Inertia and Exile

It's funny how a week of forced vacation from exercise (I was in CA, and I didn't take my bike, because of the lack of a roof rack) can affect your ability to get back in the saddle. Couldn't bring myself to go unchain Fearless from the basement, and head out for a ride. Don't have the rollers at the moment, so I couldn't even be troubled to ride in the house. But I did manage to do my grocery shopping on foot.

And yes, grocery shopping. When my dinner plans for this evening got upended, I couldn't figure out what to feed myself. I always get this mental block about keeping leftovers around when I know I'm going to be gone or busy. With Thanksgiving this week, that's at least a couple of meals that are pretty well set. And what with the pending exile, I start to think "Oh, that'll just go bad before I can eat all the leftovers." So those factors sapped any inventiveness I had in mind for dinner.

What's that? Exile? Yes. That's right. I will very likely be heading back to England again in the next couple of weeks, for as long as four weeks in total. A lot of it depends on the holiday schedules of my counterparts there, as well as my own holiday planning. But the question is not "if?" but rather "when?" I don't particularly mind traveling (anymore)--I got used to it when I was doing it regularly, and even a trans-Atlantic jaunt is not terribly off-putting. However, I had thought that I was out of this phase of my work life. They say "be careful what you wish for" though, as I was just thinking "Gosh, it'd be nice to get up to 50,000 air miles this year, for status in '06." Whoops.