(no subject)

London:

The trip over was fine, a larger jet this time, not a “cityhopper” as such, but a full flight. The short hop over the channel is so turbulent it’s a bit nerve wracking for me. I prefer the train, for that reason, for environmental reasons, for the less faff around than the airport.

I mean schiphol security’s generally a breeze, because you don’t have to strip down, and put all your valuables and electronics on full display for anyone to grab. hell. keep your water, too.

Heathrow: STRIP THE FUCK DOWN. Put the ipad and phone in full grabbable reach. Watch as your bin sits un attended as you wait for the scan and search because oh, right, men can’t do patdowns even if you, woman, consent, so you watch every man get breezed through because you’re in a line full of women in full hijab with the stroller and the children and i’m not mad at THAT but if you have a fuckton of middle east bound flights then MAYBE HIRE MORE FUCKING WOMEN ON SECURITY?

sigh.
i was just testy the last day because as much as I love visiting london, I’m dead fucking sick of the british obsession of CONSTANT AND NEVER ENDING PA ANNOUNCEMENTS. Wash your hands, wipe your ass, flush the toilet, call your mother, the escalator is ending, the doors are closing, don’t touch that, don’t put that in your mouth, alarm alert alarm notice and it’s just so much deafening NOISE.

i mean i get that it’s prob for the visually impaired but it’s JUST….there’s too much natter and nag. Pare it down. The constant barrage of audio noise….


COnference: this year I did the dress it up a bit and suddenly more people talked to me.:D Dutch business casual and british are way different.:D

Most of the speakers were fantastic, i took notes, but the AI in mining one was fucking tedious and ran long and the prev president of the gem assoc going off the rails shitting on lab grown gems….funnily enough at the photomicrography workshop the presenter saw my lab grown garnet i cut and was “I got this piece from..” the same people i bought mine from so we had a complete moment there and it was fun.

did a bit of shopping but not much. simply put there were no boys T shirts I couldn’t get in zaandam, no interesting books for S at his reading level ( mostly tacky looking ones by an author i think is problematic and again i can get stuff here? AMAZON) and so it was some cookies and chocolate.

I had a good time, overall but heathrow’s the goddamn hellmouth. next time, London city airport or eurostar. Never again heathrow.

I did snag a 50 euro fine for zombiebrained not tapping in on the train, because schiphol does put the tap post a fair distance away from the platform and if it’s busy it’s very easy to walk by them. Oooopps.

i doubt a loud PA announcement would have helped. :D

(no subject)

saw my GP today and we did agree that therapy rather than meds is the answer. Sigh. Lets get this sorted.

Today was biking and running around restocking the house and doing allll the heaps of laundry. in 4 days, three full loads of laundry piled up and R “what laundry”

he did his own, and nothing else.

Lawd.

Are we even surprised? no. So far as he knows magic elves do the rest of the housework.

next week, i’m going to get back on a steadier work schedule and well, i dunno. beyond that i have no clue.

I’m still travel-tired. Flying: cheap, but the long delays in security and having to be at the airport so early, and the haaaaasssle, maybe the eurostar is the better answer but they’re SO FUCKING expensive sometimes. That’s basically easy.

next year for the conference, fly down day before, fly out evening monday, because there’s little point to that extra day.