Good morning. Hello. Greetings from Raven Landing, Fairbanks, Alaska. I am sitting in my mom’s apartment with my mom, my nephew Lucas and my cousin Portia, who watches Lucas here two days a week so my mother gets to see her grandson. Everyone seems in good spirits. My nephew is not covered in mosquito bites this time. He is super cute. He runs around and plays with blocks.
Flight up was fine. I don’t know why I flew Delta. Force of habit from my million miler days, but I mean, what’s the point these days. I don’t travel, I’m barely a member of a mileage club these days, I WFBF and I think my Sky Club membership lapsed because the places are overpriced, filled with douchenozzels and drunk. But I keep buying Delta out of habit. Even though it meant that I had to fly through freakin Atlanta instead of taking Alaska Airlines’ direct flight to Seattle. So… 12 hours of flying.
BUT the good news is that I finally finished Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which is, I think, my first book of the year. Finally. My god, that book took too long. By the end of the book my perception had almost completely flipped, and I was just like “well, Howard, you’re not being very fair now here” about events where I actually knew a bit from firsthand knowledge. Still, though, even in the chapters about the Bushes and Clintons, I learned something.
After that, I started reading the dozens upon dozens PDFs I had sent to my Kindle Scribe over the past few weeks. I just kept reading them across three flights, getting more and more tired, finally landing at just before 1 AM Alaska time, which is 5 AM NC time, which means I’d been up for a bit more than 22 hours. I was getting more and more delirious as I read them, highlighting key passages and emailing the articles back to myself.
So, I present to you a series of things I vaguely remember from the 50 or so articles that I read on the flight:
Aubrey Plaza and Mike Mills flew to Sweden together to stalk Aubrey’s high school exchange school boyfriend. The guy who made RRR has a father who was also a famous filmmaker. You can have one-stop shopping for GDPR compliance in the UK but that doesn’t mean that a country can’t also get you with the ePrivacy directive legislation. Some countries have the same privacy agency handle both GDPR and ePrivacy, some don’t. That whole Wirecard thing was completely insane, way more insane than I realized, what with the Russian connections and the Libyans and that the main guy is still on the lam. IPONWeb is really, really big. Trump is totally guilty in the Stormy Daniels thing. They can make enzymes eat plastic but all it does it turn them back into plastic-making enzymes, mechanical recycling is still the best way to go. The Global Plastic Treaty is supposed to be signed in 2024. That guy who gave all his money to Leonard Leo was very clever and nefarious. Some guy got really good at getting Instagram accounts banned and it’s just ridiculous how bad their trust and safety processes are.
Lucas is awake from his nap. He is very cute. We had some hugs. He weighs ten pounds less than Jane.
My mom and I are going to a marimba concert in a few minutes. They really live it up here in Raven Landing. Buncha old people having a good time all living in an apartment building together with a bunch of common areas and activities and free food and high speed internet and they get their own kitchens and play games n shit. I would so like to grow old in a place like this.
Here is a photo from Seattle as I flew in. I spent my 40 minutes there texting with my Seattle friend Kelly. I miss Seattle. I want to go to Seattle. Seattle is swell.
Once I’m out of the house, and the damage is done and I am away from my daughter and I’ve accepted my quarantine is imminent when I return, and that I have to make up the trip with a bunch of extra bedtime shifts and that I can’t see my wife, and that I’ll fall behind on my awesome TV shows and not see my garden — once I accept all that, traveling solo isn’t too bad.
My hotel — Sophie’s Station — the one I worked at in the 80’s, has been slowly remodeling their rooms. They let me book a remodeled king for $30 a night more. But they called me when I was flying up and told me that they were out of the remodeled kings so they were upgrading me to a suite. The largest suite in the hotel, actually. It is the “presidential” suite, though I’m quite sure a president has never stayed there. But it has two bedrooms, a commercial kitchen, a conference table for ten. It is great. I could stay there for.. well about four days, tops, until I miss my wife and child.
Okay the marimba concert awaits. More tomorrow.
And no pix of Jane but I leave you with a pic of her cousin Lucas instead:
But that’s fine because basically half the playlist is an extended Molly joke, I don’t know why. Very into this new Tombstones song, and Samia from the concert and Chain Gang and Prime Movers cuz they came on random recently and Endless Life to wrap it up cuz it’s beautiful, beautiful. I have no way to screenshot my playlist, so you only get an embed today:
Until tomorrow! I will give you a full report on the Marimba concert.