Oliphant Parts

Hey, it’s 12:30 here — I need to be up in three hours to catch my taxi to the airport. Maybe I should get some sleep, huh?

Mmmm, yummy! Dinner was brought to us (me, actually) courtesy of “Taste of Saigon”. The appetizer was a pair of crispy spring rolls. True, I like my spring rolls uncooked, but since they were served by a waitress who made me think “mmmm . . . tasty!”, they were tasty by proxy. Dinner was Tamarind Soft-Shell Crab. Definitely yummy. This was in no way influenced by the frequent visits by the yumtress. Er, waitress. In between, I pounded the Ca-Phe Suo-somethings. Yep, yummy. And finally, dessert: Mango creme brulee. Not so yummy. Interesting, yes, but not enough time has passed since the infant moved out. Any creamy pudding, slightly warm, slightly cool and much too brownish-orange is going to be associated with something other than food. Is it caramelized diaper-leavings, or is it dessert? Hell if I know.

Wouldn’t it be nice if work didn’t get in the way of life? Then an entry like this about the morning would actually be posted in the morning. Anyway . . .

It is a peaceful morning; more servers than diners in the hotel restaurant make for quick service. Something pleasant and easily forgotten by Michael McDonald plays on the radio. Outside, it is sunny and warm, with what looks like a light breeze. I haven’t actually stepped outside, so I have no idea if it is a cool breeze. Definitely not the rain and devastation I was hoping for this trip.

Breakfast is a bagel and cream cheese, fresh fruit and oatmeal perfect for hanging wallpaper. Am I the only person on the planet who believes oatmeal should still retain some of its pre-cooked shape?

Obnoxious as the sound may be at 4am, I miss waking to the sound of robins wooping. Here is is the sound of the A/C unit cycling off and on. It’s just not the same.

My High School class is having its 20-year reunion this August. I guess this makes me old. Apparently I am missing, which means I can sleep in that weekend. Speaking of sleep, it’s 12:30am here, so maybe I will try it.

David Spade and Dave Foley . . . do I need any other reasons to never grow a goatee again? I never made it to pizza with C3 — long day. Now all I want is to curl up with a good book. Or a couple episodes of Futurama. Or the Suicide Girls segment from HBO’s “Real Sex”, over and over and over and over and over. And over. I wonder if they’d like a place to stay for the summer. Still no volume on Cartoon Network, so I’ll settle for Monk.

I have a date tonight. Okay, technically not a date, but dinner with an old friend. Still, I get to socialize with someone outside of my immediate family, which is a unique experience for me these days. The life of a telecommuter is one of social isolation. I may have the remote wilderness location, but at least I am not turning into a Ted Kaczynski.

If I am lucky, I wil also get to go home tomorrow rather than Saturday. I don’t know that Friday evening before a major holiday weekend is going to be the best time to try to get an early flight out of Dulles. I imagine that everyone else in this town is going to be tying to flee as well.

So what am I doing up this early? My eyes keep falling shut, which is not a good sign. I need breakfast. And sleep. I definitely did not need to stay up to watch amy Sedaris on the Late Late Show. It was just too, er, late. Late late late I hate to masturbate in a cut-rate . . . okay, stop right ther. This lack of sleep is getting ridiculous. It’s a spinny, wobbly, not-quite-focused world and I need to stretch before I do this whole work thing. Bad me — no donut.

Ugh. How very bloggish. Everything I’ve written sounds so whiny right now. Lousy food, crappy airline, no-notice business trip. Boo-effing-hoo. At least I have a job and money for my lousy food. And my mocha, in spite of being (and even this is being kind) lukewarm, isn’t bad. It isn’t overly-sweet and does not have the classic bitter burnt coffee taste by which we all know and loathe Starblechs. If only they could have heated it. for the maker of the blueberry muffine, I hope you get an infected hangnail and writhe in agony for weeks. In other words, blech!

I think the lack of sleep is hitting me; this should make my 1pm meeting quite entertaining. Okay, time to pound the mocha and hope I can board. Otherwise my gate-checked bag will spin alone in baggage claim while I try to kill 6+ hours here in exciting CVG. My kingdom for a nice room to brush and floss.

(Hey, it’s almost midnight! Damned real-world delays my blogging again.)

The second leg of my flight is over. Now it is just a short hop to Dulles. Assuming I don’t get bumped, that is. At present, the flight is oversold. What a great concept: Oversold. As in, “We wanted to suck every last penny we could out you idiots and really hoped one or two or ten of you wouldn’t show. And all of you inconsiderate louts did. Now who wants to stay behind?” Yep, yet another reason why I hate airlines.
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I should have realized this trip would not go as planned: I could not find my favorite pen and had to leave home without it. I’d rather have left my Am-Ex.

We have had some warm weather the past few days. Yesterday we hit 104f, with today being a bit warmer. This means a hot plane on the tarmac. Unfortuantely, non-functioning air-conditioning on the plane meant a hot plane in the air. We were quite a pungent lot by the time we de-planed. How come there’s a six hour delay when the pilot can’t figure out how to adjust his seat, but it’s all systems go in a flying steel coffin at 600 degrees?
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