Mmm, free wifi

I am at San Jose Airport, otherwise known as the Airport of Continuingly Dreadful Coffee. Why is this? (It may be that this is the only airport where I come and go early enough that coffee is what I drink here? Generally my drink-of-choice while waiting for a plane would be alcoholic, wherever in the day we were. Just, not quite this early...)

It is early, and I am from home. This is the first time m'wife and I have parted, in seven months. It feels very odd. She has gone home to feed the boys and sleep more; she will be the one to face down the cleaners and buy the wine and decide what's for dinner tonight. (The leftovers from yesterday are on the top shelf of the fridge.)

I am flying to Portland for a couple of days with Shannon and Mark. I haven't been on a plane since I came to the US, back in March; it's the first time for years that I've kept my feet on the ground so long. Also, I used my green card for ID. Never done that before. It works, apparently.

All around me, people are finishing their NaNo novels working virtuously on their laptops. I suppose I must look like that too, but really this is just a placeholder. Don't want to work. Mostly I want to watch planes, read my book, drink this dreadful coffee and figure out some way to face the world with everything I know about it. I'll let you know how that goes.

Slowly going nowhere

I have a theory: which states that all of life in fact transpires at and consists in airport lounges. No one actually travels, and there is no hope. All coffee has always been this bad. Everything else is illusion, the desperate dreaming of we despairing few. It's sort of like the Matrix, without any drama; the machines are in fact entirely static, and just don't work.

We are delayed until noon at least, while they fly a spare part down from Oakland. I am inspired with total confidence and trust.

In other news, it's raining. Probably at both ends.

Also and furthermore

They are playing muzak at me. In celebration, presumably, of this post-Thanksgiving season, it are bad orchestrations of Christmas songs et al, played at the precise level calculated to drive a man subconsciously insane. The first one dug itself deep, and was a pianist playing bad variations on the theme of Auld Lang Syne, decorating poorly and constantly sliding off in directions the piano really didn't want to go. That was horrible. It's been downhill since then. I am terribly unhappy, and I still have two hours to go before there is any hope of leaving. This is hell, nor am I out of it.

Also also

I have just figured out why most airport lounges (in my experience) don't give you a decent view of the runway and departing planes. The degree of hate engendered in those of us stuck here for every other lucky sod who gets to leave is glass-meltingly vivid. As it happens, we here have a fine view of the runway and the lucky sods. This entire wing of the terminal will be dissolving shortly.