(no subject)
The Impossible
The last few weeks have been tough, especially the most recent one. I wish I'd known that the reason I was supposed to be sleep-deprived for my EEG was because they thought it meant I could sleep through it-I could've told them that wouldn't work. But sleep deprivation compromises my immune system, so I managed to catch that really nasty cold at work that day, and it made me very sick last weekend. All I could do last Sunday and Monday was sleep-I didn't even eat due to lack of appetite. I was afraid I'd have to cancel my flight.
But Tuesday morning I was able to stand for several minutes at a time, and I successfully did the impossible:
I couldn't've done it without the help of friends, of course. My arm's still injured from the accident so I couldn't really lug baggage to BART as usual, so riseorbleed was able to give us a lift, just two days after giving me a lift to acupuncture, when I was too tired to stand, let alone drive.
The Flight
I was afraid the flight would be too rowdy for me in my condition, but it was just fine. The entertainment started as soon as we arrived at the check-in counter, with pink unicycling jugglers and check-in staff wearing balloon animals. There were drag shows at the gate-okay, those were indeed a bit to rowdy for me, but I just hung out in a quieter area with hopeforyou and a friend that uberredfraggle put me in touch with. Besides, this gave us a view of the plane, which had pink eyelashes and a giant boa. I refer you to hopeforyou's photo entry if you're not convinced.
The in-flight entertainment was at just the right level. Everyone who worked for Air New Zealand apparently wanted to be on staff for that flight, so only the best got on. They managed to really get into the spirit of it (safety demonstrations featuring pink wands) while still providing excellent service. The drag queens helped serve meals, and even Kathy Griffin tried her hand at that, throwing hot meals at patrons. Um, yeah.
On the downside, the armrests only lifted up halfway, for some reason. This was perhaps bigger than it sounds: hopeforyou and I had an empty seat in our row, and we couldn't stretch out to use it because of this. Airline seats are already impossibly crammed for me, so this is a dealbreaker for future Air New Zealand flights.
Sydney So Far
I'm afraid that my time here so far has been disappointing. I trooped through all the challenges of February for the promise of some extra summer at the end of the month, and I've been looking forward to Mardi Gras for over a year, but neither really worked out.
The Sydney summer apparently never really happened this year. February is normally the hottest month of the year, but it's apparently been the coldest for many decades. And that's made the summer rain, something I normally like to dance in, feel more like the same drivel I left behind in San Francisco. The greyness has made recovering from jetlag especially hard, and it was already challenging because I'm still not really recovered from being sick.
As for Mardi Gras... well, the buses didn't have their detours worked out this year. Drivers didn't know what to do when their route was cut off by parade preparations-they're normally pretty good about that sort of thing so I don't know what went wrong. But it meant that the end of the line was somewhere in the middle of Anzac Parade, and we had to walk about 2km to get to our marshalling area. Neither hopeforyou nor I were really up for that, but we really wanted to meet up with the bi and poly crowd again, so we trudged on down.
We were already late-Rrrrob's costume was fantastic, but its preparations delayed us significantly. We didn't worry about it at the time because we figured we could just wave at somebody to come and let us in, and hopeforyou and I figured we could mingle with the bi and poly crowd and wander around and check things out, and decide if we were still up for the march back up Oxford Street.
The trouble was-and I was a dolt not to think about this, but there's a lot I wasn't thinking about-there were many, many hundreds of floats, and tens of thousands of people just in the parade. Even though they were in bright, bi colours, it took us ages to find our group, and when we did, they were right in the centre of the marshalling area, and it was impossible to get their attention. Rob didn't have his 'phone with him so we didn't know who to call, and it didn't occur to me that I actually did have the 'phone number of somebody who was probably there, although who knows if they had their 'phone on at the time, or if they could even hear it.
If I'd known it was going to be like that, hopeforyou and I would've found a comfortable place to just watch the parade from back at the top of the hill, and not gone for that long, frustrating walk. Now we were exhausted, and we just wanted to go somewhere away from the crowd and get something to eat. I was pretty bitter; I think I'd held everything together pretty well all month, despite accidents and illness and housemates moving out by surprise and disability and much wrangling with healthcare and hopeforyou having plenty of her own health issues and a new mail server hosing my work laptop and a whole bunch of other stuff. But in the end, the stuff I was really hoping would work out just didn't.
Next Week
I've arranged a rental car for a leisurely road trip to Melbourne next week. We'll be stopping to see all kinds of wildlife, and hopeforyou wants to see the cheese factory at Bega, a bit north of the border. I expect the water will be too cold for swimming but some beach stops will still be nice, and I'm looking forward to showing her penguins at Phillip Island. And there are many Melbourne people I hope to see-that'll be fun.
Most of all I hope for this part of the trip to be relaxing. I'm tired of trying to keep so many balls in the air right now-I need to rest, and hopefully have some fun.
The last few weeks have been tough, especially the most recent one. I wish I'd known that the reason I was supposed to be sleep-deprived for my EEG was because they thought it meant I could sleep through it-I could've told them that wouldn't work. But sleep deprivation compromises my immune system, so I managed to catch that really nasty cold at work that day, and it made me very sick last weekend. All I could do last Sunday and Monday was sleep-I didn't even eat due to lack of appetite. I was afraid I'd have to cancel my flight.
But Tuesday morning I was able to stand for several minutes at a time, and I successfully did the impossible:
- Packing for the trip
- Getting my room into reasonable shape for whimsywanderer to sublet it
- Maths and paperwork for a swap in housemates-T.'s moving out and jensolo's moving in, quite a pleasing arrangement
- A day's work-I've been determined not to let work slip
- Laundry and dry cleaning
- Getting my arse to the airport
I couldn't've done it without the help of friends, of course. My arm's still injured from the accident so I couldn't really lug baggage to BART as usual, so riseorbleed was able to give us a lift, just two days after giving me a lift to acupuncture, when I was too tired to stand, let alone drive.
The Flight
I was afraid the flight would be too rowdy for me in my condition, but it was just fine. The entertainment started as soon as we arrived at the check-in counter, with pink unicycling jugglers and check-in staff wearing balloon animals. There were drag shows at the gate-okay, those were indeed a bit to rowdy for me, but I just hung out in a quieter area with hopeforyou and a friend that uberredfraggle put me in touch with. Besides, this gave us a view of the plane, which had pink eyelashes and a giant boa. I refer you to hopeforyou's photo entry if you're not convinced.
The in-flight entertainment was at just the right level. Everyone who worked for Air New Zealand apparently wanted to be on staff for that flight, so only the best got on. They managed to really get into the spirit of it (safety demonstrations featuring pink wands) while still providing excellent service. The drag queens helped serve meals, and even Kathy Griffin tried her hand at that, throwing hot meals at patrons. Um, yeah.
On the downside, the armrests only lifted up halfway, for some reason. This was perhaps bigger than it sounds: hopeforyou and I had an empty seat in our row, and we couldn't stretch out to use it because of this. Airline seats are already impossibly crammed for me, so this is a dealbreaker for future Air New Zealand flights.
Sydney So Far
I'm afraid that my time here so far has been disappointing. I trooped through all the challenges of February for the promise of some extra summer at the end of the month, and I've been looking forward to Mardi Gras for over a year, but neither really worked out.
The Sydney summer apparently never really happened this year. February is normally the hottest month of the year, but it's apparently been the coldest for many decades. And that's made the summer rain, something I normally like to dance in, feel more like the same drivel I left behind in San Francisco. The greyness has made recovering from jetlag especially hard, and it was already challenging because I'm still not really recovered from being sick.
As for Mardi Gras... well, the buses didn't have their detours worked out this year. Drivers didn't know what to do when their route was cut off by parade preparations-they're normally pretty good about that sort of thing so I don't know what went wrong. But it meant that the end of the line was somewhere in the middle of Anzac Parade, and we had to walk about 2km to get to our marshalling area. Neither hopeforyou nor I were really up for that, but we really wanted to meet up with the bi and poly crowd again, so we trudged on down.
We were already late-Rrrrob's costume was fantastic, but its preparations delayed us significantly. We didn't worry about it at the time because we figured we could just wave at somebody to come and let us in, and hopeforyou and I figured we could mingle with the bi and poly crowd and wander around and check things out, and decide if we were still up for the march back up Oxford Street.
The trouble was-and I was a dolt not to think about this, but there's a lot I wasn't thinking about-there were many, many hundreds of floats, and tens of thousands of people just in the parade. Even though they were in bright, bi colours, it took us ages to find our group, and when we did, they were right in the centre of the marshalling area, and it was impossible to get their attention. Rob didn't have his 'phone with him so we didn't know who to call, and it didn't occur to me that I actually did have the 'phone number of somebody who was probably there, although who knows if they had their 'phone on at the time, or if they could even hear it.
If I'd known it was going to be like that, hopeforyou and I would've found a comfortable place to just watch the parade from back at the top of the hill, and not gone for that long, frustrating walk. Now we were exhausted, and we just wanted to go somewhere away from the crowd and get something to eat. I was pretty bitter; I think I'd held everything together pretty well all month, despite accidents and illness and housemates moving out by surprise and disability and much wrangling with healthcare and hopeforyou having plenty of her own health issues and a new mail server hosing my work laptop and a whole bunch of other stuff. But in the end, the stuff I was really hoping would work out just didn't.
Next Week
I've arranged a rental car for a leisurely road trip to Melbourne next week. We'll be stopping to see all kinds of wildlife, and hopeforyou wants to see the cheese factory at Bega, a bit north of the border. I expect the water will be too cold for swimming but some beach stops will still be nice, and I'm looking forward to showing her penguins at Phillip Island. And there are many Melbourne people I hope to see-that'll be fun.
Most of all I hope for this part of the trip to be relaxing. I'm tired of trying to keep so many balls in the air right now-I need to rest, and hopefully have some fun.