Online Journal

It's 10:40 this morning, and I'm on the 450 bus into Boston, bound (eventually) for Logan airport and my flight into Phoenix, connecting in Salt Lake. On the way to the airport I have a few errands in mind, though it will be difficult to do them while carrying around one parcel of checked luggage (my garment bag), one carry-on (my suitcase), and my briefcase as a personal item. Nevertheless, I plan to at least stop somewhere on Boylston Street for lunch, and perhaps by Hotel Chocolat for gifts to bring my friend and Brooks Brothers to gauge options for an eighty-dollar gift card that arrived in the mail as well.

I wasn't planning to do so, but I stayed up last night 'til about four o'clock this morning playing the flash games Gravitee and Gravitee 2. Both play like a game of miniature golf writ large, conducted in space, with gravitational effects from the various masses (planets) active across the playing field. Obviously, given the game's necessary abstraction, it's impossible to define either in terms of realistic physics, but I very much preferred the model in the second game to that of the first.

Obviously, staying up so late will negatively affect my ability to compose my story, which I'd hoped to spend time doing on the flights out to Phoenix, but I have downloaded the latest progress from my website to my phone in any case, so I'll be able to work on it in any case if the mood should strike me.

Whether I finish my untitled story on this trip or not, I'm resolved to begin working again on my website once I return home; the inclination to do so was in short supply for months on end, and it's too precious a quantity to waste now that it is present.

It's 12:16 and I'm at l'Espalier, treating myself to the equivalent of my favorite meal at Sel de la Terre. I chose this restaurant, which will undoubtedly carry a higher price, mostly because I wanted the freedom to eat without having to watch over my luggage for the entire time. I have to order it a la carte here, but since SdlT removed it from their visible menu I would have had to have done so there as well.

Besides the foie gras torchon referenced above, I ordered an apple juice-earl grey tea cocktail and a double of espresso. I tried to order a Buttery Nipple as well, but they didn't have the components... from which I gather that one of them, probably the "butterscotch liquer," is probably a "lower class" drink.

Since the iGo wireless keyboard that I've been using is starting to break down - the assembly that props up the cell phone for easy viewing as I type is broken almost entirely, and the letter "c" has a tendency to pop partially out of its socket with no provocation - I stopped in at an airport store that branded itself as a wireless mecca to purchase a new bluetooth keyboard. While I prefer my current model, the iGo (previously branded as Think Outside) Stowaway, since the product has been discontinued and is no longer in stock I bought a legacy, Palm-branded version of the competing HP Freedom keyboard instead. Unfortunately, it seems that unlike with the iGo product the Palm drivers for Windows are not to be found online, and have to be "downloaded" to the device from the CDROM via USB connection to a Windows machine. Of course I have no access to a windows mashine while in transit, and if my memory serves my friend in Arizona is a Mac user... so I might not even be able to test the new keyboard until I arrive back home.

It's 2:45, a bit more than two hours before my flight is scheduled to depart, and I'm sitting near the gate, which has had no intervening flights since I arrived about an hour ago, waiting for any announcements regarding boarding. I mentioned my provisional willingness to get "bumped" from my current flight, depending on the terms, but having given it a bit more thought I've decided that I will not settle for any compensation less than at least a small refund of my ticket cost made to my credit card. I have all of the "comped" flights I require for the next year from AirTran airways, and I'd be even less interested in a partial comping in the form of a monetary vouncher toward a subsequent Delta ticket.

I realized that I'd lost my "Charlie Card" subway fare card, which had $20 of newly-bought stored value on it, when I arrived at the Copley station after my l'Espalier meal. In context of what I paid for the a la carte selections I ordered from the restaurant, it was like being kicked in the nuts, mugged, and then left bleeding on the ground.

Not much else to talk about before my flight, unless I get bumped from it voluntarily or involuntarily, or it is substantially delayed, so I'll upload this chapter as it currently exists, turn off the phone and internet functionality on my mobile device to save battery power, and try to write a bit of my untitled story before fatigue renders me entirely illiterate.