Sudden travel!
A couple of days ago, I was chatting with Mary Anne, and asked if she was doing anything fun for her birthday, and she said that Kevin was going to be away and she would have to take care of the kids. So I checked plane fares and asked if she'd like company, and she said sure.
So I flew to Chicago today. (Thanks again to Twig for taking me to the airport this morning.) Will work remotely Monday and Tuesday, and head home Wednesday.
It's been kind of a stressful week; I'm having difficulties with condo stuff, difficulties with house stuff, and difficulties with credit cards and customer service, and I'm way behind on magazine stuff, and I'm a little behind on work stuff, and I've been sad about a friend who's going through a difficult time, and so on.
But on the plus side, I've finalized some plans and bought some plane tickets and various things are progressing, and I've had some nice chats with various friends lately, and I've been reading and enjoying Deed of Paksenarrion, and now I'm getting to see Mary Anne and her two kids and a dog. (Kavi's enthusiastic response to seeing me was most gratifying, though I'm afraid the excitement kept both kids up past their bedtimes, unintentionally adding extra stress to M's evening.) Also: there are fireflies on suburban Chicago lawns! I had no idea. Am v. pleased.
I'll leave you with a joke:
I listened to NPR on the way from the airport to M's place this evening, and there was an oncologist speaking; he's done a lot of comedy, and he says that laughter is the second-best medicine, and he was theoretically talking about humor's salutary healing effects. The part of his talk that I heard was as much a standup routine as anything else, and he was kind of telegraphing his jokes, but some of them were pretty funny.
One line I liked (streamlined somewhat from his version):
“In medical school, my classmates and I were the kind of people who can get by on only four or five hours of sleep a day. Plus another nine hours of sleep a night.”
