The Oakland Airport security screening area is plastered with billboard sized ads for the hotel chain that I stay at in Houston. Everything is painted in the hotel’s color pallette and the couches where people put their shoes and belts on after screening are scaled up versions of the couch that will be waiting for me at the end of my trip today. It makes for a strange transition, like I’m already there.

My Dick’s Drive-In shirt surfaced in my dresser today and I put it on. While brushing, my electric toothbrush gave off a spray of toothpaste dots and I immediately visualized the stippling of milkshake mixer dots that would I’d have spread across the shirt after a couple of shifts.