I went to Palm Springs for a work conference this past week. As far as conference locales go, you could do worse than Palm Springs this time of year. The conference was pretty good. The talks were on the dry side, but the overall experience was enjoyable. The hotel was nice, the weather was mostly pleasant, and it was fun to hang out with my colleagues. Also, I set the high score at pop-a-shot at the end-of-conference reception (they had a bunch of arcade games there), so that was cool. I'm not being facetious. It was legit cool. A crowd of 20 people or so were watching me play and rooting for me as I annihilated the previous best score (it was 48; I got 106). Then a random guy who was playing it a bunch proclaimed in a German accent: You are the champion, tonight. It was like something out of an '80s movie. Badass.
[This is what I left]
[This is what I came home to; pretty good snowman though by Lil' S1]
The travel was pretty brutal though. There is no direct flight from DC to Palm Springs, so I had to book a layover, which I hate. I find the airport experience super stressful (doesn't everybody?), and layovers double this stress because they double the number of airports. I was scheduled to leave on Monday, but my flight got delayed, which would have caused me to miss my connection, and there was nothing else available, so I had to rebook for the next morning. Of course, it didn't get delayed until after I had already arrived at the airport and went through security. To make matters worse, I (stupidly, in retrospect) checked a bag, so I had to go to baggage claim and have them put in a request to pull my bag, which they did, but not until my scheduled flight actually boarded, which was almost two hours later. I left for the airport around 1:30 pm and returned back home at 5:30 pm -- four hours for a trip I didn't even take.
And I had to wake up at 4:30am the next morning to catch my rescheduled flight. But that, thankfully, went smoothly. Although I hate getting up that early, it does make the traveling process so much more tolerable. There are so many fewer people on the road and in the airport, and you're much less likely to get delayed because there aren't as many flights before yours to mess things up. I also learned from my previous mistake and didn't check a bag. I downsized from a hard-case roller-board to a medium-size duffel bag, and that's the way to go if you can swing it. You can always find room for it in the overhead bins -- pliability, see.
It's the dilemma of the short trip: Is it more inconvenient to check a bag and have to wait for it at baggage claim (and run the risk of getting separated from it somehow), or to not check it and lug it around with you and possibly fight with other travelers for overhead space?
Now my answer to that question is that it is much better to not check it if you have a layover, and it's about the same if you don't have a layover. But this, of course, is also contingent on your cargo. I typically don't have anything that can't be a little smushed or that isn't allowed through security. I always just bring all my normal toiletries -- normal-size toothpaste, deodorant, etc. -- and then if they tell me it's prohibited I just throw it away and buy a new one. But that almost never happens. On this trip, I even brought a razor blade through security, both on the way there and back. I didn't even need to shave. I just forgot it was in there.
I don't really like doing anything on a flight other than sleeping (half-sleeping really; I can never get comfortable enough to totally conk out) and watching, so I always load up the iPad with movies before I go. I watched four of them combined on my flights there and back.
Free Solo: Alex Honnold climbs an insanely treacherous rock, thousands of feet, without any security ropes. It's truly nuts, but, I gotta say, kinda awesome. I've been meaning to watch this for years, in part because a guy I played lacrosse with in high school is in it. He's a mountain climber/cameraman, and he's part of the film crew, who are part of the movie, because part of the movie is about the ethics of filming somebody doing something that could easily result in them falling to their death.
Minding the Gap: I guess I was in the mood for documentaries about extreme sports. Although, this one is really more about boys coming of age in less than ideal circumstances than it is about skateboarding. Very good, but maybe a tad -- just a tad -- overrated. I mean, 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from the critics -- really? The audience's 91% is a more accurate reflection, IMO.
Lady Bird: Really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for this type of character-driven teenage dramedy. Such a great cast too -- Saoirse Ronan, Beanie Feldstein, Timothée Chalamet, Laurie Metcalf, etc. Metcalf was especially impressive to me, because she pulled the Bryan Cranston. She made me forget that she's the sister on Roseanne. That's why I said Cranston should have won every TV acting award every year he did Breaking Bad. His entire case was just Remember, this is the same guy who was the dad on Malcolm in the Middle. I know it's true, but I still never believe it.
The Ballard of Buster Scruggs: Fantastic. A delight from beginning to end. Those Coen brothers don't make a bad movie now do they? Well, actually, yes, they do -- I found Intolerable Cruelties irksomely convoluted and Inside Llewyn Davis is flat-out boring -- but this one was excellent. It's a series of six western vignettes, and there wasn't a dud in the bunch.
Well, I was going to also write about a weird dream I had, but I ran out of time. It's just as well, to quote Built to Spill:
No one wants to hearUntil next time.
What you dreamt about
Unless you dreamt about
Them
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