Kind of an obligatory post, unless you like travel nonsense.
Not much there and it both goes to external links. There's a reason for that - every year, the division of a large corporation that employs me attempts to gather all of its remote employees at the office in Carrollton, Texas, to plan out the next three months and maybe beyond. That's basically everyone, by the way; folks I know who moved to Dallas to work there barely go in post-pandemic, and one of my managers who lives right across the street went there for the first time at last year's meetings. The place has a stark "days of a dying dot-com" vibe, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly fine.
I mostly go to connect faces to voices and let others do the same, because we've basically settled on a good "only psychos turn their cameras on in Teams" vibe, and, hey, it's January, why not being in Texas rather than Boston? I don't participate much in the meetings; I mostly do maintenance rather than new development at this point, which is okay, because I'm happiest as a worker bee with a pile of things to do where I can just take the next one off the top. I stay in the meeting rooms because I'm going to just be staring at the computer somewhere and, hey I might absorb something useful.
So: Monday was flying, arriving just late enough after a weird rideshare thing that I was barely able to grab anything to eat. Most importantly, though, the pilot mentioned that it was going to be about 34 Fahrenheit when we landed, and that's when I remembered the weather map we'd been laughing about on social media, which looked like a gigantic phallus drawn across the continental United States but was, in fact, the expected track for a major winter storm.
Tuesday, during the kickoff, management mentioned that, yeah, there was snow coming, so they were cancelling all Thursday meetings and if we could move our flights up, go ahead. By the time I had the chance, though, my 12:35pm Thursday flight was already inside the 48-hour window when they're locked. Ah, well, the storm wasn't expected until later in the afternoon, so I'd just go the the airport as soon as I had breakfast on Thursday and hang around the termina. The day ended with a team dinner, where we did not order our meals until an hour after the listed time, with those sixty minutes spent on drinks, talking about places to get drinks and local beers, local restaurants, and what people's kids were doing. I had nothing to add to this conversation and my hearing is such that I could only hear the very loud people to my left (one ear is much better than the other, so it's hard for me to pick voices out of a crowd). If you know me, well, this isn't Hell, but it is Heck.
Wednesday, things continue on, and then sometime around 3:30pm I get an email that my flight is canceled. I'm guessing staying an extra day isn't going to be a lot of fun, even if it can be finagled with the hotel, so I go on Expedia and find no direct flights, but there is one at 9pm CST or so that will get me to Washington, DC around 12:30am EST, and then another at 7am EST that will get me to Logan at 9am or so. I book it, say my farewells, and smile to myself that I won't be bringing everyone down by not enjoying the evening's Casino Night activities.
The rideshare to the airport is a Ford F-150 pickup truck. I am not sure if that's "Texas panicking about imminent snow" or just regular Texas.
Anyway, not a lot going on in Reagan National airport during those hours, but I mange to stay awake until shops and restaurants open, fill my belly, and head home. There is probably more Rockstar Energy drink in my veins than blood by the time I call into a regular 12pm EST meeting, but I nevertheless crash hard that evening.
Friday night, I catch a 6pm show of The Prosecutor, a decent enough Donnie Yen action thing where he looks okay behind the camera but noticeably slower in front, and if he's going to try to do courtroom drama stuff, he might be better off with a director who is good at that. Sunday evening, I hit a mainland China thriller in Octopus with Broken Arms, which is both one of those "sequels" that have nothing to do with each other, story-wise, but have similar themes and some shared personnel and one of those Chinese movies that are set in a version of Thailand with a majority-Chinese population and can thus be really gruesome with corrupt cops and the like. It's a slog. In between, a bunch of errands and falling asleep when starting Blu-rays too late.
Anyway, back to sunny Boston, where it snowed on Saturday but we are well able to handle it, having snowplows to clear the roads rather than janitors' push brooms (I kid; I don't know if Dallas has brooms). My Letterboxd account will be waking back up soon, though.
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