I am traveling again which means I am spending entirely too much time in my own head, which means you get to listen to (read) a list of things that are annoying me:
- Airline and Hotel loyalty points programs. You guys, the extent to which I will go to board a plane via a dingy red carpet. It’s not pretty, I tell you what.
- See also: free bottles of water in hotel rooms. Ok, this is actually 50% bitching, 50% life hack: 1) If you are going to store corpses in the hotel water supply, then don’t make me pay $7 for a bottle of water, yeah? 2)Bring your own bottle of water. And yes I know the airport will screw you just as hard as the hotel w/r/t pricing, but for some reason that annoys me less, so I always have a bottle of water from the airport with me. Then go to the hotel fitness center. They ALWAYS have a filtered water machine in the fitness center. That is where you refill your water. Life hack: BOOM
- And on a different note: Isn’t it cool that science created a vaccine for cancer? Well, I mean, a vaccine for HPV, which CAUSES cancer, so it’s a little roundabout way of getting there, but I’ll take it, because, hey, end result: less cancer. Too bad that even though both men and women can get HPV only women can get cancer from it, though. If it protected again more than just GIRL cancer I bet health insurance companies would cover vaccines for EVERYONE, not just girls as they currently do. [insert side eye glare]
- Back to travel: don’t put your coats in the overhead bins. That’s where rolly bags go, and it’s limited space, and if that space runs out, people have to gate check their bags, and then there this whole “gah will I ever see my stuff again or am I going to have to go to tomorrow’s customer meeting in the yoga pants I’m currently wearing” angst along with “well if it was going to be checked I might as well not have gone through the rigmarole of small little toiletries and dragging this thing through the airport if I’m not even going to get the time and other benefits of keeping my bag with me” (SO MANY RULES)
- I get a little cranky towards humanity when I travel a lot. It’s really not you guys, it’s me, unless you’re walking really slowly in the flow of traffic, in which case it may in fact be you.
- This reminds me: my brother’s method of not getting annoyed when he travels, especially in the security line, is to just sloooooooow down. He just pretends he’s not in a hurry, and does some kind of jedi mind trick on his blood pressure to be all “it’s ok that the person in front of me is unpacking everything they own and putting them through the security thing one at a time, it’s ok that the entire line is shut down, la la la it doesn’t matter at all” and when I remember to do this, man, it makes a huge difference.
- I was unable to employ this method as my bag was getting gate checked and I could visibly see THREE COATS IN THE OVERHEAD where my bag could have gone. But that’s a failure of personality, not method. The method is good.
- Here’s the annoying thing about getting cranky about traveling too much: I love what I am traveling for. I love my job. This is what I want to be doing. I’d be annoyed if I wasn’t doing it.
- Minneapolis continues to have the best airport, forever and ever, amen. You should go there. It’s just such a pleasant place. MSP FTW!
InnerTeub 