I really only get the legitimate chance to blog when I’m watching Idol these days. At least that’s my excuse, given as I was legitimately sick last week when doing so. Doesn’t explain it away I suppose, but it’s a reason enough to not have updated in many days. Katie left on a flight that was delayed by the extraordinarily rapidly declining quality of service on Northwest Airlines. By delayed I mean she got bumped to a U.S. Airways flight because the Northwest one was cancelled due to a lack of hours for the crew. That is freaking insane, notably, that you are just not doing an entire day of flights cuz your management is so poor that you cannot pay even a skeleton crew to get the bags up. It doesn’t get much better when you are dismissed by their gate agents and left hungry or poor (since the freaking “Fruit and Nut” snack costs a dollar, seriously, I know we could potentially say this about anything, but the dude(tte)s at the top can’t afford a couple bucks a year to get me the 2 cents per package pretzels). It’s just sad to see an airline I associate so strongly with Minnesota business and have so many friends/family members employed with, take such a nosedive. NWA makes Delta look like Eos.
Between that point and my own departure Thursday morning, I got really sick, rested, wrote 5-6 pages, watched the season premiere of The Sopranos, caught up on all my non-reality TV, prepared a lesson plan for a job interview, and got at least somewhat better again. Renee came to stay with Hippo for the weekend, so at least she can pretend there is a streak of continuity in her family’s travel schedule. I, meanwhile, arrived to the first real snow I have seen on the ground all year and was awaited by Katie, who herself had spent 35 odd minutes in the “return to terminal” driveway.
I watched shockingly little basketball this weekend, which was painful considering my usual track record with regard to opening weekends of the NCAA tournament. I didn’t lose any of my final four picks in the first round, but it doesn’t mean very much to me since I saw at best 12-14 games all weekend. Thursday was running around doing Katie related stuff for the most part, including shopping for a ridiculous concoction of items at the grocery store, and setting up for a bridal shower thing I was not technically involved in.
Spent that night chilling with a good part of the old crew, though I had to get up early for a job interview. Did that thing, nailed it, if I do say so myself (more later if it ever pans out) and went to pick Tom up at the Humphrey Terminal of the MSP International Airport.
Some context: the Humphrey Terminal is like the bastard stepchild to the Lindbergh Terminal. I had not been there in years; it was essentially the storehouse for ridiculous little airlines which had like 2 flights a day. I have picked people up there when they fly in on the regional thingies like Midwest Express and I flew out of there when I went on the cruise with my fam. It used to look far more like a bus terminal than an airport, there was one baggage claim, maybe two, the parking lot was just a big fenced in area past the building, and I think the snack bar was on par with what you might find at a Rosemount JV Hockey game, minus the SuperRopes. It is now, essentially, a miniature version of the Lindbergh Terminal, with enormously oversized parking structure and, without question, the absolute worst “Return to Terminal” system in history. If you exit the pick up area, which you freaking have to of course, cuz the damn airport cops force you (seriously, airport cops are arguably now the worst abusers of their miniscule “move it along” authority that exist, even the robocops in my high school exaggerated their power to a smaller degree than these pricks. What, exactly, is the need to make me drive around the building? If I seriously wanted to do something negative to the airport, how long do you think I would need to do it. “I have this device here, it does something very dangerous, but it needs to be parked against the curb for 53 seconds to activate…” I understand that if you let people freaking park there at 5 on a Friday it becomes unusable, but when there are giant 40 foot gaps of space between the 4-5 cars that are waiting to pick people up at 9:30 pm on a lazy Sunday night, do you have to give me this Federal Aviation Guidelines bullshit), in that situation you have to cross literally 3 stoplights, including at least one that seems to serve approximately 2 cars per decade. That’s not even to mention that each of your 3 merges is from the most awkward angle possible and you have to go over the light rail track. It takes 10 minutes in all seriousness. You would be better off parking at Ikea.
We had dinner with my dad and it was prolly the best dinner he has ever cooked. It was St. Patrick’s Day, after all, and if the Irish can’t belt out some corned beef and cabbage what can they do. The cabbage mixture had potatoes, onions, cabbage, and bacon, all braised to perfection. That’s actually a really simple thing to mess up, cuz overcooked cabbage will sulfur up your house as hard as the day is long. The being out and about portion of our day ended with a stop at the rehearsal party, where Katie got some hella glam gifts and good times were shared by all. I, for my part, most enjoyed playing with the kitties which wandered in triplicate throughout the festivities. Just when one cat was sick of your shtick, you could count on another one to wander by who might think that a stick tapped against the window is the awesomest thing ever. It’s a hard opinion to dispute, when you really get down to it. Three hella cute cats would just be too much for me, I wouldn’t know who to meow at or when to do it. For one evening though it’s the perfect amount.
I will pick up at Saturday morning when I return, with all luck, sometime before this weekend’s NDT. In the meantime Hippo insists that I spend more time tapping sticks against windows for her than I do discussing doing so for hypothetical cats.
Peace,
MB-K
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment