As I write this, the time is just after midnight on September 5. I am in Concourse D of the Charlotte International Airport in North Carolina.

I am on the way home from a three-day work training session in Orlando, Florida. My first flight was delayed two hours due to severe storms around Orlando, which meant I missed my connection. The next available flight back home is at 9:30 this morning, which means I will arrive in Grand Rapids at around 11:15 am.

This means, counting from when the first plane was first scheduled for takeoff, my trip home will take around 18 hours.

Back in 1994 I travelled to Russia as part of my degree. The flight from Grand Rapids to St. Petersburg was around 18 hours.

While at the conference one of my directors informed me that I would be rolled off of my current project at the end of the month, which is also the end of the fiscal year in the corporate world. This coincides with my secondary project coming to a close, also at the end of the month.

So I might take an extra few days off in October. And a couple of weeks on the bench would be nice.

Reading

For reading material during my trip I brought Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems, which is engaging and informative. Many of the concepts in the first part of the book are familiar to me, but put together in a way which unlocks possibilities and implications which are new to me. It was a good pairing.

For the flight home I downloaded and read Terry Pratchett’s Interesting Times, one of the few Discworld books which I had not yet read. Fun, funny, unexpectedly deep, and very much a good book to read when stranded in an airport.

[Update, 14:13] After I finished the Pratchett I immediately downloaded and read John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society. I finished it just before the plane touched down in Grand Rapids. Scalzi described it as “pop music,” which tracks, as it was fun and engaging and clever, but like most of his tunes (to belabor the metaphor), the lyrics are worth paying attention to.

Writing

Due to work stress and travel disruption, I have, for the first time in months, written nothing at all. Not even journal entries.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Subject: Addiction, Reincarnation
Setting: Subterranean
Genre: War

Listening

Brand X, “Nuclear Burn” from their 1976 album Unorthodox Behavior. That’s Phil Collins on the drums. Damn!

Interesting Links

• “OpenAI Is Sinking Fast, Who Will It Pull Down With It?” (Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism)