Bringing the Drama

This past weekend I went up to North Carolina for a wedding. I was flying, and had probably waited a little too long to book my flight, so I had to get a crazy flight time going to NC. My flight Friday was 6 am. SIX IN THE MORNING! It was on US Airways, an airline I had never flown before but my friend Kari had, and she’s had issues. I figured the 6 am flight was the first of the day, it wouldn’t be delayed, and I was not checking a bag. What could possibly go wrong?

I set my alarm for 3:35 am so I could wake up and have time. I packed almost everything the night before, so getting the final things together wasn’t a big deal. I left my house at 4:25 to make the 45 or so minute trip to the airport. There was no one on the road for obvious reasons, but the whole time I was nervous about making it on time because of that one time 3 years ago when I was late for a flight. I couldn’t be late for this flight. I made it to the airport about 5:15, plenty of time. I parked the car, walked in the terminal, checked in, and made it back to the gate by 5:30. I was wearing a long sleeved shirt because NC was actually cold, so I was a bit warm standing there. At 5:35 am, the guy at the gate comes on the intercom and says “Ladies and gentlemen, the crew got in late last night, so they’re still resting and we’ll start boarding once they get here.” WHAT?!? The 6 am flight is delayed? It’s the first flight of the day! Also, the crew had a late night, so they might be tired? GREAT! We waited until about 6 am, and the crew finally walked up. Freaking slackers, I had woken up at 3:35 and did my part to make it to the gate on time, the crew on the other hand did not.

We got on the plane and I put my stuff away. I had an aisle seat, which I don’t normally get, but they ended up being pretty nice. Everyone straps in and the pilot comes on and gives us some line about the FAA regulating how much sleep a crew gets each night, and they had to get their allotted rest, blah blah blah. So then he says “but don’t worry, we’re going to make it to Charlotte on time, watch this happen!” I thought to myself “he just said ‘watch this happen’”, and looked around to see if anyone else had heard it. I didn’t see anyone notice, because it was 6:15 and I guess everyone was still tired.

I tried to get some sleep, and did get some, but a whiny toddler in the back decided to make it difficult for everyone on board. Sedatives people, sedatives! We did in fact get to Charlotte on time. I did watch it happen. Maybe the pilot wasn’t so bad after all. I still didn’t forget them strolling in late though.

The connection flight to Greensboro was supposed to take off at 9:45 to arrive at 10:40 am. I had arranged for my friend Brandi to pick me up. There were some pre wedding activities she was having to do, so when I heard the connection was delayed 15 minutes, I texted her. Then we sat on the tarmac in a line of planes for another 15 minutes, so I got my phone out, turned it on, and texted her to tell her “we’re still sitting on the runway, I’ll call you when I land.” I thought for sure there was no way we’d make it to Greensboro on time after being delayed half an hour. The pilot didn’t tell us to watch anything, but assured us he’d try to get us to Greensboro on time.

I dozed off and the next thing I know we’re landing. I turned on my phone to check the time and it was 10:41. We were only 1 minute late after leaving half an hour late. How does this happen? Of course, the insanity of this happening caused me to have to chill at the airport for Brandi, which was fine because I was able to read in my grad school book and play in the arcade. They have Ms Pac Man and Galaga machines in the Greensboro airport, and they are only 25 cents! I’m pretty good at those games, so it occupied a lot of time. In fact, I gave one of my four tokens (seriously they had a TOKEN machine) to a guy that walked in right after Brandi texted me because I had no idea how long it would take her to get to the airport, and I didn’t want to make her wait with the excuse “hold on, I’m playing Ms Pac Man.”

Incidentally, this story allowed “watch this happen” to become one of the lines of the weekend. So to the pilot on the NOLA to Charlotte leg of my trip Friday, thank you. US Airways though, you suck, and btw, your $25 one way bag fees are a complete joke.

Check it, so I’ve been reading about some new phones coming out, which made me realize I have a backlog of pictures on my phone that I needed to unload. So I emailed a couple to myself today and figured I could post them here, because I figure it’s better than not writing anything for 3 weeks.

Alright, this one was taken on the first day half of the new Twin Span bridge opened in July. The original Twin Span was 2 lanes each way, and was destroyed by Katrina. The new one is higher off the water and 3 lanes. When they finish it I would assume we’ll be able to fly across it like we did the old one. Anyway, the first day it was open I drove across it on the way home from work, and it was kind of exciting. I was one of the first people to cross over on the new bridge! I’ve been watching the progress of the bridge obviously since it started, so it was cool to finally get to drive across.

I went to the LSU/ULL game a couple of weeks ago and snapped a few pictures. If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen a couple. This one I didn’t show, but it doesn’t make it any less weird. This guy was standing around Mike’s habitat, and when I saw the name he had chosen for his customized LSU baseball fashion jersey, I laughed and took the picture. IT IS MISTER DAZZLING!

That wasn’t the only picture I took where I thought “Some LSU fans are hard to accept”, like the lady who had two big poodles and decided to shave LSU into their coats. Seriously. I have photographic proof and will show you when I get around to uploading them.

So I’ve been sitting next to KCOG for a month or so now and it’s been about what I expected. The old man sweater wearing, the simple questions about things he should know by now, the people coming by his desk to just talk, but what I didn’t plan on were the random conversation starters. The way we sit has our cube openings facing each other, so I can see him out of the corner of my eye and vice versa. Recently he has started to turn to me and just randomly say a statement like “I told them I didn’t want to go to that meeting” or “I was in an online conversation with someone from the bank and they kept asking me my name”. He does this so I have to turn and acknowledge him, and then he’ll continue the story. I always turn, because I’d feel bad otherwise, but the whole time I’m looking at him I’m thinking “I don’t care about any of this”. I’ve been able to avoid the random backrubs that I heard KCOG likes to give, so I figure I’m doing okay.

More recently, someone came to his desk and KCOG let him in on a little secret. Apparently KCOG knows about an investment opportunity and really wants to get “Guy who came by” in on it. KCOG was telling GWCB to talk to ‘the boss’ (ie wife) and if she’s cool with it, GWCB will just have to give KCOG his account number, routing number, and some other banking number. I thought “that sounds like a plan with disaster written all over it”.

BTW, I bookmarked a few news stories that I found interesting, here they are:

This lady was late on a couple of credit card payments, the bank jacked up her interest rate because she doesn’t have a full-time job and made late payments. To fight the higher rate, she made a youtube video telling the bank they were being terrible people. The bank eventually had some VP guy call her and lower her rate. Who started this fiasco? The lady getting the lowered interest rate. More of that great “it’s not my problem, someone fix it for me” attitude.

Two teenagers working at Domino’s managed to get everyone at their store fired by being complete morons. They’re being charged with food tampering, but I think they should be more afraid of their former co-workers kicking their ass.

If you ever wanted to track sex offenders on your iPhone, there’s an app for that.

This morning I woke up at 5:30 am and then went for a run at 6:20 am. I might be a little crazy. It was really nice though, to go out running just before sunrise.

Ok, so I read the news everyday and usually find articles where I want to tell people about it. I email myself the links so I can blog later about it, but usually I forget to. Not today. It’s not exactly my adventure late Sunday and early Monday making baklava (I have pictures and all that), but at least it’s something to read for today. It’s not exactly my blog friend Mandy’s ‘Dispatches’, but hopefully you’ll like it.

First up, we have the article my friend Chad sent me yesterday about how a guy in Mississippi who was beaten to the brink of death by someone he had kidnapped. Apparently he picked the wrong couple to mess with since the guy was ex-military. He literally broke the rifle’s stock over the guy’s head. I told Chad I am not sure I’d have left him alive.

Second, infamous governor of SC Mark Sanford laments about living alone in the Governor’s Mansion. Poor him, now he doesn’t have his chick in Argentina and his wife moved back to Charleston with the kids. I guess that’s the price you pay for cheating on multiple continents. BTW, from personal experience, Charleston is light years better than Columbia.

Next I read an article about people that have gotten heart transplants competing in Ironman competitions. How cool is that? I especially was fascinated when the doctor described that post transplant, it’s takes longer to get the heart pumping fast because it needs adrenaline to get going, and not the brain. Who feels lazy now?

Apparently a teenager in Orlando thought setting himself on fire would be cool because of a video he saw on Youtube. The mother actually partially blamed Youtube. Of course, because lighting himself on fire must be too completely stupid for her son to do. That shot at Harvard is looking bleaker by the minute.

Finally, NASA might not get enough funding to track asteroids in space like they were directed to do. Apparently in 2005 Congress wanted NASA to be able to track 90% of all large asteroids by 2020, but now they don’t appear to be wanting to provide the additional funding required. What happened to all that stimulus money? Maybe they think Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck can save the day, but I can tell you, there’s no way NASA can prep two shuttles that fast to launch at the same time.

Also, I was playing around on iTunes last night and downloaded the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me podcast. My friend Kari has typed about this show before, but I honestly don’t listen to the radio that much, and I don’t really know what station NPR is in NOLA. The podcast was free though, so I subscribed and listened to the 8/8 show yesterday morning on my way to work. It was really great. I enjoyed the jokes involving current events. I even knew a lot of the answers to the trivia. I think one of my favorite parts was when the host described how Bill Clinton was pretty much Superman and stepped off the plane from NK with a knife between his teeth and a female reporter on each arm. What’s he going to do next???

(The whole idea of blogging kind of got put on hold the past week or so because all I could think about was how some people just shouldn’t be parents. There was a local story here that was on my mind almost every time I thought of blogging, but it’s so frustrating and sad, that I didn’t want to put any of that on here.)

On Monday afternoon I had an appointment with my eye doctor, the same doctor who has in the past called me to just hang out. Allow me to explain…

He was recommended to me by my old eye doctor when I realized that doctor was not on my insurance. Anyway, my current doctor is cool, and I think about 3 or 4 years ago we were making small talk at some point and he told me he was a volunteer fireman. The next year when I saw him, I asked him how that was going. We talk about it every time I go now, which is not awkward itself. He’s tried to recruit me too, but I’ve turned him down. The problem is the calls after I leave the office, to numbers that are in my file that I did not actually give him when I saw him. Two years ago he called my cell phone and left a couple of voice mails. I wasn’t screening my calls, just not able to answer the phone. He was calling to see if I wanted to meet up with him and his fellow firemen for karaoke at a local bar. Last year he called me on my work phone to see if I needed my contacts polished, and also if I wanted to go hang out. I had been out of town, so when I got back I listened to my messages. The first voice mail was about how he could polish my contacts if I needed them polished, the 2nd was the same thing, but he was leaving at a certain time, the 3rd was that I could come later if I wanted because he was staying longer than he thought. I don’t find this anywhere near as creepy as the run-ins with CGG, but it’s odd. He’s a pretty decent guy, just looking for another guy friend to go hang out with (he has pictures of his grandkids in his office), and I guess he sees me as awesome, and wants to hang out with me. I guess I feel like I want to keep our relationship professional, so I’ve never called him back. I did see him in the local bar doing karaoke one night when I had gone out with a couple of work friends, but that was totally accidental.

So Monday was my yearly checkup. It was a little weird because I was the only patient under 70 it seemed like. The nurse did her pre doctor visit thing and then the doctor came in. The conversation wasn’t too awkward, although he did tell me about a fireman who was getting fired and how his friend he used to go sing karaoke with had moved or something. On the way out, he told me how his wife was now changing shifts so he was going to need something to do on Friday nights or something. I told him good luck. I know he was fishing, but I was not biting. I haven’t gotten any phone calls since either….another win.

The main thing about the visit was that my prescription isn’t changing (go gas permeable contacts!) so I won’t have to buy new contacts or glasses. I like my new glasses, so I was glad I won’t have to worry about updating them. They even said I’m seeing at 20/15!

I walked out with my eyes still a little dialated and made it to the grocery store to pick up some bread. While there I managed to find what must be the last sixer of Abita Strawberry for 2009. I had not seen any in stores since the beginning of summer! I found it inside the walk in cooler for the beer. That particular store has the walk in cooler where they keep some of the higher end stuff, and I walk in there mostly just to look around and see if there’s anything interesting. Monday I saw the Abita Strawberry sitting on a shelf and couldn’t believe my luck. I quickly picked it up and brought it home. It is THE BEST ABITA THEY MAKE and I’m sure my friends will be happy when we have our Saints party in a couple of weeks.

last night i spent the evening doing hw. i had gotten the main problem done on monday night, but still had a 2nd problem to do for tuesday. at lunch i went to work on the problem only to find out the professor didn’t really go over the process to figure out the problem in class, and i’d need my book…..which was at home. i faxed off the one problem and planned to fax the 2nd the early this morning. i got home and cracked open my book for the first time, maybe all semester and found the section he referenced. i figured out the problem after about an hour, so the hw was done.

after a quick run to the store, i settled in to watch the Hornets/Kings game, and saw as they had this ridiculously long ceremony at halftime to honor Vlade Divac. (i know, right, Vlade Divac?) they really did it up, complete with a video and children bringing the banner down from the stands to really dramatic music. i used to love watching those Kings teams, too bad they never could get past the Lakers. oh, and the Hornets won on a last second shot, which i didn’t see, but have now seen 5 times already.

i still have that test i need to take tomorrow, but fortunately the prof went over what would be on it in one of the class videos i watched, and i THINK it won’t be as bad as i feared. i may still reschedule tonight’s plans for next week though so i can study. i mean, yeah, it’d be nice to go tonight, but it’d also be nice to get reimbursed for my class too (which may not happen if i bomb the test). stupid priorities.

in my email this morning i got this birthday card. today’s starting off on the right foot! (i think she got my email from when i submitted an app for free tickets to the show last fall, but then i got a bunch of calls from a telemarketer….et tu kelly?)