Thought Sausage

It's 4:45am....do you know where your children are?

I've been up all night. Rather than attempt to get to O'hell in the morning, I went ahead and trained it here last night around 12:30am. Camped out on a bench out front, which I'm sorry to say isn't the first time (and probably not the last). Getting here when O'hare opens for business is a spectacle in of itself. It's like some grand opening parade, but instead of a grand marshall, a 4'0" tall man with a TSA coat wanders up and down the cattle line reciting the same Homeland Security Bullshit that was blaring over the loudspeaker @ 3am this morning (and threatening to prevent me from sleeping). That speech is amusing. As you are no doubt aware, you are no longer permitted to bring liquids of any kind on a plane. Now there are some caveats to that. Baby formula is okay, but no more than 8oz's. Prescription medicine is a go too, so long as your name is on the prescription. Deodorants, chapstick and personal hygiene effects of that substance are also permissable. The amusing part to me is that the announcement then takes the time to suggest some other "substances" that may fall into the "deodorant-consistency" realm. Crew Cream was thrown out as an example (who the fuck still uses that?), as was some other shit I've never heard of. The entire message takes about a minute and a half to play through, and the tiny little man in the coat knew every single second of it. Word for word, enunciation by enunciation. From what I can tell, this is how that little man will spend the next 9 hours of his day. And you thought YOUR job was dull. Har har har!

So I was privy to being 2nd in line today. For those of you who've never been at O'hell when it first opens, keep it that way. Even at 4:30am the stupidity amazed me. First they parade everyone through an egregiously long maze (you know, the roped off things you see at banks and every other airport). Once it is about one hundred people deep, a largish woman with pants that look like they fit her three previous lives ago begins sectioning and resectioning off this little maze. She tripped up twice and had to "start over". By the end of it, she had taken a long-yet-routed line and turned it into a convoluted gigantic clusterfuck that, were I in at a carnival, I would expect to win a prize for getting all the way through. The fatal flaw in her poorly engineered labrynth was that she put in 5 (FIVE) areas where the line would feed into security. If there were 5 corresponding security checkpoints, this might make sense. However, we only had two available. At this time of morning, I, and probably most people in the line are not equipped to deal with these problems. This resulted in a clusterfuck of tired people aimlessly wandering to one of the two lines. Being the savvy people the dipshit brigade @ O'hare is, they solved this problem by designating one of the troops to stand in the middle of the floor and say "Go to the closest station to you". This statement neglected the obvious physics that 5 lines and 2 checkpoints poses. Nevertheless, I cut somebody and got through.

So where I am I going? Why NYC of course! I'll be here today for a meeting at 11 (pray tell I can get from LaGuardia to mid-Manhattan by then). Actually, this puts me pretty close to Times Square. I think if you haven't been to New York you should see Times Square. Kind of like if you've never been to Chicago, you should at least go to the Signature Lounge and have a drink. But after seeing it, Times Square has to be the single most plastic contrived wad of gawdy bullshit north of Disneyworld. I don't even know if I can properly describe it other than to say, if you took Justin Timberlake, Simon Cowell, Sharon Osbourne, a Japanese game show and somehow melded them all into a single building, what you would end up with would be the McDonalds in Times Square (you know, that one that looks like it should be in Tokyo). Sadly, I'll probably be eating a McRib there before the day is through

Of course, Carnegie's Deli is just a few blocks north of that seizure inducing section of town. If time permits, I may cruise up there and have a cow with two crackers on the end.

The client I'm meeting with today is a largish techie firm that sells solutions to problems you didn't know you had. From what I understand, if they decide to throw the gauntlet down on this project...I'll be spending ever MORE time in the most expensive city in the union. At some point or another, I may have to set aside my disdain for New York and make friends with that town.

Boy howdy this was a fucking day for the record. Upon boarding the plane, a monsoon decided to lumber its way into the far northwest end of Chicago...and O'hare ain't too hip to fueling and stocking a plane with lightning around. So we had to wait for 45 FUCKING MINUTES until they deemed it safe. Then, once we got out of the gate, the pilot announced that "we're going to wait until the showers die down before take off". Joy. Now I'm starting to think I may miss this meeting, but I'm going to New York no matter what. I decide to email the boys in NYC and inform them of this state of affairs and assure them I will call as soon as I land.

when we did land, the pilot then announced that "we hadn't been cleared to go to the gate" yet, so we had to sit out on the tarmac AGAIN! Of all the days to be delayed at every juncture, this was not the one I'd pick. Basically I was fucked. I called the rest of the crew and basically said I'd join the meeting late if I had to (an entrance I'm oh so fond of making).

I joined the meeting about a half hour late, did a 20 minute song and dance about myself and then hopped on a bus and headed back to Laguardia. Yes, I was in new york for a grand total of about a half hour. LAMENESS

New things are gonna be happenin around these parts. We're taking it to the next level! More details soon