hello! This morning I touched down in Seattle after a week in Vermont spent visiting a dear study abroad friend. The trip went swimmingly and, apart from a moment of severe turbulence on my first flight (Seattle to DC) during which I was minutes away from begging the two burly men on either side of me to hold me as we all plunged to our death, the travel was not that much of a pain. A little aside: airport security has gotten insanely high tech lately! Perhaps I am a bit late in noticing it but shoot, every time I feel like I am stepping into a sci-fi flick. Fun tidbit: I got selected for a "random screening" TWICE--once they rooted through my luggage (the attendant very courteously asked me: "May I?" before unpacking every bit of luggage. What if I had responded: "I'd really rather you not.") and the second time they swiped my palms with some magic terrorist-detector cloth that they ran through some secret machine before pronouncing me, seconds later, good to go.
I spent most of the week in Burlington, Vermont, a lovely town. Locals brag about it, saying it's a "slice of the Pacific Northwest" and they aren't wrong. My favorite part of my visit was probably the last full day. hannah had gone to work at the Gap on Black Friday (poor, poor soul) and I nestled myself in a nearby coffee shop called Muddy Waters. I ordered my London Fog and cozied up in a large leather armchair to read short stories by Nabokov. But people kept talking to me! And not even in a stop-talking-to-me-can't-you-see-I'm-trying-to-read sort of way, but in a really friendly chat-up-your-neighbor kind of way. I had two separate looong conversations with locals and they were just the greatest. The second one invited me to join him in a protest against WalMart (apparently I "looked like the right kind of person to ask"). I didn't end up going because it involved my traveling by car to which I had no access, but I enjoyed the invitation nonetheless. I like being included, what can I say! he then bid me adieu, well, actually he told me "good karma." Yeah, I like Burlington. I just about finished my book and spent the rest of the time doodling cringe-worthy doodles (that's right--so little talent that not even my doodles come out "right") phrases from the stories and am thinking I will start a new blog dedicated to these downright dowdy doodles (however, I am sufficiently embarrassed just thinking about the possibility so don't wet your pants about it just yet).
Anyway. I am very content and thankful for my time in Vermont with my good friends. It's always fun seeing a bit of the country outside of your own little bubble. The places I want to discover most are Portland, New Orleans, Quebec City, Montreal (not exactly in the country, I know), Nashville, Chicago, and everywhere in between. Speaking of in between, something this week of travel made me think of is the importance of all the "in-between" time. Particularly with travel, you have hours of waiting around for the next step, be it changing flights, buying a disgusting and disgustingly overpriced sandwich but you are already so hungry you don't give a crap, waiting for taxis, waiting for takeoff, waiting for your friend to get off work. Some of these periods of time may seem almost unbearable, but that's because we're only thinking about our lives as a series of appointments and are just so hopped up on moving on to the next big thing. You're probably missing a lot of opportunities for new connections, enjoyable eavesdropping, good writing material as you "kill time." Most of life happens in the in between moments so I'm working on giving them the time of day.
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