Travel. Fun...?

I wrote this post two weeks ago on a plane, but only got around to posting it today: 



The sun isn't up, and I've already had a more interesting day than I planned.
Last night I talked to my mom, and the week has rough on her. Her brother is on the hospital, it's serious, and I said I'd fly out to spend the weekend. Tickets were about $400 cheaper out of Austin, so I booked them, and called our awesome friends R and M who live there. Air mattress arranged, I mangled the pizza (not enough flour on the peel, toppings all over the stone, smoke alarm got upset), so Mita and I went out to Green, a delicious vegetarian restaurant. Mita and I then went to Shabbat services at temple Beth El (beautiful, worth going again, and a whole different post), went home, and then I drove up to Austin. After a worth-it-but-sleep-robbing conversation with M and R ranging from politics at Beth El (M's temple), Chinese Jews (Mita used their supposed non-existence to underscore her ethnic out of place feeling at temple, five minutes before the Rabbi invited a Mr. Wu up to the podium), to the self selection in dorms (Shafer at Wellesley was apparently the lesbian one).

And then I slept, with my alarm set for a perfect schedule without wasted time to catch my 6:20 flight. And I woke up, dressed, and looked at my boarding pass: flight at 6:05. Firetruck. The math didn't really leave much room for error, so I rushed out the door, easy enough since my bag was packed. Got to my car, and to text Mita so she'd know all was well, I pulled out my...double firetruck. Phone is in the apartment. No biggie, it's not nice, but I'll just wake up M and have her let me back into her building. By calling her. With my...phone.
Here I am, 15 minutes late with minimal margin of error to start with, no phone, and no way to get back to where it is. I give myself 5 minutes to recover my phone before giving up, and try the stairs. Key card access, but the door is barely cracked, so all is okay. But wait. There is an imposing gate at the bottom of the stairs, with another prox card reader, and this one is closed. I look at the metal gate, look at the 18 inch gap at the top 8 feet off the ground, silently thank UTSA for their climbing wall, and pull myself over.

Why yes, I am kind of proud I could scale that

Run up (5th floor, did I mention that I'm starting to suspect my ankle is broken, not sprained?), grab my phone where it's still charging, slip out, race to the airport, park in expensive parking because I'm late, in line for security I rifle through my bag checking for any of the box cutters I use as cheap disposable pocket knives, go through security smoothly, put my passport back , and see a friendly green box cutter poking out at me. Oops. On the other hand, the sky off our starboard wing is gorgeous.

Morning, sunrise, Jacques

I'm sitting out on my balcony again this morning, and I've traded my cup of coffee for a dog.  We were concerned about him on the balcony, since he might be able to jump over the edge, but he's wary of the edge anyway, so I don't think we have to be scared.  I'm not about to leave him here unattended, but he's happy to sit next to me and take in the world, looking up at me every so often.  He likes it when I scratch the back of his neck, and I think he likes watching the traffic go by on the freeway. If I imagine hard enough, I can see him gazing at the horizon as it turns shades of orange and pink.

Sunrise, Coffee, My Balcony

I miss home--most days I get up and almost instantly find myself in throngs of traffic, or if not traffic just a collection of rude drivers on their way to work, and nobody out here knows how to drive (I'll save my rant about different lanes being for different speeds for another day), but some moments it's perfect.

This is one of them.  I'm sitting outside on my balcony, looking at my little potted basil plant, and watching the sky turn from purple to yellow to pink as the sun comes closer to the horizon, and there's a large flock of little birds flying past, and my coffee is perfect, the air is just cool enough that I can wear a sweatshirt, and to top it off, there's a small dog on the neighbor's balcony that is adorable.  The dog spends all day out there, as far as I can tell without any water or toys, but at the moment it seems content sitting under a piece of patio furniture, lazily attacking the tag hanging off the bottom.  This dog is a prime candidate for impersonation by Mita, which usually involves some form of inquisitiveness about where his mom has gone, followed by confusion as to what just happened to the lawn chair (it collapsed when he attacked it), and ends with the ever adorable series: "OOOH, what's that, its moving! [its his tail]... Mine, wait, come back, don't go away, I'll catch you!... HA, gotcha, you're mine now!...Oops, I fell over... Hey, what's that wagging thing?"

I've been told that its pathological, but this is the first dog I've seen that not only chases his own tail, but catches it, an event followed on most occasions by his falling over, releasing the tail, and then trying again to catch it.