2008
5:30am in Boston
The tuxes-/fireworks-/Zombies (the band, not the internet cliché)-themed New Year’s party we’ve been planning and anticipating is most likely not going to entirely succeed. There will probably be some guests, and some booze, but the tuxes and the fireworks are looking less likely every day.
The weather in Boston and Chicago is dreadful. Friday afternoon I opted to break the bank on an Amtrak ticket to New York instead of taking a bus. It took three and a half hours. It was like magic. A bus that departed New York at 1:00 on Sunday afternoon, on the other hand, arrived in Boston at 7:30. We crawled behind two snow plows for what felt like two hours of that trip. Fortunately I had been tipped off to Bolt Bus, whose buses have two rows of seats removed, giving every row an extra four or so inches of leg room, which sounds trivial but is in fact not trivial at all.
Logan Airport was madness at 6am on Monday. I boarded my plane fifteen minutes before takeoff. JetBlue is not all it’s cracked up to be. There really isn’t any noticeable additional legroom. The snack selection isn’t as exciting as you might expect. And the TVs embedded in the headrests of every seat is an awful idea. Even if yours is off, your eyes are irresistibly drawn to every other screen in front of you, all of which are on. This of course requires that all the shades be pulled down to reduce glare. It’s a depressing sight that’s ripe for a photo in Adbusters.
If nothing else, staying with my folks in Chicago over the holidays slows things down for me and offers me some faint clarity and perspective that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I’m looking forward to next year. I do feel a little smarter. I think I even have a better idea of what I want, and maybe even the motivation to do something about it.
Anyway. It’s nice to know that there’s a whole weekend between this trip and beginning work again.