Belligerence will not be tolerated (day 141)

I arrived in San Jose a few hours ago.  Walking in the warm(ish) night air was refreshing and familiar.  I've been here a number of times before.  I'm not a frequent traveler.  As much as I like a change of environment, the indignities of air travel prevent me from looking to leave very often.  Plus there's the cat to consider.  Traveling by air is really only a short portion of the actual air travel experience.  The airport is impersonal yet invades all personal space without apology.  It's lures and rejects in a way that makes you want to stick to the middle of the runway halls.  No chair is comfortable and sitting itself is an indignity when you are sitting to wait to sit some more.  Healthy food is camouflaged amongst the bright colours of junk food that promise an immediate hit of comfort.  It takes a will of steel to reach for the salad or the apple, harnessing faith that it's the fluorescent lights making them look so sickly and alien.  Most of the time hunger is not the reason for eating.

Tomorrow an early start will continue the bizarro yet common experience that is conference attendance.  A relentless streams of scheduled information dissemination will delight until it overwhelms and then guilt as it forces the memory of how rare a moment this is.  I will eat more 85% chocolate and keep absorbing hoping the information won't get blurred out of existence overnight.  Then I will have every good intention of using the new information, even disseminating far and wide with colleagues.   At the very least I will remember the highlights and be grateful for renewed enthusiasm.

A song for this post.