Monday - U Li La Lu

You've probably never heard of Poi Dog Pondering. Neither had I until a college friend played their song, U Li La Lu, incessantly on the tape deck of his POS. It's an odd song, really, sound-wise, but I always liked the first couple of lines.

Wear with pride these scars on your skin
They're a map of the adventures, the places you've been

I've got a pretty decent map. What about you? Funny how you can point out scars and usually remember exactly what happened to put them there and when they occurred. For example, the "dimple" just below my left temple came to me the day before St. Pat's when I was about 11 years old. I was lying on the floor with one of my friends painting the banner that our Girl Scout troop would carry in Atlanta's parade the next day. My sister, then 3, climbed up on the sofa and dragged up a very sharp-cornered footstool that my uncle had made. She then proceeded to rock the footstool back and forth, back and forth, until she finally lost control of it and it lurched off of the sofa and onto my head. Another fraction of an inch and she could have killed me! Much to my embarrassment, I had to march in the St. Patrick's Day parade with a big goose egg on the side of my head. Now when I tell people that my sister gave me that "dimple", they usually ask me if she is a plastic surgeon. What a prodigy she was!

Where do your scars take you?

Sunday - Mayberry

Sunday was the day of rest
Now it's one more day for progress
...

There was a time when I might have asked "What happened to Sunday?" Now it seems more appropriate to ask "What happened to rest?"

Why do we have to live in a world where there is so little time for rest, worship, family, and so many other things that are integral to our human experience? Why have we upped competition to such a level that survival of the fittest demands our every waking moment (and more waking moments, at that) be spent working? Is it part of a natural cycle? Leisure does seem to be something of a modern invention. However, even in the early days of this country, Sunday was different from the rest of the week. Sunday was special. People made time for Sunday.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could choose not to work on Sunday, Christmas, Easter, etc. and still have a job? Wouldn't it be great if families had that one day a week to spend together, rather than squeezing in moments here and there? Yeah, sometimes I miss Mayberry too...

Saturday - Daysleeper

I see today with a newsprint fray
my night is colored headache grey
don't wake me with so much
daysleeper
...
ocean machine is set to 9
I'll squeeze into heaven and valentine
my bed is pulling me
gravity
daysleeper

These lyrics are selected from REM's "Daysleeper". I have never gone digging around for the full intended meaning of the song, but it's one that rattles around my head alot while working long night shifts. It is an entirely different world that runs silently along while most other people are sleeping. It's very easy to begin feeling disassociated with reality when you work there. This song popped into my head again today as I was struggling up from the couch to go out and take down the flag. Though I have been away and not subject to those 3 am callouts for a few weeks, I did not sleep well last night and was very happy when my day was at last over. I took an unintentional snooze on the couch in front of the TV once off shift, making it very difficult to get back up again and see to the rest of the off-the-clock "stuff" I had yet to do. Amazing how gravity seems to increase on the truly tired. In these situations it always seems like there is something pressing in on me, and I have to work hard at acheiving escape velocity. Often nights when I am working I feel that pull toward the sheets, wishing that I could just go doze off for an hour or two. Sleep becomes the ultimate luxury. Going back on a night shift after a period of dayurnal activity makes the whole world fuzzy. For me, that "headache gray" exists in the period of struggling to stay awake and alert while attempting to readjust against the body's natural sleep rhythms. The world becomes confused a bit - I am there but not there. It is always difficult at first. There is that sense of unreality, for sure. Now, as I am a bit fuzzy at the moment from my little nap, I think I will head back and see what else I can get done before my bed starts calling me again.

It's Lyrics Week On The Mailboat

Beginning tomorrow, I will feature a daily post in which I wax poetic about a particular set of song lyrics or segments thereof. Possibly I may just skip the poetic part and launch into one of my regular ramblings. I just don't know. It's almost like "Anything Can Happen" week, but at a slightly higher parental rating than the Mickey Mouse Club. I bet you're so excited you could just pee! Patience. As I said, posts begin tomorrow. Oh, and I also use the term Lyrics Week rather loosely, as the week of posts will likely only run until Wednesday or Thursday - whenever I lose internet access again. These are the breaks. Well, anyway, enjoy tomorrow and whatever may come next!

Greetings from Fort Lauderdale

Well, it seems that my big rant about the Miami airport might have angered the travel gods a wee bit. After a decent streak of about a year, travel disaster has once again come my way. I am, as I type, sitting in front of the TJ Cinnamons in concourse C of the Fort Lauderdale - Hollywood International Airport. This is one thing I love about this airport: free wireless internet throughout. Anyhoo, my plane out of Philly was late picking me up, then weather patterns caused them to cancel all northbound flights. You are probably wondering how this affected a flight to Ft. Lauderdale. Well, lemme tell ya. Seems there were a bunch of northbound planes already in line ahead of us on the runway, and some that had already taken off had to turn around and land again. This created a giant slide puzzle of aircraft which took a couple of hours to work out. Lucky me, I was seated in the middle of a row of 3 right next to a portly gentleman who had many, many anecdotes to share. Nice guy, but it was physically impossible for him to not encroach on my space. I finally arrived back here in Florida around 8:55 p.m., one hour after my connecting flight to Key West landed in Key West. Obviously there are not many flights to the keys on a daily basis, so yours truly had to get re-ticketed for 8:40 a.m. By the time I wrestled my bags away from the baggage carousel, got to a hotel, walked to McDonalds for a bite, and finally got to bed, it was 11:30. Getting back up at 5:30 and doing it all again was simply not fun. Enter TSA. For reasons unknown I have been getting the black spot for years at the screening area. This was my day to get the full-on glove and swab treatment. To their credit, the TSA agents were very nice and once they discovered my credentials were very chatty and interested in hearing about my job. This, thankfully, helped pass the time. I was fascinated by all the wiping of bags and electronics, especially my iPod. Thinking I was being smart and saving time in line, I had removed my steel-toed boots prior to entering the queue, which apparently I was supposed to wear into the puffer/sniffer thingy. As I had already placed them in the bin, they got the swab treatment too. So now here I am, in front of TJ Cinnamons, enjoyig a nice chocolate milk because they were all out of white. Add that to the over-iced cinnamon roll and I am super sugared-up for the plane. I am so looking forward to a home-cooked meal and a long night in my own bed. Thankfully I am done with air travel for a little over a month. Now if the Seven Mile Bridge will just stay clear...

Philly - Who knew?

I had no idea Philadelphia was such a cool town. There are about a zillion cool restaurants, bars, and stores I would like to visit and I only have 5 days! Not even five full days! Tonight I dined in an exceptional restaurant called Morimoto. The creation of Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, it is truly an incredible dining experience. It's a little spendy, but they at least deliver exceptional service, cuisine, and style for the price. The design of the dining space alone makes it worth a trip. The decor and mood of the restaurant are so hypnotic that we were barely conscious of the din of conversation. The meal was quite exceptional, and the presentation so artful that it seemed almost a shame to consume it. There are about a zillion things in Philly to do as well. I'll never cover all of the historical sites at one go. I'm wishing that I had known about all of this while I was still living in Maryland. It would have been a perfect getaway weekend for when I wanted my "big city" fix without going to D.C. Oh well. Perhaps I will come back someday. I have to at least make it to the Liberty Bell while I am here.

Fly, Forrest, Fly!

While I was standing in the Philadelphia airport today waiting for my baggage, a person on the loudspeaker kept paging Lieutenant Dan. I suddenly wanted an ice cream...

MIA - How Appropriate

Today's first feature is another rant on how much I hate Miami and the lackadaisical attitude that is so prevalent there. Last week we arrived at the Miami International Aiport for our 6:35 a.m. flight to Tulsa (via Houston) at 4:30 a.m. We had carefully removed anything remotely liquid or gel-like from our luggage, chosen shoes without gel insoles, and arrived the minimum of 2 hours in advance recommended for making it thorough security. We were ready to have as smooth a trip as possible. We forgot to take into account the fact that we were still in Miami. We arrived at the Continental check-in counter and found it unoccupied. Even the self-registration monitors were blinking at us, declaring that they would not be available for use until 4:45 a.m. In Miami, apparently, even the computers can't be bothered. There were no signs directing us where to wait or what to do, so we did what seemed reasonable at the time. We decided to stand in line at the counter and wait the 15 minutes until we could check in. Other passengers who had been sitting down in the area joined the line behind us. When a Continental employee finally arrived at around 4:50, she snapped at us for where we were standing and directed us to another spot. We all moved, and she spent the next 10 minutes or so constructing the queue. As she put the first posts in place, she snapped at us again because we were standing approximately 2 inches too far forward of where she wished to begin the line. We apologized and moved back a little and she proceeded on in a huff. We had to move back again to facilitate the spreading of the official Continental Airlines floormat a few moments later. At around 10 after 5:00, the counter finally opened, at which time the agents instructed us to use the self-check monitors. We inquired what we should do with our checked bags and were told, in that tone of voice one uses to address the stupid, that we would get in line again and someone would call us when they were ready to take our bags. We complied, and when our turn came to give our bags to the agent, we were told rather brusquely, "Your name is not on these bags. You will have to fill out luggage tags." When I pointed out the luggage tag slots manufactured into each piece, I was told "Oh no. We do not go into pockets. It's required to be on the outside now." I saw this nowhere on the TSA website I'd perused the night before, so unless it is an airline thing, I'm skeptical. I was to step aside and fill out 3 tags. When I tried to attach said tags to the luggage, the agent took them from my hand and said "You can go now." Fine.

Soon after, we found ourselves at the security checkpoint. Again, there were no signs telling us what to do, so we did the logical thing and went into the nylon strap maze heading for the screeners. We were stopped with much waving of hands and brandishing of papers and told we had to wait outside the queue. Once we formed a line outside the queue and the screeners had concluded their conversation, we were allowed back in. We put our stuff on the conveyor and I stepped through the magnetometer. The TSA agent on the other side asked me in a voice so soft that I had to ask her to repeat herself, "Where are your bags?" When I replied that they were on the conveyor, she told me "You have to go back and push them into the machine". What is the conveyor for?!?! At any other airport, they would yell at you for pushing your stuff into the machine because there is a person who does that once the machine operator is ready. Not in Miami, apparently. In Miami you have to be psychic just to make it through the airport without getting snapped at.

Okay, well, I think I've ranted about that for long enough. The rest of our trip was great. The Houston and Tulsa airports were much better - much friendlier. In fact, every other airport in the world that I have passed through has been head and shoulders above Miami. In conclusion, at MIA, customer service is MIA.