Travel's End

For now, my incessant travel cessated (ceased?). So long semi-regular posting, until I travel again. I still have a few leftover points to post, but will do those later. Kind of tired right now, what with it being 0420 and all.

***

Thursday, January 31, 2008. 1815 EST. Nashville International Airport, awaiting flight back to Baltimore. Rainy, dreary. It's sheeting down the window panes, and would be almost beautiful if I didn't have to go out in the middle of it in about an hour.

After two weeks, I don't think I did a great job, but I think I've done a somewhat competent job. Lots of improvement possible. Going to have to work on it in the coming weeks and months.

***

I went and got breakfast at Jack in the Box. The lady actually said "Go ahead and have a seat. I'll bring you your food." She did. That would never happen in Baltimore.

At Chick-fil-A, all of the workers were around sixteen years of age. This makes sense, as I'd gone a few hours after school let out, and you gotta make your money somewhere. Still, that happens more and more where everyone around me is younger than me. I see it at work also, and it sort of makes me feel decrepit. Well, no sort of about it. I do feel decrepit.

I had the opportunity to go to a Sonic fast food restaurant. Near D.C., you see commercials for them all the time. I'd never figured out if there was one nearby, though. Also found out they had tater tots. Tots!

Went to a Thai restaurant, and the woman at the front automatically assumed I'd come there to pick up some food. As she was also Asian, I've determined that I just need to go to the right places to find Asians in Tennessee, such as Asian restaurants.

Had a nice breakfast this morning at Waffle (Awful?) House. Their All-Star Special breakfast consists of a waffle (to which I added butter and syrup), three slices of bacon, two slices of buttered toast (plus multi fruit jelly), scrambled eggs, and hash browns. Washed it down with three diet cokes. Lunch was at Stroud's Restaurant, a barbecue beef sandwich with slaw and pickles, along with a large diet coke.

Yes, I'm not missing the irony of getting diet cokes all day.

I also ended up dragging all day, and felt really stupid and useless.

You'll notice that I ate a hell of a lot of junk food this week, which definitely can't be conducive to mens corpore sans corpora. Now, I think that means "healthy mind in a healthy body", but I'll bet you if you translated that, it probably comes closer to something like "have a mind without the body." The point is it was quick and easy and I think I ended up suffering mentally and physically because of it.

Hence, my wack job idea: from now on, when I travel, I'm going vegetarian. I'm already on the run, in unfamiliar environs, and probably not exercising as much because I'm busy. The temptation, since food is expensed to the client, is too great to get whatever, and so I'll end up getting the worst food known to man. Plus, it'll probably be embarrassing if I have to show up without a belt because I got too fat for my clothing in a week.

***

One morning, as I drove to the client site, I got stuck behind a remarkable individual, weaving in and out of our one lane on a two lane road. At eight in the morning (nine EST). Yes, this individual came within about twenty-five feet of slamming headfirst into an oncoming tractor trailer, or veering off the road into a ditch. I had my phone out, and dialed nine, one, and was waiting on the one.

Drunk at eight in the morning and driving. This is something you also don't see in Baltimore, though it's because people are drunk and inside sleeping it off that early.

***

There was a half-price book store without a science fiction section, though it had several rows chock full of religious texts and devotionals.

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My conceptualization of time zones are so screwed up. I keep thinking that I'm one hour behind EST (which I am), but I look at my watch and laptop (still on EST) and add one hour to get the current time for CST (when I should be subtracting; this act puts me in the Atlantic Ocean, time wise). This is also why I can't schedule flights correctly, and why I end up flying at screwed up times, because my math was all off.

***

This Wednesday, there was one moment at which I felt like it was law school all over again. There was so much information in such a small amount of time, and my mind felt melted down. The feeling passed in about five minutes, but still. Not a bad thing, but something to watch.

The bad food may also have had something to do with all this. It also contributed to my feeling of ineptitude today, when nothing was sticking in my mind.

***

What we have here is a failure to communicate. My yankee accent confuses them, their southern accent confuses me. It turns out if I'm not actively talking to someone, and they just ask me a question when I'm not paying attention to them, I cannot decipher what they said.

***

Such a culture shock from New York to Tennessee. Everyone is so polite down here. My nonscientific theory on why (which J.L. has backed me up on)? Space. In New York, everyone is crammed together. If you expend the energy to be polite to everyone, it would drive you crazy. You need to carve out some space of your own to survive. In Tennessee, on the other hand, there is space. You can afford to expend the energy to make your life better, by being polite to others. It's all just a matter of space.