Planes, Trains and Automobiles

This afternoon I'll be flying out of Nashville to visit Houseboy's family out East, and I just finished packing, Round I, in which I try to shove too many different t-shirts into a carry-on bag and then realize that my contact solution is more than three ounces, so I can't carry the bag on anyway and then think about getting a bigger bag so I can bring my nice boots for Christmas Eve because everyone knows that church is all about looking cute for the Catholic/Presbyterian in-laws. Guesses as to which religion is better dressed? Anyway, after a lot of shoving and balling up and re-thinking I did decide to check luggage, which is tempting fate considering that when we did this two years ago we unknowingly participated in "voluntary separation" from our luggage, which is to say that we apparently gave up our right to our own bags by taking a different flight when ours was cancelled due to weather.

But all this is just practice for the fact that I have TWO week-long data collection trips in January, one of which involves driving a rental car up to Louisville, Kentucky, and the other of which involves flying to Minnesota, and both of which involve driving rental cars all over the city to visit middle schools, which is something like evil torture to me. So, I had to have the embarrassing conversation with the project manager about how I, like, have a driver's license and all, but I haven't exactly operated a vehicle more than three times in the last seven years, and that was most definitely by choice, so even though I'm probably the only member of the team qualified to drive in the snow and who used to drive in downtown Minneapolis regularly, I'd prefer it if someone could chauffeur me around. Because I'm really smart and pretty I got what I wanted, of course. That was anti-climactic, wasn't it?

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