commercially important persons

Some notes I took (lightly edited) while in the CIP lounge in Dushanbe airport waiting to leave for Dubai at 4 AM:

• Been watching this Russian TV show for 20 minutes and have no idea what's happening or even what kind of show it is. A game show? A talk show? The TV reflected in the window is showing MMA, which I don't enjoy much but which is at least easy to understand.
• "Partner" and "roaming" are direct loan words to Tajik, transliterated into Cyrillic on the wall-sized cell phone ad across the room from me.
• Daler booking us space in the CIP lounge: a kindness that kind of backfired because it's uncomfortable and they took our passports and there's no clear indication of where or when we check in. 
• The check-in lady, without asking, put one of Farah's bags with mine, and somehow also one of Farah's bags with Jasmin's. Farah had to go get her to redo it. Shockingly incompetent and rude, I'm not sure I've ever seen a more incompetent person working in an airport.

Coda: The check-in lady used code numbers on the tags that were not recognizable to the system in Dubai. I'm not even sure how that's possible, but it meant that it took more than an hour for them to find Farah's second bag and that I had to check at the counter and also the gate to make sure mine had made it through. It did, but with half my clothes somehow stained yellow. Like, urine yellow. They didn't stink but if they're permanently stained then Emirates and Fly Dubai are gonna get a strongly-worded email. 

running

Today I ran 14.53 km, or just over 9 miles, with nine 60-second bursts at ~3:30/km pace (5:38/mile) sprinkled throughout. That is the farthest I've ever run, certainly farther than we ever went for cross country practice in high school (come to think of it, that might be why Blair was never very good at cross country). This represents progress. I'm excited about the two 5K races I've signed up for while I'm on my trip next month. My knees are a little achey, but that makes sense given the distance.

Heading to Tajikistan tonight for the first time since late 2015. Transit time in each direction is the same as getting home, even though a direct flight would be three hours at most. That's what you get for flying from one crappy airport to another, I guess. Whining aside, it'll be nice to see some people up there. I'm looking forward to it. Back in almost exactly a week. 

dreaming about jack

Last night I had a dream about Jack. Warning: it was not a nice dream. Certain readers may want to avoid or pick a judicious time to read it.

M, D, Linc, and I were in the basement of our next door neighbors' house, and we knew that Jack was in the neighborhood and on a killing spree. We could hear distant gunshots. That basement has a lot of windows so we knew we weren't safe and had to run but we were hemming and hawing about picking the right time to do it. Eventually we all fled and I ended up in a smaller basement room in a nearby house (not one from real life). This one had smoked windows and an old door with a couple of deadbolts.

We could hear Jack getting closer, looking for us. After a few minutes he was outside the door and tried to open it. He shouted, "I know you're in there! Let me in!" and started trying to break down the door. We watched the deadbolts shake against the impacts. I decided that I would try to ambush him if he got through the door, so I positioned myself to the side of it.

When he did break through the whole door came with him and he ended up on the ground. I was on him right away, with my arm around his throat from behind. He flailed around and dropped his gun and I got him on the ground. I tried to bang his head on the ground but resisted and somehow he twisted around so we were facing each other with him on his back and me kneeling over him with my hands on his throat. He was a smaller, younger version of himself -- maybe mid-teens -- although in the dream I didn't notice that. He was struggling, red-faced and crying as I tried to keep enough pressure on his throat to make him pass out.

"Why are you doing this?" he choked out, and I said, through my own tears, "You know why."

At last he passed out, and I woke up.