¿Está en la cocina?
No, está en la sala.
I hope that my old Spanish teacher Ms. Malick (now that I type that I think she was my first teacher who *insisted* on being “Ms.” vs “Miss”) is happy with my recall of 7th-grade Spanish. The “Ms.” thing makes sense come to think about it, seeing as it would have been 1979 and all…and she kinda was a free spirit. I studied Spanish all through high school and even got placed in an advanced class my freshman year of college…where the professor drilled me with the phrase “necesitamos hablar” (“we need to talk”) as he handed back whatever assignment I had underperformed on. Either the class was too high-level for me or my performance too low-level for it. At the time I was sure it was the former but in hindsight I realize it was the latter and my freshman year of college looked like me in a year-long audition to play Rose in Titanic—me treading water frantically in frigid water not knowing where I was or how I got there.
But I digress. (Though to be fair this is a “Thursday Thoughts” post so my mind is allowed to run a bit amok.)
So what’s with the Spanish? This morning I come to you from Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Arrived here Sunday night, staying until Saturday, overseeing some program delivery related to pipeline emergencies.
WAKE UP.
It’s not *that* boring.
In fact I’m trying to decide if it would be more or less so if I actually speak Spanish. But it’s neither here nor there, because I don’t. It’s all good just the same. To be honest it’s nice to be out of the day to day and the weeds that occasionally choke me. Being at an event of this scope and scale makes me remember the importance of what I do. It doesn’t erase the day to day “stuff” but it’s a nice perspective shift for a week.
Anyway, this is a little bit late today, because I’m two hours behind and because I have had practically no free time. Apologies in advance if I muck something up or have more typos than usual.
Here’s what’s going on north of my neck while I’m south of the border:
The only thing worse than the Sunday Scaries is when they happen on Saturday, as evidenced by this:
Airports (in Boston and Houston) were a zoo on Sunday, like pre-pandemic numbers and all the nonsense that goes along with it.
On the plane “Sara Smile” came on and I looked down at my phone. Who knows how many times I have done this before but for the first time I noticed that on the album cover Hall looks like he’s auditioning to host a drag brunch? Oates is just a good shave behind.
Kerri saw the doctor yesterday and got clearance to do everything with pain as the limitation. She has been a model patient; this hip is going to have a lot of fun!
We’re so conditioned to routine that the sign telling me to put toilet paper in the toilet was quite jarring. What’s the alternative? Am I supposed to take it with me? Who knew? Glad we’re able to flush at the hotel.
While we’re on a discussion of the bathroom, why would you put the products in this order?
How many people do you think unknowingly conditioned their hair with body wash?
There’s a kind of (very) (VERY) (VERY!) annoying 7/8ths bald guy who—while talking to me—pulled a little pouch out of his backpack, unzipped it and pulled out a collapsible palm-sized hairbrush, and “brushed” his “hair” (remember—while he was talking to me!) as if I didn’t notice and/or it was perfectly acceptable.
After years of singing Kenny Chesney’s song, it was fun to finally literally sit right here and have another beer in Mexico.
The work style here is very different. On Monday we had a day long planning meeting and were in a small room with Michael Buble playing loud and people singing along…we were doing a million things and somehow it was such a productive and invigorating day.
This assignment required me to wear a branded polo shirt. Fortunately they did get women’s styles for the women, with a little bit of styling (as far as polo shirts go, like an open placket for example)…that said, I’m grateful for my time in Canada (mentioned here and here if you want to catch up), notably that one of the group is an artist who gifts us with handmade pendants as a memento (thanks, friend!)—this year I picked a black one which allows me to really spruce my outfit up. If you’re looking for cool handmade designs inspired by nature, you can find them here.
The breakfast buffet at the hotel is fantastic and I could drink the Jugo Verde all day long. It’s that good. We also enjoyed Pan De Muerto, a special sweet bread that is 🔥 when paired with the fine coffee…it is on the menu in anticipation of the upcoming day of the same name, Dia de Los Muertos.
I’ve lost count of how many pictures I’ve been in this week. It’s really interesting how culture creates “celebrity,” but anything goes. In this sub-culture, in this context, people want pics of us. Poor things.
I think I ate pork rinds yesterday. I mention that for no other reason other than I think I ate pork rinds yesterday, for the first time in my life, to be polite. What even are pork rinds? (They weren’t bad. They kind of tasted like chili-flavored Funyuns.)
Moving right along…if Will and Jada have been separated for 7 years, why are they still together all the time, playacting? And why did Will sucker punch Chris Rock?
Mary Lou Retton is reported to have pneumonia and be on her deathbed. Any other Olympic junkie products of the 80s are feeling this as hard as I am?
I wear an Oura ring; have been for about a year, first wrote about it then. And learning that it’s gonna start tracking daytime stress is stressing me out. I don’t need a ring to know I’m wrapped too tight. But we’ll find out how tight I’m wrapped, and soon.
Speaking of stress I was pretty stressed about this trip. I’ve been sleeping horribly for weeks. Last week I put on a sleep meditation and which advised me to go back to a happy place, which was a particularly day at a specific place…and then I couldn’t remember the name of…then had to get up and google it so kinda defeated the purpose. The happy place restaurant in Harvard Square is called Grafton Street if you were wondering.
Israel…just 💔💔💔 ❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹 I feel like it hasn’t sparked enough outrage. Since when did accountability die?
I need to stop here even thought a lot more is happening upstairs—I don’t have time to talk about it though and need to get to it.
Thanks for being here with me, as usual.
Love you too.