Jetlag

I used to travel a lot for my day job, but over the past several years that has slowed down, until recently. This year I’ve been on three business trips so far, which is infinitely more than last year (since last year I had none). I consider myself a fairly experienced traveler, though I find it a lot less fun that it used to be, primarily because of all the hassles at the airport.

The one thing that’s always hard to get on top of, though, is jet lag. Even a shift of two hours on your internal clock can throw you for a loop. You end up wide awake at the strangest times (like 1:15 a.m.). Sleepiness I can deal with better, but there’s little worse than lying awake in the bed with your mind going 200 mph and wishing you could be asleep. It’s all a tad ironic considering my wife is doing doctoral research into circadian rhythms.

I’m back home from a three-day trip to California, so I’m still in the readjusting phase. I was greatly relieved when I arrived at the Houston airport yesterday to discover that my car hadn’t floated away while I was gone. The 12+ inches of rain some areas had received on Monday/Tuesday had me worried. One of my colleagues in San Diego said, “Twelve inches isn’t all that much rain. We get that every year.” (In truth, their annual rainfall is closer to half the amount we received this week alone.) Several of my coworkers were unable to get to work on at least one day this week because their neighborhoods were cut off by local flooding.

Slowly catching up on TV shows from the past few days. Lost had some very good moments last night. I had been studiously avoiding spoilers for a couple of weeks now so, while I knew a major character was fated to die, I didn’t know who, and I was taken by surprise when it happened. Some of the things we’ve been suspecting or speculating about all along were confirmed, such as the identity of Daniel’s father. It was good to revisit the scene where Daniel was crying in front of the news broadcast about the fake crash and to have it confirmed once and for all who was responsible for same. I still feel sad for Juliet. Her life had finally attained some level of normalcy only to be completely upended again. I think the finale is going to be a blast. Literally.

I am almost finished the short story I’ve been working on this past week. Up to 4000 words as of this morning. I received an extension that gives me the weekend to proof and finalize it, so I plan to write the ending during my session tomorrow morning and spend two solid days whipping the puppy into shape.