rowyn

December 20

It's January 6 as I'm writing this, so I'm just gonna write whatever random bits I happen to remember about each day.

December 20th was a Friday, and Eliyahu was here, so we went to the Jewish bakery in the morning and picked up four loaves of challah: two for the Sabbath and two to freeze for next week's Sabbath, since I wouldn't be around to drive them to fresh challah the next week.

We were both relieved to have a full day together with no travel plans. I think the weather was pleasant enough that we went for a walk and bubble tea.

December 21

I spent most of the 21st at home, as my flight didn't leave until 6:45PM. During the day, I packed and baked sugar cookies for Sophrani. Even though I didn't have to mail hers this year, I was going to see her on the 22nd so I wouldn't have time to bake at my parents' house and package them for her. For the trip, I packed my Surface Go 3, which is kind of a tablet/laptop hybrid: it's tablet-sized at 10", but runs windows and has a detachable keyboard/cover that's large enough for touch-typing. I also brought my new Lenovo tablet, which I still only use for Time Princess, and my phone. I left my Chromebook behind because two tablets seemed excessive and two tablets and a laptop was kind of ridiculous.

Around 4PM, I checked Lyft for prices to the airport. The normal rate is $40-50. It was over $100 when I looked. "Surge pricing?" Eliyahu suggested.

"It must be. I wouldn't think rush hour on Friday would make that much difference but I guess?" Normally, I use Lyft out of a combination of (1) it's nice not to drive (2) long-term parking is $9.00 per day (3) plus cost of mileage. But at $100 plus tip, it was much more expensive to get a Lyft than to drive. "I'll just drive myself."

As soon as I reached the main road, I saw the real reason for the surge pricing: an event at the stadium had traffic backed up in every direction. Even getting away from the stadium (as I was doing) was something of a challenge. And of course, any Lyft driver would have to get to me through dense traffic first. Don't blame them at all for the extra cost; it would clearly take a lot of extra time. It took me an extra ten minutes or so to reach the airport as it was. But I'd left an excessive amount of time to reach the airport in this instance.

For the second time, when I got to long-term parking I made a note of the row marker my car was near (and took a photo of it for good measure), but got picked up by the bus outside of a stop and so forgot to note which stop I was nearest. This would come back to haunt me when I returned on December 28.

At the airport, I realized I'd forgotten to pack the tablet pen for my Surface. This was particularly annoying since I hadn't drawn enough Apothecaria entries to cover the length of my trip. I ordered a relatively cheap tablet pen for delivery to my parent's house.

The departing flight was delayed by around an hour while they waited for crew to arrive from another flight. Unrelated, the second flight was also delayed by an hour while they waited for crew to arrive (and they were aware of this delay before my first flight left), so that part worked out all right. I read Time-Crossed Engineer during the flights, which was fun. I'm beta-reading it for Tuftears, so I'm reading slowly and leaving lots of comments. The vast majority of my comments when beta-reading aren't analytical or critical, just me leaving cheerful comments about the story.

I landed in North Carolina around midnight, and got a Lyft to my parents' house. I rode in the front passenger seat, which is a weird reflex on my part. The driver didn't mind but commented that I was the first person who'd ridden in the front passenger seat when the backseat wasn't fully occupied. We had a fun chat about the economics of Lyft and Uber; he is as much of a nerd as I am and has a giant spreadsheet for calculating expenses/revenue/income per ride (he made around $15-$20 an hour net income, before tax, IIRC). As a driver, he prefers Lyft; their cut is a bit more generous and they treat their drivers better. He thinks Uber has a better user experience, though. I only use Lyft because I want to be as minimally exploitive as possible. (If you think taxis are the least-exploitive route, I want to note I've spoken with taxi drivers who are contractors who have to rent their taxis from the company, and can therefore lose money on a slow day. Ridesharing may suck but so did taxis.)

My parents were asleep when I arrived (as planned), so I let myself in. Neither of my parents can climb the stairs to the second floor (empty except for a guest twin bed and a guest queen-size air mattress) so my mother had told me the linens would be in the laundry room. I looked at the linens in the laundry room and realized almost at once that these were not, in fact, the linens for the guest bed. Among other things, the pillow case for my super-weird O-shaped pillow was missing.*

*It's this pillow: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BFDK2JQT/ . At the advice of a physical therapist, I have long slept with one pillow against my back and another against my chest, in addition to one for my head. Lut used to refer to this as my "fortress of pillowtude." With three separate pillows, it's very easy to accidentally shove one out of position. Every time I rolled over, I had to drag pillows back to where I wanted them. With this design, you lie surrounded by a single pillow so you can't push it away, much less accidentally push it out of bed. It's excellent for twin-size beds in this respect, because with typical pillows one or another will often fall out of bed during the night.

I brought the wrong linens up to the guest bed and contemplated using them. They were queen-sized and so didn't fit the twin that I was using, and also a cheap scratchy poly-cotton blend. And I'd have to use a normal pillow, or forego a pillowcase on my weirdly specific one.

I decided to make a renewed search for the actual linens.

Half an hour later, after searching the laundry room and the walk-in closet in the primary bathroom, I found the linens in a pile by a laundry basket in my mother's office. VICTORY!

In the midst of making my bed, I remembered I wanted to give an extra-large tip to the cool Lyft driver, so I ran for my phone to make sure I got to it before Lyft went with my default tip. Success!

At long last, I crashed, cozily ensconsed in soft sheets and my weird custom pillow.

December 22

I slept as late as possible, after staying up until around 2AM the night before. After getting up, I spent a little time chatting with my mother and eating brunch. The tablet pen I'd ordered from Amazon arrived but I didn't have time to try to set it up with my Surface.

In mid-afternoon, I took my parents' garbage cans to the curb so my parents wouldn't have to wrestle with them, then set out to visit Kagetsume and Sophrani, taking my mom's car.

I gave Sophrani her box of sugar cookies -- the old Christmas-tin style box stuffed full, since I didn't have to pay shipping on it, so she got more cookies than usual. Sophrani got my gifts from under their tree and I opened them: maple sugar candies and homemade pumpkin spice granola. :9

The three of us hung out chatting for a while until Envoy arrived, and then the four of us hung out chatting. Kage's dad stopped by briefly to pick up a thing, but did not stay long. We watched some of "Secret Level", a series of Amazon Prime shorts (mostly 8-20 minutes) based on different game franchises. Starting with the Pac-Man one, which was creepy and strange.

We went to Ted's Montana Grill for dinner. To handle the check, I used the trick Lut's sister Holly had demonstrated: get up to use the restroom, then find the waiter and give them your credit card before the check even gets to the table. Voila, you have won the check battle. Kage and I usually only fight hard for the first check of a visit, and after that we graciously alternate.

Using it this time was especially funny because my waiter didn't recognize me when I tried to give him the card. "This isn't my section. Maybe he's your waiter?" he suggested, indicating a different man.

Me, giving him a blank look: "No, I'm really sure it's you. I'm seated on the other side, in the booth a few from the back--"

Waiter, now extremely embarrassed: "Ohhhhhh."

It didn't surprise me that he didn't recognize me, although I was startled by how confident he was that I was wrong; I would've expected him to ask where I was seated first. When he came back to the table with the receipt to sign, he apologized again and said, "If it helps any, the entire rest of the staff is mocking me over this."

"It's fine, I understand. I also mostly recognize people by context. I'm sure you would've identified the top of my head more easily," I said, only half-joking.

When we returned to the house, Sophrani had to shower and fuss with some things. Kage, Envoy and I watched an isekai LitRPG anime which started off with the protag dying and then being mocked by the reincarnation goddess over the manner of his death.

Me: "Wow, I hate them both."

The protag got to choose one special power/item to bring with him when he was reincarnated. The goddess needled him to hurry it up; annoyed, he picked her.

Later, he's annoyed because she's not useful, to which I was like "Dude I don't know what you were expecting."

We watched the first arc, which was really enough for me. It wasn't terrible; the characters exhibit some growth. But ehhh. Usually I don't mind fan service but for some reason the gratutious butt and boob shots in this show grated on me. It's the sort of show where the female characters feel like toys rather than people and idk, it bugs me. It had some good moments, tho. Like the villain curses a party member to die and lays out a near-impossible quest to remove the curse. After he leaves, cackling, another party member uses her curse-removal ability to cure the first. Crisis resolved! That was amusing.

Afterwards, Envoy headed out and I went to sleep on the futon in the theater room.