Not Feeling the Aloha

Life transitions, like changing jobs or moving, force us to complete long-neglected tasks. Documenting our work for whomever inherits it, throwing out stuff that might have been useful in a future that never came, and packing our possessions in the right boxes are stressful activities because there is a hard deadline looming.  The afterglow of accomplishment is the reward (but little else because there's scant recognition for doing what we should have been doing all along.)

Extended trips don’t have the same finality as life transitions, but they also to a lesser extent make us clean up our act. For over a week I had been hand-watering a patch of lawn that had been yellowing due to a broken sprinkler head. Yesterday I finally fixed the sprinkler. I prepaid some bills (not all of them can be scheduled online), replaced some worn bathroom fixtures, and closed out volatile securities positions that I did not want to worry about while away.

We were tired when we boarded the plane, but we were pleased with the past few days (see aforementioned afterglow).  The trip has started well.

[Note: a group of high school students entered the plane and blocked the aisles while they tried to jam their duffels into the 777’s overhead compartments. They were well-behaved and probably weren’t familiar with airplane etiquette. When a flight attendant asked one girl to let other groups pass, she complied, but the request did not seem to register with the other teens.

Does social IQ take longer to develop than other forms of intelligence? Your humble observer admits that he was (more) socially oblivious in his youth. Unfortunately, any gains he made in that area are more than offset by the deterioration in his alertness, memory, and speed of mental processing.  If I only knew then what I know now.....]