I'm at a point in my life when I should be extremely busy, but I've just been sitting on my butt ever since arriving back home. What the hell, man? Why is time progressing like this? I'll be starting university soon, and I'm woefully unprepared. I need to buy a laptop, I'm 60 dollars in debt to a friend, my student aid may not be secured yet, I don't know what my transportation situation will be, I broke my water bottle (it's fixable though, thank the lord. Wouldn't want to part with my latest love so soon), I broke the lid of my airpods (also fixable), I broke my suitcase (not fixable), I lost the charger for my shaver, I've grown rusty in Minecraft, I'm still waking up at 11 AM, and I need to clean out the flooded basement that I'll have to move into when we have guests in a few days.

That basement is fucking disgusting - it's covered in old laundry that was sitting on the floor and is now practically rancid after sitting in stormwater for weeks (and it's not the first time they've done that!). It actually used to be my room, but I eventually got to leave it after one of my siblings moved out. A lot of my stuff is still down there - lego sets, books, magazines, my 3D printer, and lots of random electronics shit I collected over the years. I had all my magazines in a nightstand shelf against the wall, and I left them there when I moved out. Guess what was sitting above that nightstand? If you guessed "leaky glass block window", you'd be, unfortunately, correct. During the last storm we had, I bravely ventured into the basement to assess the scale of the water ingress problem that had clearly been worsening with time. The windows were GUSHING water, like full-on shower faucet flow. Actually, no, I'd guess each window was contributing at least two or three showerheads worth of waterflow. It's extremely bad. Everything that was on that nightstand, and the nightstand itself, are ruined and growing mold. I'm kind of sad about the loss of half of my collection of Make: magazines. Why I didn't bring up that older half and reunite it with the new ones I keep upstairs, I'm unsure. Anyway, if I actually end up sleeping down there, I'll probably end up dying of mold inhalation. But hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. If the price of hospitality is just a little exposure to toxins, you bet I'm paying.

Mold probably isn't that dangerous anyway. Mycotoxins, my ass.

I should probably talk about the trip I went on. Where was it? Places. My first flight was actually grounded because Trump was showing up at the world cup, or something along those lines. I initially thought he was doing a flyover, for whatever strange reason, but I was then enlightened by a fellow passenger to the fact that he was actually spectating the game. When we finally landed at the correct airport, I actually saw the new Qatari-donated air force one parked on the tarmac. At least, it was the Qatari air force one according to that same fellow passenger. I'm pretty sure that I saw the distinctive, widely shat-on red stripe, so they might've been correct. It's not like I've bothered checking after the fact if the plane was actually there, to verify what we were apparently looking at, so it could've been some random ass 747.

The flight I got on after that one was longer, and worse. If I have to sit down for a stretch longer than two hours, my butt will be in extreme pain. I don't know if this is normal for everyone, or if I'm just experiencing this because I'm low body fat and have nothing on my butt to cushion my pelvis with. Either way, I was in extreme discomfort for a majority of the 10+ hour ride. Besides for the pain in the ass, I also dropped my dirty fork into my neighbors seat, I stupidly opened my water bottle and sprayed water on my stuff, I gave my pillowcase to a flight attendant to throw out while thinking it was a disposable wrapper, I couldn't charge my phone because the seat only had USB-A ports, and I was perpetually blinded by the in-flight entertainment screen that wouldn't turn off. Basically the whole thing sucked and I felt like shit the entire time.

My flight back was infinitely better though. This time I knew what to do and what not do: DON'T open your water bottle (that you're totally allowed to have), DON'T bother trying to eat the in-flight meal, and DO bring a USB-A cable. In addition to the improvements brought by my newly attained flying wisdom, I lucked out with a window seat, and in premium this time instead of economy. Hurray. As it turned out, this plane (777) actually did have USB-C ports, which rendered my purchase of a C-A cable pointless. Or maybe it was just the premium seats? I don't know. The window seat was cool and all, but if I end up flying somewhere again, I'll make sure to get an aisle seat and not a window seat. I'd much rather have easy bathroom access than three minutes worth of views. I don't understand how the engineers who arrange the seats in planes expect people to be able to get up in the middle of a flight. I was lucky that the people I was sitting next to weren't complete strangers, otherwise I wouldn't have even attempted getting up to take a piss. And despite my new wisdom, there was still one mistake I made this time: I wore shorts. I ended up with hypothermia. Don't wear shorts on long flights. Even with my frozen extremities though, it was still a far better and easier experience this go around.

I lost my Duolingo streak on the trip. It was nearing 500 days, and a particularly long stretch of poor internet access wiped it out. My sister lost a streak once, and months later was able to get it back. Hopefully something like that happens to me. I'm currently sitting at a measly four days. Sigh.