Dorothy Marley's Journal

Things I have learned in the last 24 (or so) hours:

( Or, as Archie Goodwin once said: There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up. )

I have completed Phase One of the vacation process. For several years, my mother and stepdad have been mailing their luggage instead of checking it on the plane. They started by mailing one bag because they couldn't fit their metric crapton of ski gear into the checked bag allowance, and then eventually realized that just mailing off the bulk of their gear saved them from the crush of humanity that always surrounds the baggage belt at the Jackson airport. (Imagine about 200 people crammed into a luggage claim area about the size of a postage stamp. Then imagine them all with skis...)

This year, the mail-in option became even more attractive because American Airlines decided that checked baggage was no longer free, and would be charging $20 for the first checked bag and $30 for the second. So, I lugged my two ginormous suitcases to the FedEx office this morning and shipped them off. The cost to mail two 35lb suitcases to Wyoming? $66, only $16 more than it would have cost to check them onto the plane. And they'll be there a week ahead of time, and I won't have to fight my way through throngs of passengers to get them.

( More about carry-ons, and why CPAP machines don't count )

( Speaking of the CPAP machine, I had a follow-up about my apnea. )

Yep, it's that time of year again, when I move my NaNoWriMo bookmarks up to the Toolbar. Of course, the site designers have, as usual, rearranged everything so that most of them are broken, but re-setting the links is always a nice time-waster those first few days.

I have to say that, despite thinking about what I'm going to write since the beginning of October, the actual arrival of NaNoWriMo snuck up on me this year. I've been tootling along with it in the back of my mind, then suddenly I look up and it's three days before the start.

Part of my distraction has been my nesting behavior over at the new rec journal. I'm really, really glad I moved all the rec stuff. Not only am I no longer spamming people who are not necessarily interested in the recs, I've also been able to do a lot of tagging and organizing that wasn't really practical here. I feel like the rec journal can now be an actual resource that will, hopefully, remain useful even if I stop having the time to do as much recommending.

In other news, I picked up my CPAP machine today. I think it says something that I'm looking forward to strapping the thing on at bedtime. (Probably that I'm willing to do almost anything for a good night's sleep. :))

I also discovered that if you wait until the last few days to buy Halloween candy, you a) don't have time to eat it beforehand and b) can get it on sale. Also, Cheetos are not kosher.

In order to avoid blathering incessantly about Yet Another Health Issue, I decided--this time--to wait until I had a firm diagnosis.

( The desire to fall asleep into your mashed potatoes is not normal. Just so you know. )