Tag: boredom

How to resolve boredom

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I mentioned the other day that I couldn’t decide what to read and with the weekend coming up, I felt I needed to take preemptive action. So at lunch today, I went down stairs and got my spending money for the week ($100). Then I walked over to Borders. I bought 2 books, Humans and Hybrids both by Robert J. Sawyer (I’ve already read Hominids). Then, just for good measure, I also purchased seasons 3 and 4 of NYPD Blue. It came to $99.71. There goes the spending money for the week. Fortunately, I had some left over from last week.

The thing is, I’m not sure I want to read the two Sawyer books yet. Last night I was thinking about reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer (which I read once in college) and the other two books in that trilogy (which I haven’t read).

I could spend the time writing a new story, but I’m not quite there yet. (Almost, but not quite.)

Ah, they hell with it. I’m going home, watching some Blue, watching Battlestar Galactica and figure out what to do next when that’s over.

Meanwhile, it’s time for a chocolate shake.

Observations from 36,000 ft

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It is 10 PM Eastern time and I am sitting in seat 2B in the First Class cabin of United 307 from Baltimore, Maryland to Los Angeles, California. I have been sitting here for just shy of four hours and I have exactly two hours to go, if everything is on time. I am bored out of my mind. I thought I would take this opportunity to list some observations.

1. Looking around an airport terminal, you can always tell the most important people by the thickness of their cellular phones. The most important people have the thickest phones. They have to be thick to hold the extended life battery pack so that they can be on the phone all of the time. That’s how important they are.

1a. The most important people in the airport terminal also walk around with those ridiculous-looking BlueTooth headsets. This is a corrolary of #1 above.

2. There are two places in which it is particularly inconvenient to get a stomach ache: stuck in traffic, or stuck at 35,000 feet.

3. If you are ever stuck at 35,000 feet with a stomach ache and the flight attendant offers you an ice cream sundae with chocolate syrup and whipped cream, you should refuse it. Accepting the dish of ice cream only makes matters worse.

4. First Class on United is not what it used to be. The napkins used to be cloth. Now they are thick paper.

5. Most people who fly First Class on United have probably upgraded using miles or upgrade credits. No one in their right mind would actually pay for this.

6. I like airplane bathrooms. They bring out the claustrophillia in me.

7. On United, you can listen to air traffic control on channel 9 on your headset. On long flights like this, it seems that no matter how often I check air traffic control to see how we are progressing, we always seem to be somewhere over Kansas.

8. No one in First Class seem to be using laptops. However, everyone in coach seems to be working. I’m not sure what this says, but it seems somehow significant.

9. If there is so much more leg room in First Class, then why do my legs feel cramped up?

10. Laptop battery power decreases in inverse proportion to my level of boredom. As I get increasingly bored, my laptop seems to run–

Solitaire

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I spent the last two hours doing nothing but sitting on the couch, listening to music and playing solitaire. I felt like I wanted to do some writing earlier, but just couln’t get into it. So I literally killed time playing solitaire. I am terrible at solitaire. I’ve been trying to decide if there is an actual strategy to the game (without looking it up online) but it seems pretty consistent to me. I love far, far more often then I win. More reinforcement for when I go to Vegas.

Battlestar Galactica is starting up in about 15 minutes and I’m looking forward to that.

No snow yet…looks like I won’t be getting any until sometime tomorrow. But the weather people insist that it’s coming.

Heard from Shannon today and she’s doing pretty good, it sounds, all things considered. I was thinking about her because yesterday, I needed to look up a quote and pulled out my Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations which Shannon got me for Christmas 1992. Inside, she wrote:

Someday I will open a book like this to see a quote from you.

and so I sent her an email last night and heard back from her earlier today.

Need to get my train and/or bus tickets to/from NYC for next weekend.

And I’m shooting for an even 40 pushups tonight–eventually.

The problem with business travel on Friday nights

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I got back to the hotel at around 5 PM and I am bored out of my mind. Everyone always has plans on Friday nights so it’s hard to find people to hang out with. I figured I’d come back here to the hotel and read or write, and I find that I’m in the mood to do neither.

I went over to the AM/PM earlier and got some chips and a sandwich for five bucks, rather than order room service for $50 or eat in the restaurant for $35. But it is now 8 PM and I am in bed, writing this because I am bored. I’m looking forward to hanging out with Andy, Mandy, and Lisa tomorrow, but at this point, tomorrow can’t come soon enough.

I’ve started listening to some Billy Joel to pass the time. I imagine I will either fall asleep or read in the not too distant future.

Bored Beyond Belief

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There is not much to do here at this hotel and I was just tired and lazy enough to not want to go out and do anything either after work today. And so I find myself in one of those moods where I just don’t know what to do with myself.

I watched an episode of Donny Deutch’s show on CNBC where he did an hour long interview with Billy Joel, and that was interesting. I thought about going to the hotel restaurant for dinner, but nothing on the menu looks good. Instead, I went out and found a chicken salad sandwich and that wasn’t too bad.

I did manage to get in some writing–about 800 more words of “Blind Date”. If all goes well, I should finish it up tomorrow.

I feel like reading now, but I also feeling like listening to some Billy Joel and I can’t do both at the same time. That’s okay, however, because I am also tired and the best option at this time of night, and this level of boredom is to just go to sleep, so that’s what I’m going to do.