jenk

It might have been a mistake to go luggage shopping the night before a road trip, but I did it anyway. (The real mistake might have been reading www.OneBag.com during lunch Wednesday.)

But still - ain't it shiny?

Cool stuff:

• Built-in optional (can fold down or up) padded dividers.
• A center compartment that fits the work laptop, thus letting me eliminate a separate computer bag.
• Handle AND detachable shoulder strap AND tuck-away backpack straps.
• Two zippered pockets in the top, one on the front.

I also shocked my darling jw1776 by getting 95% packed the night before. One of the things with me and packing is that I feel I must pack all at once or else I will forget things. This was not a problem in years past, but somewhere between sleeping with the bite guard (an item I only have one of, which must be packed in the morning) and sleeping with a CPAP (also an item I only have one of which must be packed in the morning) I quit packing prior to the morning of a trip.

Since we wanted to leave early - like, 6AM early - I didn't exactly want to do my full packing gestalt Thursday morning either.

So I tried to psych myself out: I had packed everything at once, I just had unpacked the CPAP and bite guard for the night, from the separate CPAP case. I think it worked.

I also think skydancer and I shocked jw1776 by being up at 5AM Thursday morning.

( Twitter excerpts from the drive... )
Given that we'd all had about 5 or 6 hours of sleep Wednesday night and then driven all day, we were quite happy to order pizza. I'd brought my swimsuit with the idea that I could work the driving/sitting-in-car kinks out by swimming but the icy water in the pool sent me to the hot tub. It was warm and cozy, and I chatted with an organic farmer / part-time school bus driver who thought the idea of a science fiction convention sounded really cool.

It's a question that many have to wrestle with.

In Vailia Dennis' and Art Buchwald's cases, it was a conscious choice. That's probably better than skipping check-ups or ignoring a possibly cancerous lump because you don't want to know...but it's still a choice.

And I know quality and length are not always either-or. I'm told that treating my sleep apnea increases the chances that I will live longer; I know the better sleep I get improves my current quality of life.

Either way, choosing to put quality or length of life first is a valid choice to make for one's self. I doubt it's always easy ... but maybe it sometimes is.