HFCS: effika’s blog

I have to take a trip this week for work. It’s going to be an annoying one. I am stuck in a hotel for 3 nights and I couldn’t even get my favorite hotel. I planned to stay in a suite with a kitchenette (and AWESOME beds) but thanks to some kind of convention I’m stuck at Holiday Inn. Granted, it’s very close to the health department that I need to visit, and apparently there’s decent dining nearby and getting to the mall is easy, but it’s not a suite. I can’t pretend that I have a tiny but upscale efficiency appartment with two huge beds and a gigantic bathroom. Holiday Inns are really quite OK, and I have no problem with them in general, but since I was going to be there for so long I wanted to be able to cook a little. Ah well, I think I still get a coffee maker so I’m good. Gotta have my green tea.

I also made a run on the snack section at Wal-Mart and spent my Barnes and Nobles gift card in order to prepare for my impending boredom , as most of my friends who have families there have returned here for the semester. I’ve got my knitting, but I want to keep my mind occupied, too. Here’s what I bought for my 3-night stay:

1. sack of six bagels, sliced
2. 2 Fuze juice drinks: Strawberry Gauva, Mango Peach. I would have bought more but they were low on stock.
3. 1lb of original spice beef jerky Old World Kitchens
4. 4 Braeburn apples (I originally thought they were silghtly-off-looking Gala apples. We’ll see how they taste!)
5. Cherry Dark Chocolate Kashi TLC granola bars
6. Zinc gluconate lozenges (I get no zinc whatsoever from my diet so I suck on tasty zinc candy to make the white spots on my fingernails go away.)
7. American Scientist, Jan-Feb ‘07 edition
8. The Year’s Best Science Fiction, 22nd edition, ed. Garder Dozois (I still plan to collect and read those all. I used to get them for my birthday since they came out so close to it, but I haven’t gotten one in years.)
9. Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides
10. Titan by Stephen Baxter in case I need a slightly different sci-fi fix. Stephen Baxter is going to be the next Ray Bradbury or perhaps the next Isaac Asimov (except that Baxter can write believable dialogue and probably will not be nearly as prolific).
11. Floppy-brimmed hat knitting project. Maybe something for coasters, too.

Is this a lot? Yes, but I must occupy my time without the internet. I do so love the internet. It’s going to drive me crazy not being able to instantly check the weather. I wish I had a laptop, but now that I’m out of college it’s not nearly as useful. It wasn’t all that useful to me in college, either, otherwise I think I would have had one by now.

Edit: I’m so afraid I’m going to forget my green tea that I’m going to pack it right now.