March 2026 – Mom's Guide to the Galaxy

My different packing styles

In the last month and a half, I have packed for four different places that weren’t my own bed (and were all sadly lacking in cats): a local convention, a brief work trip to Tennesee, a conference for work in Boston padded with an extra night to see friends, and a Caribbean cruise. As I packed and unpacked yet again, I reflected on the differences inherent in packing for very different trips, both in the duration and the nature of the trips.

For three of the four trips, I packed my Temperature Tree embroidery project; I didn’t take it on the 2-night work trip, and by the trip to Boston, I had moved it into a smaller bag that fits in my carry-on. At Capricon, I worked on it during my Friday morning Stitch & Bitch, then didn’t touch it for the rest of the trip; in Boston, I kept up on it until the morning I was packing out. (Yes, I had enough time at the airport after the conference to catch up if I had felt so inclined. I was busy reading.)

Capricon was the only driving trip, which gave me a lot of leeway in how many bags I packed and the possibility of loose items. (Not to mention boxes to build a Box Fort.) On the shorter work trip, I checked what’s effectively a carry-on bag (not to be confused with my actual carry-on, a backpack that includes my laptop) with some space to spare. Heading to Boston, I knew I was spending an afternoon “book and yarn shopping” with friends, so I gave myself the extra space of a larger suitcase, and I did in fact use it. (Among other things, I found a used copy of Elphie: A Wicked Childhood, a recent prequel to Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Score!)

For our longer trips over the last couple years – to the UK, Canary Islands, or even to Portland (which was only a week) – I’ve packed knowing I’d want to wash laundry during the trip. In Glasgow a couple years ago, it was easier to find a laundry service than time to use a laundromat. Similarly, on a longer cruise, there isn’t a really good laundry option… handwash everything in the tiny bathroom, pack an extra suitcase and have to store it in the equally tiny room, or pay for the laundry service per bag. I lean towards a mix of those, handwashing smaller items, and paying to wash larger items, so I can pack for half the duration of the trip and reuse items. Of course, part of that is because some delicate items like bras really shouldn’t run through the dryer if you can help it. On our cruise, that plan lasted until we realized how small the laundry service bags are; then we decided to use some of our promotional credit to pay for ongoing laundry service instead of on a per bag basis. As it turns out, coming home with only a couple days of dirty laundry from a long trip is a fabulous experience.

For everything except the cruise (for both Customs and profitability reasons, they don’t want you bringing your own), I packed some nicer teas, though I was so tired one morning at Capricon that I completely forgot I had and asked housekeeping for some spare tea. (My roommate slept in the first morning, so our room wasn’t reset.) For Capricon, we packed a couple meals, knowing that we’d have a fridge in the room, and for my trip to Tennessee, I packed some snack foods, mainly because I didn’t know what time the included breakfast would be available compared to when my work day needed to start.

Overall, it’s an interesting study of what becomes important for each trip, including the never-ending dilemma of “can I fit another craft project?”

Do you Zip?

I realize, without context, there are a lot of options for the word “zip,” not the least are “zipper” or “zipline”. In this case, Zip is the name of a daily puzzle game available on LinkedIn. It’s one of a handful of puzzles I like starting my day with, along with Wordle, Waffle, and Connections.

Zip is a spatial rather than word puzzle, where you need to connect all of the numbers in order while also passing through each space only once. The quantity of numbers varies, so you never know until you click into that day’s puzzle how many you’re trying to connect and what the layout looks like. The grid pictured in the first image above had no obstacles; sometimes there are borders to work around.

The second image is the completed puzzle for that day, and the third image shows how my time compared to other players’. That was a particularly good day for me, completing the puzzle in 15 seconds when the average was 26. The “flawless” text at the top of the third image means I didn’t undo any of my path while completing the puzzle. That is certainly not always the case, some puzzles trip me up in different ways, hitting a mental block that sometimes prompts me to close the window (pausing the timer) or use a hint.

What does your daily puzzle routine look like?

Did you “spring forward” last Sunday?

Or did you, like me, reluctantly hobble forward in this seemingly pointless semiannual ritual where we change the clocks and hope our circadian rhythm catches up to the change quickly?

I was oddly lucky this morning in not realizing the change had hit when I woke up to feed the cats. Had the clock in my bedroom automatically changed, I might have wondered at the cats letting me sleep in; they do not partake of time changes lightly. In fact, I didn’t remember about it until nearly an hour later, after they had been fed and I had showered, which is when I felt like I had lost an hour of my day, preparing and eating breakfast at a time – according to the clock – when I have normally finished those and moved onto either chores or work.

There have, on multiple occasions, been bills put forth in the US Congress to end the time change. In recent years, it seems one will pass either the House or Senate, and then get ignored by the other body until the resurgence of complaints – now or in November – brings the issue to light again.

I am aware that the issue is not as simple as “stop doing it.” Back in 2007, with about two years warning, the start date changed, extending daylight savings by four or five weeks. From an IT perspective, this was a borderline disaster for the bank I was working at: PCs ended up on one time and servers on another, due to a mismatch in software updates. I see a bit of that now, as I have co-workers in other countries who don’t change their clocks, which means recurring meetings will shift for someone… which way depends on who originally scheduled it.

I do hope we do away with the time change, like so many other countries have, at some point in the near future.

You’ve got dice!

If you read Cassandra’s blog, you may have seen her post a few months ago about entering sweepstakes. When she finds a sweepstakes that may also be of interest to me, she shares the link. While the odds are better than winning the lottery, I never really expect to win something. So it was a pleasant surprise about a month ago to open an email saying I was a potential winner for one of the sweepstakes I had entered.

To be clear, legitimate “you won something” messages are entirely different from spam versions. The sweepstakes I had entered and the specific prize were mentioned in the email, along with detailed instructions for claiming the prize and the deadline for doing so. Presumably because there was a minimum age for entering the sweepstakes, a copy of my ID was required along with an affidavit.

A set of liquid core RPG dice (the usual: d4, d6, d8, d10 standard, d10 percentile, d12, and d20). Essentially translucent dice with a dark red center and gold letters.

Given the title of this post, you can guess what part of the prize was… dice! These are described as a “branded set of 7 liquid core RPG dice”… pretty cool looking, aren’t they? So far, the d20 has been rolling pretty well for me on this year’s Quest Calendar.

A wine stopper with a fancy dragon claw top

But that’s not all! The prize package also included a “branded dragon claw shaped wine stopper” and a (not pictured, cause I couldn’t get a good photo) “branded wine tote”.

How’s that for a random prize package that’s totally appropriate for me?