grown-up? part of this might be that i always forget that people tend to dress up more in europe than, say, LA, so that i feel like a little kid in my orange tee and jeans surrounded by people in designer tops under stylish fall peacoats.
anyway. i have to go. i am exhausted. i think i'll be able to fully kick jetlag tonight by going to sleep at a decent hour [editor's note: i wasn't able to. not at all.] but before then i want to forge a little further in ruth ozeki's my year of meats. i started it toward the end of our flight and have gotten about halfway through. i am starting to get the sneaking suspicion that i may have both purchased and read this book before. i don't recognize the story or characters at all, and i don't know what's going to happen next, but i KNOW i've read a contemporary lit book that wove DES (hormone) and injection into cattle into the story, and that i've also read a book with paralleling stories of a japanese-american and a japanese woman. this is starting to bug me. i'm going to have to go back and ask epc about this -- i vaguely remember her recommending six asian/asian-am books to me a few years ago (they included wild sheep chase, kitchen, and eating chinese food naked) and my whipping through them in under a month. actually, i think it was right after the bar exam and i averaged a few of days a book. so that makes it more possible that i would have read this but moved on so quickly that i didn't have more of a permanent imprint of the book left with me. it's also not so impossible given that a few years ago i went through all of les miserables thinking, "huh, deja vu, this is so familiar i must have read it before but gee i don't know what happens next so i must have stopped around here." when i got to the end and still had that feeling i realized i had read the entire freaking book before and just forgotten about it.
anyway. maybe tomorrow i will actually try to talk about greece a little. goodnight.
passive to a fault
4/13/06 3:30 pm (Athens)
we are finally here. our room is amazing. we wanted to go all out for my mom and make sure she was comfortable, so we booked a six-star luxury cruise and put my mom (and me) in a penthouse. you know how cruise rooms are always super-mini? it's, like, the size of a normal hotel room, with a private deck and a full-size bathtub.
we got in around 1 pm, had lunch, unpacked, and now i am doing my damnedest not to fall asleep. i went to sleep last night around 11:30 pm, and got up around 8:15 am, which would have been fantastic had i not in between there been awake from 1:30 am to 6:45 am. yeeaah. i did finish my year of meats, though. i had read it before (damn it!). which means that i already own another copy somewhere else. anyway. it's a good book. very quick read.
this morning before we got on the ship, wendy, paul and i took a quick morning excursion to the acropolis. my mom stayed in the room because she wanted to rest, and we were told that wheelchair access would be a problem. it was really beautiful, though quite a lot of it was covered by scaffolding. it's also a shame that a lot of the friezes weren't taken down (for preservation) until the late 90s, so much of it was severely eroded.
that's about it, except that the cabbie on the way to the harbor completely ripped me off. beforehand my sister had yelled into the window that the trip should be about 15 euros (we took two cabs), but there was a lot of traffic, the ride was much longer than we expected, and i was super-tired, so i forgot and didn't think about it when he charged me 38 euros. my sister's cab was 12. and i fucking tipped him. i'm still pissed off. this is the only time i can think of where i was duped and ripped off like a stupid tourist like this. argh. i need to get more aggro. stupid fucker.
...
...
okay. that's all i wrote while i was away. once we started doing stuff, i completely abandoned recording it. i will (maybe) write up very brief descriptions of where we went. but that will come later. bye.
i am now in serious need of detox. we went all out for my mom, so we were on a six-star luxury cruise (and i stayed with my mom in a penthouse). imagine all the bad and fatty food you eat on something like that. of course, for all the variety, what my sister and i were most excited about was having corned beef hash every morning (hey, i balanced it out with grits and fruit, so that's okay, right?). i've also been made really paranoid about intestinal worms because of the beef carpaccio i ordered a couple times -- eating with doctors is hard.
i wrote a little to post on my blog, but only during the beginning when we were still in the throes of the WORST TRAVEL DAY EVER. i will type that up later, and then will work on posting stuff about the trip. it was nice/tiring/challenging/relaxing. not your typical woo-hoo-we're-going-on-a-cruise type of vacation, but we got some good family time in.
okay. back to sifting through work messages. my secretary couldn't get access to my voicemail to change the outgoing message to say i'd be away for a couple weeks, and as a result i have some angry messages from defense counsel in one of my cases. ugh. i want to go back to the ship. bye now!
i had a fantastic weekend, which i am still a little worn out from. saturday, still exhausted from staying out too late at ayumi & brian's, i hit the mall with my mom, who had a ton of things to do. we accomplished a lot. then i headed out to a friend's bbq bday party, where we had good food and lots of alcohol (i did vodka shots for the first time in, god, years, and good god they're nasty, though these were orange grey goose ones, so not quite as bad), and then headed out to a bar afterward. it was a lot of fun, though one of the bday girl's coworkers got, er, pretty trashed and spiraled into a belligerent depression, which i haven't seen before (usually it's a quiet depression, you know?). bday girl got pretty tanked herself. if you don't count the upchuck factor, though, i think a good time was had by all.
sunday i got my hair cut, which i'd been meaning to do for a very long time. after that, i meant to stop by my friend's house to pick something up, then go by my place, pick up stuff to pack, go to my mom's, pack, and swing by ayumi's to pick something up. instead, i went to my friend's house to pick my stuff up, and then friend + friend's husband + friend's friend + i went to the grove and sat outside and drank beer in the sun. for seven hours. it was glorious. i was just thinking the other day how when spring comes around, what i miss most about chicago are the beer gardens, and the lazy beer-drinking sunday afternoons. mmm... beer gardens... after that i stopped by my mom's dropped some drycleaning off for her, went to ayumi's, had dinner and hung out the rest of the night.
do you notice how no packing was in there... anywhere? yeah. around midnight i threw a bunch of stuff randomly in my suitcase so i could haul it to my mom's where i'd be able to pack (because more of my stuff was at my mom's). i figured i had plenty of time to pack tonight, because our flight was at 7 am tuesday so, even with my mom's crazy planning ahead, we weren't leaving for the airport until 3:30 am.
yeah. this morning my mom calls at 9 to tell me that american airlines called. they canceled our flight. they were going to shift us to a 1 pm flight, but she told them we had a connecting flight to catch, so they were going to see if they could bump us up and call us back. she called half an hour later to tell me not to call wendy, because wendy's phone was dying and she was in the process of figuring flight stuff out because for some reason american airlines canceled and "refunded" paul's flight. wendy had to call and argue with them about how we never canceled his flight (and someone noted that it was actually never refunded, a supervisor just put that notation in the account -- nonetheless, his seat was canceled). then she called back an hour later to say delta moved our flight to 10:30 pm. tonight. so we have to leave for the airport at 7. um... damn, i wish i packed this weekend.
i frantically finished the crap i had to do before my vacation and left work around lunch time to take our incredibly long associates committee meeting by phone while running around and packing. during this my sister called to tell me she was panicked about time because she and paul, who were in fresno until this morning, hit crazy traffic because there was a shooting in a little town on an overpass so they shut down the freeway and they had to take surface streets through lots of little towns. they were also unpacked.
i finished packing and had time to go buy the stuff i needed to pack. i felt a little better. my mom told me she's stressed because they won't guarantee a vegetarian meal because it has to be set 24 hours in advance and we couldn't do that since we didn't know we were going to be on this flight until they called us this morning to tell us they canceled our original flight. also she's worried because they threatened not to let her fly unless she could give a doctor's note (because she said she had chemo? i don't think this is standard operating procedure.) my sister called to tell me she was stressed because delta strikes have been approved, and delta is our carrier to athens, from where our cruise leaves. hopefully they won't strike until saturday, which she said was their plan, but... let's pray on that. oh, and my sister called a few minutes ago so i could print our etickets for her... and there is no ticket for paul. she asked for the american airlines number and hung up.
now i'm all packed and have lots of time but am exhausted and a little worried that we're not going to get on that damn boat. i can't think about that too much, though, because if we have 24+ hours in travel with my mom feeling really sick and stressed and then we don't get to take the cruise... that will suck.
and just think how relaxed and happy i was all yesterday. oy. wish us luck.
my new iPod is so shiny and preeetty... but it is going to take for-fucking-ever to finish updating. i have almost 16 gig of music on my computer, and i have maybe 75 more cds to upload (or more?) -- i never got around to putting everything on my computer because i surpassed my 10 gig iPod and it was such a huge pain in the ass. woo-hoo space for music!
beskone rocks. thank you.
i'm tired. i had some yummy fizzy mai tais tonight. mmm... and i heard a cool mix of stevie nicks' landslide. and was reminded of the words to that pat benatar song that was in billie jean king:
WE CAN'T AFFORD TO BE INNOCENT
STAND UP AND FACE THE ENEMY
IT'S A DO OR DIE SITUATION
WE WILL BE INVINCIBLE
YEAH!!!!
good night.
relatively speaking, anyway. also i got a new ipod. a shiny black 30 gig one. this will be nice because i won't have to manually select playlists and stuff anymore -- since there's now more space than i have music i can just dump my music on it. woo.
i had kalbi shortribs and an awesome banana dessert last night somewhere in the palisades. it was fun.
and i'm starting to think about packing for this trip we're taking. we leave in three days, so i should start figuring out what i want to do. but i figure... if i forget something, i can just buy it on the boat, right?
anyway. back to "work."
so this is what it's like. although maybe it's not a "nervous" breakdown. i'm not nervous. i'm just having a breakdown. a breakdown. fuck. i hate all this shit.
i'm filling out my tax returns right now. i don't like filling out tax returns. what a boring pain in the ass.
it's too bad i'm not parked on my couch watching reruns of TLW.
i did a bunch of stuff this weekend, which was good because i noticed that i have been growing progressively more unstable this last couple weeks (i started crying on the escalator going into work when one of my friends was talking to me about how i was doing -- this was a big surprise when it happened), and i needed some slices of "normal" life to help balance me out. i think that, in addition to the overall grief of the fact of this thing that my family is dealing with, the reality of permanence is starting to set in. it just... keeps not going away, and my "before" life is fading further and further back, making it clearer and clearer that this new life i have is not going away anytime soon (and, when it does, i will be unhappy about it).
anyway. to try and pull myself out of my funk, i did a bunch of fun stuff this weekend and vowed to spend at least two (preferably consecutive) nights a week at my place.
on friday i went bowling with ayumi, brian, and a couple good work friends (plus a husband). we were going to go to pico bowl (apparently "amf bay shore lanes"), but they were all booked up so instead we went to amf mar vista. it is much bigger, didn't involve a wait, and they gave out free socks. it was a lot of fun. we played one normal game, and then, given the alcohol-related decrease in performance levels, we played the next two with bumpers. i LOVE bowling with bumpers. i managed not to injure myself this time, so that was good. i also managed not to bounce any balls into the next lane (both these things happened at a work bowling event a couple years ago). then again, the lack of falling injuries and bouncing balls was probably because this time i only threw one ball overhand.
on saturday night i hung out with ayumi (we were both pretty tired from the bowling festivities the night before -- we'd also gone to eat afterward, and then i inexplicably woke up at 8:45 the next morning, which i was pretty unhappy about. then i ran a million errands with my mom, adding to the fatigue) after watching the bruins BEAT LSU BY FOURTEEN POINTS!!!!! we mellowed and chatted and watched some tv, and then after she left around 1 am i ignored my extreme exhaustion and watched the last four episodes of this season's The L Word.
which brings me to a few thoughts (apologies if you don't watch The L Word, and also, if you haven't finished watching this season yet, there are going to be all sorts of spoilers here):
1. i liked this season MUCH more than last season. it's true that it's completely inconsistent that helena has a heart now, but i like her much better. and they dealt with some trannie issues that i think a lot of people don't talk about. and when people did bad things, it wasn't because they were two-dimensional evil cardboard cut-outs, but because life is a little more complicated than that.
2. god, i still hate tina. the stupid bitch can't figure out how to make decisions for herself while still thinking of the other person. she wants to leave bette and date men... fine, whatever, shit happens. but she has to start a serious relationship in the TEN DAYS that bette is out of town and then fuck him in their bedroom with their baby sleeping next door? stupid bitch.
3. carmen is fucking hot. but so is lara. last year bette was my favorite, but now if i had to rank my top three it would go carmen, then lara, then bette.
4. i like lara a lot. the only negative about her personality (in my opinion) is that she was a little too pushy season one when dana wasn't ready for pdas, and a little aggressive with the flirting when dana was with alice. other than that, she's this awesome, intelligent, funny, hot girl who is considerate and a good care-taker, and who always encourages talking about shit when shit is going on. i hope she becomes a more regular character.
5. i don't hate jenny anymore. she was open-minded and supportive for the moira/max transition, but still stood up for herself when he turned into a testosteroney asshole, and if you watch the deleted scenes, she's a lot more responsible and healthy now. in one deleted scene, she goes to the LA LGBT resource center and talks in a group about how to cope with max being an asshole, and in another she talks to max about how she is a lesbian and misses women, and how, yes, she is going to go have sex with that french chick, but only because she was talking to him about it first. that's a pretty big step. i actually like jenny now.
6. i am pissed off about the shane/carmen ending. especially because sarah shahi is apparently going to leave the show. i love how shane is this unexpectedly sensitive character who gets confused more easily than she likes to think and all that crap, but the end made me sad despite the fact that, yes, i get it, it makes sense. though... she took off because she's so sensitive and afraid to be like her dad, which, really, should be enough to show how different she is from him, so really she didn't have to leave, etc etc.
7. lara and carmen are hot. i don't like that bette is becoming weak and crazy. she needs to be more power-bitchy again. but she is still hot, too.
see what happens when i don't have my own life? i sit and babble way too long about fake lives that i watch on tv. i vow to get out more. anyway. after staying up until 5:30 to finish the season i slept until 12:30 (oh, 1:30, with the time change), and then went shopping for jeans with seanboy, whom i had not seen in forever, so that was a lot of fun.
i'm going to end my unnecessary blow-by-blow description of my weekend here, because my, what, three readers probably won't make it to the end of this long-ass post anyway. suffice it to say that i feel a little more human having spent some time with good friends, and had a good weekend. talk to y'all later.