The liminal state of existence in airports/planes
I'm on my layover at the Dallas/Ft Worth airport. I got in at 5 am, almost an hour ago, though that would be 6 am Indiana time and 3 am Seattle time, and I haven't slept yet, so my body has absolutely no idea what time it is. I wasn't tired (yet), and the plane was packed, so I was one of the few who didn't sleep through the red-eye, and worked on my knitting instead. (Finished the first half of Arabella, yay!) There was a tiny African woman sitting next to me who wore a [faux] fur coat, spoke a language I couldn't identify, and smelled powerfully of Ogun. On the other side of her was somebody who had also been at the Pop Conference (I didn't recognize her, but saw the program sticking out of her bag.) Didn't get any chance to chat, though.
It's weird being in a hugenormous airport this early in the morning. It's empty and what few people are here are walking around like they're shell-shocked. I praise the existence of mother ing Starbucks and curse the stupid "free internet" portal that requires me to have brought my own ethernet cable-- instead I'm using the free terminal, wherein "free" means "20 minutes" and a slow connection.
The past four days have been an odd combination of hyperreality and fairy tale. I mentioned before that I forget how much a part of me my friends are when I'm away from them for a long time-- so reuniting makes things really real. On the other hand, I met quite a few new folks (all fabulous) whom I previously only knew as names on album liner notes, bylines in newspapers, and faces in pictures on the internets. And now they're real people. Kind of cool and kind of "huh?"
I have four days to buckle down, catch up and get moving on all the work that got shoved aside while I was freaking out over my conference paper, and then I'm off out of town again. So no conference hangover for me, though I'm not quite sure what to do about sleeping today, since I haven't yet, but I expect I'll be half by the time I get to Bloomington.
Eh. Sleep is for the weak.
It's weird being in a hugenormous airport this early in the morning. It's empty and what few people are here are walking around like they're shell-shocked. I praise the existence of mother ing Starbucks and curse the stupid "free internet" portal that requires me to have brought my own ethernet cable-- instead I'm using the free terminal, wherein "free" means "20 minutes" and a slow connection.
The past four days have been an odd combination of hyperreality and fairy tale. I mentioned before that I forget how much a part of me my friends are when I'm away from them for a long time-- so reuniting makes things really real. On the other hand, I met quite a few new folks (all fabulous) whom I previously only knew as names on album liner notes, bylines in newspapers, and faces in pictures on the internets. And now they're real people. Kind of cool and kind of "huh?"
I have four days to buckle down, catch up and get moving on all the work that got shoved aside while I was freaking out over my conference paper, and then I'm off out of town again. So no conference hangover for me, though I'm not quite sure what to do about sleeping today, since I haven't yet, but I expect I'll be half by the time I get to Bloomington.
Eh. Sleep is for the weak.