lundi, novembre 13, 2006

"Get everything done" day

Ack! Today was the day to make good on the long to-do list I had written up the day before. I needed to make an appearance at the Center, take care of some IT support issues, print out all of the documents I needed, go shopping for chocolate (gift for someone in Chicago, via an attendee in Hawaii), buy batteries for my camera and a plug adapter for my French cellphone, a swimsuit and some flip-flops for the beach. And, eventually, I had to pack.

Ultimately, I took care of most of these items, but I had to drop the flip-flops and swimsuit. The simplest and cheapest flip-flops were 12-20€ and there were no reasonable swimsuits. Apparently, there is a reason why European men always wear speedos at the beach: there is nothing else available. I searched high and low for "board shorts"-style swimming trunks, and all I could find were handkerchief-sized speedos and thongs. There's no way I'm showing up in one of those in Hawaii.

Also, as I was packing later that night, I accidentally dropped my cellphone charger on the floor. It broke into two pieces. I swore, thinking I had busted it, but instead I found that the French electrical plug had detached from the charger, revealing an American plug underneath. Damn, I just spent about 5€ on an adapter I didn't need.

I comforted myself with the thought that perhaps this was the obligatory pre-trip fuck-up, which meant that the rest of the preparations would go smoothly. I was partly right. My preparations went fine (even though I went to bed late), but no amount of excellent packing could've made the following day any more tolerable.

2 commentaires:

Anonyme a dit…

I have a recurring anxiety dream that I wind up some place like Hawaii with no bathing suit. I usually try to shop for one in the airport/hotel/cruise ship, but they're all hideous and expensive.

I don't know what that says about me. Normally I have anxiety dreams about much more weighty subjects.

For some reason, Bloglines hasn't been notifying me of updates to any of my Paris blogs, so I'm catching up on a lot of old entries today.

Luis-Manuel Garcia a dit…

Ha! That was totally my problem. The bathing suits in Paris were teeny handkerchiefs, while the board shorts in Hawaii were hideous. Eventually, I broke down and got some hideous board shorts. They're hideous.