I don't think Bill slept at all last night. Every time he tried to lie down, he was up 15 minutes later. And every time he got up, I awoke as well. It was actually a relief to just get up and go get a cup of coffee at 3:50 am, and get on with it.
Our drive over to Tri-Cities was pleasant and uneventful. The check-in was a breeze, due to a helpful gate agent and a non-frustrating computer that allowed Bill to slide his passport through the thingy, and confirm his identity and eligibility to travel overseas. My paranoid children insist that the only recourse to the "outrage" of having identification documents micro-encoded, is to repeatedly swipe a magnet over the coding strip, thus foiling the evil intentions of the government to keep track of them. Sigh. The next time they try to swipe their passports through the reader, they shall not have such an easy time of it as we did this morning.
So now Bill is probably sleeping soundly (snoring, if his seat mate is unlucky) in the air, winging halfway around the world. I expect I will hear from him, either by phone or email, tomorrow.
It will be 12 hours later to him in his local time, which is more weirdness than I can comprehend. Does that mean he's talking to me in the past? Am I talking to him as he will be in the future? Yes, here we go again with my inability to fully understand the intricacies of the International Date Line.
As we say in this house, the only thing worse than going back to work is having no work to go back to. So we will both do our appointed tasks and meet up again in December, probably on the West Coast. We'll marry off the daughter, (Bill asks: "How can I give her away?--she ran away from us years ago!"), celebrate Christmas with the family and then find our way home to Tennessee in early winter. Or at least, that's the plan right now.
In the meantime, I will have plenty of projects to keep me busy here at home. But it will be strange to be spending all of autumn without the tromp of hunting boots, guns lying all over the house, and piles of camouflage clothing to wash in unscented detergent. I guess I shall have to begin some autumn traditions of my own.
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2 comments:
Correction: the outrage is not over having our government keep track of us. I'm sure they do a fine job of that already. My objection is to encoding all of my personal information into a chip that broadcasts said information to anyone in the vicinity with the know-how to pick it up. Also: magnets don't work, but the internet has all the answers. Not that I would ever take such an action, since it is a crime.
- Your adorably paranoid son.
That's amazing, Alex. I am corrected (and chastised, and humbled),and commend you for your take on this. Always On? Broadcasting? Sheesh. Now I'm paranoid. I think of your dad walking around in Singapore (land of infinite technology)with his passport in his pocket, sending out his info for anyone to catch and do mischief with. Does the govt. know about this? Now, I'M the paranoid one.
And yes, you are adorable.
Love, Mom
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