Traveling

Good Morning -

What you don't want to hear from the security agent who has pulled your carry-on aside for a check:
Do you have a knife in your bag?

What you don't want to say:
I don't think so...
(thinking maybe I have a pocket knife on my keys even though I know I don't have a pocket knife on my keys - I hate how those security situations create a space in which one is open to believing almost anything about oneself that the guard suggests)

Followed by:
Oh...shit.
when presented with the 4-inch blade he just extracted from your bag.

That's how my traveling day began. I had totally forgotten that I had decided earlier in the week to bring home the big knife I kept in my locked cabinet at work that I used to cut up apples so I could eat them with peanut butter for a snack.

I've been so tired lately that the knife got into my bag, but didn't get out until the security guard removed it. The bag I carried on yesterday is the same messenger-style bag that I use to go to work and when I packed it yesterday morning with things I needed for the interview, I didn't take the time to first thoroughly unpack it.

When presented with the knife, I launched into a quick explanation of how I kept it at work to cut up apples and had forgotten that it was there. I kept saying, "You can throw it out" in an attempt to show that I have no allegiance with the knife and don't care about it and certainly don't need it for my day in Denver.

Then I was worried that if I encouraged too much the throwing out of the knife, he might wonder why I want him to dispose of it and decide he needs to pull me aside for a more thorough investigation. I calmed myself, though, with images of the CSI-style lab running elaborate tests on the blade and not finding blood but being able to tell exactly what sort of apples I eat.

The rest of my day involved flying, bus riding, walking, light rail taking, walking, interviewing, interviewing, interviewing, interviewing, walking, light rail taking, walking, interviewing, walking, lease signing, walking, bus riding, flying, and then a grateful ride home from my partner.

By the time she got to me, I was deep into my vow of silence after a very non-INFP day of talking, talking, talking. That and I was tired.

I'm told a lot of savvy-types come and go by plane in a day, and I salute them. I need a day to recover on either end from zooming at high speeds at great heights (cabin pressure regulating be damned - flying still affects me), so doing it at the start and the end of the day makes for a very incoherent Me (see sentence structure and general writing composition for more details...).

The image for the Virgen is some credit card ad that is supposed to be demonstrating how securely they keep your personal info, but I thought it was a great representation of how my brain was last night - cloudy and with some thoughts but indecipherable ones that weren't verbalized well.

Knives aside, it was a great day in Denver and I'm so excited to set up home there with my partner if a few weeks. The interviews all went well, and I'm super excited about the last two.

Here's to that. Here's to good interviews. Here's to good interviews turning into good jobs. Here's to weapon-free flight and time to decompress.

This is what I saw out of my window on the flight to Denver. I like that my plane to Denver had a bear on it and that my plane from Denver had a sea turtle on it. I didn't realize pictures taken out of a moving plane worked so well or I would have also taken shots of the other great things I saw out my window, including the spots of gold on the mountains that are the aspen groves turning, the high, snow-dusted peaks that sit above timber-line, and Red Rocks.

(I was a little shy taking this picture for a couple of reasons - I felt like a tourist, and I get nervous now about anything I do while flying that could be interpreted as a sort of "unusual" or "suspicious" behavior (I don't know anyone who feels "safer" and "more secure", even with the color-coding of fear and other precautions).