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Home, and in preparing-to-leave mode...
Sep. 30th, 2006 03:23 pmGetting from the LIRR Woodside station to LaGuardia by cab cost me about $13.00 with tip (up 69th Street, right on Broadway, to the BQE and then the Grand Central to LAG). That's more than the $9.25 it cost me to go from JFK to the LIRR station near my folks' house during the "off peak", which in turn is exactly the "peak" fare from that station to Woodside. I probably could have cut some of yesterday's getting-to-the-airport costs by taking the Roosevelt Avenue elevated line to 84th Street and then the 48 bus to LaGuardia, but time was - theoretically - short, and I frankly wasn't in the mood to be dragging a backpack and roll-on bag through the subway system.
Check-in, security, and so on went smoothly, leaving me with nearly two hours to wait before boarding. I noticed a new kid on the block downstream of security, a "New York Times Bookstore." Yikes. (Later, both in Cincinnati and in Houston, I noticed the CNBC logo on bookstores and newsstands... what gives with this incursion of media names all of a sudden? Or have I just not noticed it 'til now?)
One tactic US booksellers haven't tumbled to yet is repricing books (upwards, naturally) in places like airports, the way it's done in, say, Frankfurt. However, the price of drinking water between security and the gate appears to be going up. A pint of bottled water was going for $1.49 at the Atlanta airport on the first "no liquids" day (which was the day I returned from the previous campaign). The same bottle was going for $2.49 in New York and not much less in Cincinnati yesterday. Fortunately, the water fountain had not been shut down at the Cincinnati airport, and in any event, TSA decided recently that you can board your flight with a drink bought in an airport concourse (and, FWIW, relaxed the rules somewhat regarding liquids).
Natalie picked me up at the airport and we ordered a couple of dinners to go from Carraba's here in Clear Lake, which worked out well, as there was enough for the three of us to have dinner after we got to Webster.
Natalie stayed the night and she, Galina, and I had lunch at the Chinese buffet down the street, before Galina went off to the other house to supervise some work, and Natalie and I drove around for a bit before she went back home.
So far today, I've fixed a leaky sink at the other house and set up the desktop in my office in case Galina needs to use a computer after I leave. My next task will be to do an online search to find the operating/programming instructions for our air conditioner's thermostat, so that we can reset the goofy thing and keep it from trying to drive the temperature into the single digits during the night.
Before leaving for the funeral, I had informed the person I was working with at my client's office that I would not be able to do any onsite interpretation work this past week and that I was leaving for Kazakhstan early this week, but that word apparently did not get passed. Fortunately, after calling and explaining the lay of the land, and that I would not be available for work starting Tuesday, and apologizing for the apparent short notice, I still have an assignment for Monday, for which I am grateful.
Nonetheless, it just seems to me I'm making too many errors lately, but - following the advice of several LJ friends - I'm not going to lose any sleep over it right now. I'm sure it's merely a transient state.
Time to get some other tasks out of the way. Tomorrow will be reserved for completing the medical translation and taking it easy (and, oh yeah, packing).
Check-in, security, and so on went smoothly, leaving me with nearly two hours to wait before boarding. I noticed a new kid on the block downstream of security, a "New York Times Bookstore." Yikes. (Later, both in Cincinnati and in Houston, I noticed the CNBC logo on bookstores and newsstands... what gives with this incursion of media names all of a sudden? Or have I just not noticed it 'til now?)
One tactic US booksellers haven't tumbled to yet is repricing books (upwards, naturally) in places like airports, the way it's done in, say, Frankfurt. However, the price of drinking water between security and the gate appears to be going up. A pint of bottled water was going for $1.49 at the Atlanta airport on the first "no liquids" day (which was the day I returned from the previous campaign). The same bottle was going for $2.49 in New York and not much less in Cincinnati yesterday. Fortunately, the water fountain had not been shut down at the Cincinnati airport, and in any event, TSA decided recently that you can board your flight with a drink bought in an airport concourse (and, FWIW, relaxed the rules somewhat regarding liquids).
Natalie picked me up at the airport and we ordered a couple of dinners to go from Carraba's here in Clear Lake, which worked out well, as there was enough for the three of us to have dinner after we got to Webster.
Natalie stayed the night and she, Galina, and I had lunch at the Chinese buffet down the street, before Galina went off to the other house to supervise some work, and Natalie and I drove around for a bit before she went back home.
So far today, I've fixed a leaky sink at the other house and set up the desktop in my office in case Galina needs to use a computer after I leave. My next task will be to do an online search to find the operating/programming instructions for our air conditioner's thermostat, so that we can reset the goofy thing and keep it from trying to drive the temperature into the single digits during the night.
Before leaving for the funeral, I had informed the person I was working with at my client's office that I would not be able to do any onsite interpretation work this past week and that I was leaving for Kazakhstan early this week, but that word apparently did not get passed. Fortunately, after calling and explaining the lay of the land, and that I would not be available for work starting Tuesday, and apologizing for the apparent short notice, I still have an assignment for Monday, for which I am grateful.
Nonetheless, it just seems to me I'm making too many errors lately, but - following the advice of several LJ friends - I'm not going to lose any sleep over it right now. I'm sure it's merely a transient state.
Time to get some other tasks out of the way. Tomorrow will be reserved for completing the medical translation and taking it easy (and, oh yeah, packing).
