(no subject)

[damselfish]

I leave for Alaska Wednesday, which means I have to think about packing. There's a zen to it, but my biggest problem is, by far, getting all the liquids I need with me for a ten day trip. I haven't flown with checked baggage in years: all the trips home from college would be extended by about an hour while I stood by the carousel at MIA waiting for my bag to appear. This is not what you want to do at midnight. Or any time, admittedly, but especially not midnight. My bag is a standard carry-on size-- too big to be a carry-on, technically, but about the same size as everyone else's wheelie bag. It goes in the overhead bin and I walk out of the airport with it. No fuss, no muss, no paying for checked baggage. But I have to think on what liquids to take.

My mother thinks I'm nuts. She asked what bag I intended to use, and on hearing was all "that little bag for ten days!?"

"...It was my suitcase when I spent a month abroad."

She stared at me, disbelieving, as if ten days required more stuff than a month. Granted I was not the most fashionable, in my t-shirt and jeans and skirts and sneakers, but I wasn't there for the night life. The fashion maven admonished my choices because I had an amazing figure and only a few flattering things, but then I'd wear the same outfits that made her tut around Miami and I get showered in compliments for being cute and colorful. Sure, her advice was good, especially for make-up, but I had a small bag and I was going to be trekking around ruins. I needed clothes to match. Flattering is skin tight and tailored. Not stuff you want to be sweating in.

Then again, my parents don't know why I'm taking my netbook instead of my Mac. ("Netbook? You know you won't have internet, right?") Gosh, I don't know. One cost $300, the other over $1,000. Which would you rather see stolen or lost or confiscated forever by TSA? And why would not having internet mean I should take my Mac instead...? Sure, I'll miss Scrivener, but Abiword will see me through. I hope. It's kind of odd to realize the internet costs money on the cruise, but I'll have a connection on the plane because we're going first class (awwww yeah. I have arrived.) It's one thing I hate about travel. I'm so used to the prevalence of free wi-fi around home (I'm sitting on Starbucks right now) that traveling to places without just... boggles the mind. Like, when I travel with my grandparents we stay in business hotels, which always have free internet. But tourist hotels never do. One notable example in Rome? Three guys from the same room bought up all the internet for the entire hotel, meaning no other guests could use the hotel's net for days. In what universe does this make sense? I know, fleecing the tourists. But I went a month with no internet last summer, I can make it ten days. Even if my parents are of the "sit and do nothing" opinion when it comes to traveling, so I foresee a lot of evenings spent reading if I don't pay for a connection myself when and where it's available. Last summer I was so busy I hardly noticed the lack of internet; I was either on a bus or trying to get my eight hours of sleep in before we had to get on another bus. It was a good reminder that I'm not addicted, I'm just bored. Important difference.