silver linings

I'm getting better at this traveling thing (though not more enthusiastic about it). Packed in about ten minutes flat last night, into a suitcase small and light enough for me to hoist into the overhead compartments without assistance (now that they hand-screen checked luggage, it's immeasurably faster to go the carry-on route). Everything I need in route easily accessible from the backpack. Magazines for when the computer needs to be stowed, three fully-charged batteries for when it doesn't, and good-quality Sony earbuds for music and/or Audible audiobooks. (This year for my birthday I want some Shure E2C sound isolating earphones. Actually, I really want the E5C's, but there's no way I could justify buying--or using--$500 earphones!)

Even more effective, however, has been my new power-blogger online/offline tool setup. Between Shrook for reading blogs and news offline, and Ecto for writing posts offline, I'm finding airport and airplane time ideal for catching up on both reading and writing. (More about Shrook in my M2M post...) I can mark posts for later review in Shrook, then respond and link to them in Ecto...all without a network connection to be found.

I'm also rediscovering magazines--the print kind. They're a lot lighter to cart around than, say, a hardcover copy of Quicksilver. When I'm not traveling, I seldom have time to read them, but on these recent trips I've realized that I've become far too accustomed to getting my content online--and have missed a lot of great writing as a result.

On my last trip, I passed over People, and instead bought a copy of The Atlantic, intrigued by the cover image and headline "Dispatches from the Nanny Wars," and the story listed below it, "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement, by Caitlin Flanagan." A book review that turns out to be a full-length, fascinating essay on working women and domestic labor, it was worth more than the price of the magazine (and will probably result in a lengthy post to misbehaving.net this week). But an added bonus was the range of great writing in the issue--from a chilling story on Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their Reagan-era Dr. Strangelove plot to subvert presidential succession in the event of a catastrophe, to the delightful "Word Fugitives" column on the last page, in which readers recount situations in need of a simple descriptor, and others write in with brilliant suggestions (e.g. "the phenomenon wherein a mechanical or electronic device, having gone on the blink, resumes working perfectly while the repair person examines it"--which yielded suggestions of devious ex machina, deus hex machina, afixia, refixicidivism, rekaputulation, on the wink, and hocus operandi.

So yes, I'm tired of traveling, tired of airports and airplanes and hotels and shuttle buses and unshakable coughs and not being with my family. But I'm also grateful for the opportunity to sit quietly and be offline--reading, writing, or just staring out the window.

Expect heavy, rather than light blogging on this trip, particularly now that I've mastered this Shrook/Ecto integration act. The symposium I'm headed to will be full of interesting people, ideas, and conversations, and I'll do my best to report my take on it while I'm there, here and on M2M.