Recently in Babble On Category

Got home on time last night from Kansas City. This was a bit of a surprise, really.

Got to the airport and saw my flight was delayed 45 minutes. So I read and people watched for a bit, then went through security and walked the short walk to the gate.

A man there was talking very very loudly into his bluetooth.

I wonder about people like this.

Just unaware how loud they are? Or intentionally loud to get attention. Intentionally broadcasting a work conversation so we think gosh he must be important?

Me, I was listening to the conversation. He was using full names, company names, and talking about meeting details.

We did in fact board 45 minutes late. I was in seat 1C and dude on phone was in 2D. He was still on the phone when we walked onto the plane, and the flight attendant rolled her eyes at me as he walked by. I nodded sympathetically and said I was going to tweet his conversation.

I put my bags away, and got my phone. And started tweeting his conversation. Flight attendant came and asked me if I wanted something to drink, and saw I was actually doing it. And laughed.

Through further listening in on his conversation with his seatmate, the woman seated right behind me, I learned lots of other things.

How long he's been married, how many grandkids he has, what his house looks like, how smart he really is, how little he really thinks of his wife, and that the man considered himself "above average." He told his seatmate that no one could do what he does, with the sucess he's had, if they weren't above average. Then he says his wife is below average.

The guy tells his seatmate that he blew through six million dollars by the time he was 44 years old That's why he's still working. Then he says that his wife's father never earned more than 10 dollars an hour his whole life.

And the woman seated beside him just egged him on the whole way, agreeing that his wife seemed not to understand him, and gee what a good grandfather he seems to be.

Right before we took off, the flight attendant told me that she had refused to serve him a drink while he was on his phone. Apparently he tried to get her attention but she ignored him. I wanted to hug her.

Once we landed and got out of our seats, the guy who had been sitting across the aisle from me, and who was now behind me in the line to get off the plane asked me loudly what was up with that dude.

I answered that I did not know, but that I was sure glad to hear that he was above average.

Despite the delayed departure, we were mostly on time. I ambled leisurely to my next gate and had a seat.

A few minutes later a guy walked up and stood standing, talking to another guy who was seated a few seats down from me.

Guy standing up had shorts on, and something about those calves seemed familiar.

Couldn't get a good look at his face however, and he started to walk away.

I saw the walk and knew it was Bruce, a guy I dated for two years. When they called the flight I walked down toward the gate by myself. Bruce was a ways away talking to his friend or coworker again, and then looked my way. Did a double take, smiled, and walked back toward me.

We got on the plane. He was one seat up and one seat over, until he got up and took the seat beside me. We chatted the short flight home.

Got off the plane, down the escalator, said our goodbyes, he went one direction, I went the other.

Thinking there was a time in my life when he was the only one I wanted. And I sure am glad that it didn't work out.

With any of the three Bruces.

I have no one thing in mind. So let's just see where this goes.

In Sheaness news, she seems to have stopped growing at just over the 5' 9" mark. And has inherited her dad's ability to ruin electronic devices at a rapid pace. Otherwise, she's mini-me. She knows it, and I know it, and it makes our relationship the greatest thing ever in my life.

We've talked about things - you know the things - since she was young. Now's she's a teen. And has a boyfriend. And will be driving within a year. The talks continue, and after all these years, I have to say, we're good at it. Boys, drugs, driving, peer pressure, tolerance, prioritization, trust, religion, being a good tipper.

Of course I liked her before this, but of her own accord she started liking Dave Matthews after their last album. I'd hear "Funny the Way It Is" playing in her room and just smile. Pretty soon she started asking to borrow my CDs, and now she knows which track numbers in the car are her favorites.

She took quite a liking to "Too Much." When she was little I would turn the volume down for the parts with bad words.

Now I turn it up.

And we laugh.

So speaking of Dave, the Atlanta show was awesome. Gov't Mule opened. They sang "Soulshine." It was wonderful.

On deck are the two shows at Wrigley in September, plus any others I can work into my schedule.

In other news, in the Twitter vs. Facebook thing, I have a definite preference for Twitter.

Maybe because there is less maintenance and admin involved.

But probably it's because of the fellow Dave Matthews Band fans there.

I don't have a care in the world about Twitter being occasionally unavailable. It happens. Demanding uptime and reliability from a free service seems a little self-indulgent to me anyway.

So I check Facebook every now and then, but TweetDeck stays open most of the time. One of these days I will get my Twitter feed back over there in the right-hand column. Probably not today.

Work continues to be primarily online. I have, in fact, denounced my road warrior title. I can't say I'm totally normal now, but I do shop for groceries, and drive my car to places other than the airport. I didn't mind at all my printer ink cartridges drying up from lack of printing boarding passes every week.

My house sits in the landing path of the airport, and several times a day, from my throne on the screened-in-porch I look up and a) wish them all safe travels, and b) give thanks for not being on that plane. Or any plane.

This week I'm learning an add-on application. Which is going to be easy in all regards. First, it's a relaunch of something we had years ago. Second, the application's function is something that is so ingrained in me that I don't even have to think about it. So all I got to do is learn the fields and actions. Third, it's self-paced. Best, like all the work I do at home, I do it from the porch, while watching the birds and other backyard creatures.

It's a real-life tweet deck.

This past week when I got to the airport, I laughed myself silly with the "it rubs the lotion on its skin" thing. I don't know why.

The thread continued in my head as I went through the rest of the routine things I do when I go out of town.

I intended to continue tweeting but kept getting server connection errors on my Blackberry, so I gave up.

Well, on the electronic note-taking anyway. I always have a pen and paper backup.

So here is the full list, as I wrote it by hand.

It rubs the lotion in its skin.

It puts Eternity on the cloth, and the cloth in the bag.

It straps the bag to the other bag, locks Jalepeno, and goes into airport.

It checks the board and says hi to all Delta agents.

It goes to prettiest airport bathroom ever.

It goes through security.

It gets a compliment on forearm tattoo.

It puts on shoes, straps bags together, and goes up escalator.

It gets a SW veggie wrap and chips. And a filled H20 bottle.

It goes to the gate. It asks gate agent if we have a plane. He says yes.

It sits and eats.

It chats to TSA agent who is "making a presence" [in the terminal.]

It throws out its chat. [Don't ask.]

It gets comment from gate agent that I have a very FAST looking bag.

It fesses up that it owns not a Ducati.

It still gets smiles from agent who then puts valet bag tag on fast bag.

It boards the plane.

It gets another baggage compliment from flight attendant.

It gets no seatmate.

It gets out its book.

It notices how text size has gotten bigger as I get near bottom of page.

It reads.

So this is the little light reading.

Wouldn't blame you if you thought I meant Twitter. But I'm serious. This stuff fascinates me.

I'm only on page three of the abstract though.

I got distracted. See, I was, in fact, pondring superlatives earlier. While doing such, memories of a college Philosophy course popped into my head.

In retrospect it should have come as no surprise how quickly I took to the subject of Logic. Even my professor was surprised at the speed with which I could complete truth tables.

But wait. It gets better. In addition to the cold hard facts, it was also highly useful to learn definitively that there are some questions that cannot be answered definitively.

And for me, this all boils down to the concept of a question being rightly put.

A man lights a match, and then blows it out. He asks, "Which way did the fire go? North, South, East, or West?

The answer is, the question is not rightly put.

All the above, input to my thoughts, which led me to the argument of the beard, which asks at what point does a beard become gray.

Hard to say.

So I set about getting my posts from Twitter to display here.

While it is far from rocket science, I am always apprehensive about pushing buttons on pondring's control panel. Maintenance-induced failures, don't you know.

I also know better than to do anything without making a backup first.

Bravery and recklessness often go hand in hand, however. I didn't make a backup. If anything went south then I'd be forced to tackle the problem and figure it out, as opposed to just undo it.

Lo and behold, it worked.

So there you are. Pondring to go. Typographical warts and all.

Not really.

But I did need to order some more tea, so I did that last night.

Whilst shopping I came across some Tot 50 staples in refill boxes of 1000 staples. The little Tot staplers were redesigned to take standard staples. You can't get staples for the old kind in the stores anymore.

And I'm not about to part with my little stapler. It's a classic. So I ordered enough staples to last 15 years or so. Unless my stapling habits change drastically.

I also managed to come across a first edition of Step Into the Light.

I think I spent 51 bucks including all the shipping.

Big shopping weekend for me, don't you know.

I've got another hour or so at home before it's time to head to the airport. It's been a very productive day. I got expense reports, time sheets, emails, an on-line course, and part of my annual review done, as well as all the laundry, the dishes, house vacuumed, put away clothes, put stuff in the mailbox, beds made, and sent and read a few dozen emails.

Which makes up for the slug's pace I moved last week on vacation.

Which is as it should be.

The perpetual motion of words. Swimming in them today, and they refuse to be put into any order.

Prior to yesterday, I had never cleaned gutters before. Yesterday I did. Now I can say I've done it.

It was a piece of cake. But note to self, next time don't wear Birkenstocks up on the roof. Wear the foundry boots, as my brother called them. A few weeks ago there was a family intervention at my house prior to the new siding and gutters. The work in the yard required sturdy footwear. And I own no footwear sturdier than my steel-toed boots. Which happen to also be quite comfortable.

My brother sees them and says to me, "where in the world did you get foundry boots."

"Uh, the foundry," I say.

So I cleaned the gutters with nothing more than rubber-gloved-topped-by-leather-gloved hands. My brother came behind me with the gutter guards. My mom was on the ground handing the guards to my brother and holding the ladder for him. (And, I suspect, worrying the whole time whether I was going to fall off the roof.)

(I did not.)

So I've cleaned gutters. The fact that I did it upon arriving home after a red-eye flight from San Francisco, sans nap in my own bed, speaks volumes to my intestinal fortitude.

Or possibly just to the jet lag. (Seems more likely when I factor in that I had Shea back Jalepeno into the garage when we got home yesterday.)

Earlier today I tried to take a nap but was too tired. Instead, I had a lucid dream about being at the piano in the middle of Atlanta's E concourse, playing Master of the House from Les Miserables. (I do not know how to play it, but my hands were moving around as if they did.)

Which is part of the fun of lucid dreams. Perpetual motion. Not very restful, however. So I got up. And have been laughing at my kid since then.

A few minutes ago she was in the kitchen and opened the pantry. Thanks to a trip to the grocery store yesterday, there was actually something in there.

I suggested an apple, which I then cut up for her, and said, "and perhaps a vegetable or something."

She says, "what is this vegetable you speak of..."

(Baby carrots, in case you are curious.)

She took a trip through Growthsburg again in the past few weeks. (Or her dad is stretching her on a rack.) Either way she seems to be warming to her height, and to the strong possibility that there are inches yet to grow.

I don't recall whether I mentioned that my third tattoo has been postponed until January. (All in all a good thing, because I don't need any more sky miles this year.)

The flight attendant on the plane from the west coast asked me whether I had any trouble sleeping on a plane. I said no. I also gave her permission to poke me if I started snoring. (I took a flight about a year and a half ago from somewhere in Europe (I do know for sure it was Germany, London, or Amsterdam) to South Africa. Once we reached 10,000 feet I put my seat back, covered up from head to toe, and slept for eight hours straight. Woke up when we were over Harare.

Nope, no trouble sleeping on planes.

Now I'm reminded of what happened after the conversation with the flight attendant. A guy seated two rows behind me, who had just come from the bathroom, asked her what she did with the little black pouch he had put in his seat pocket.

She shook her head and said she didn't do anything with it.

He said, "come on now, I know you did. It was there when I went to the bathroom, and now it's not."

Another flight attendant was standing nearby and she asked him if he lost something.

He said he didn't lose it, he knew one of them had taken it, and ha ha, and now they needed to give it back.

They both assured him that they didn't touch it. (At first I thought he was just joking with them. But he started to get perturbed.)

He accused them again of taking his little black pouch. And they both again tried to tell him that they would not have touched his stuff.

He just kept on repeating "come on now, give it back." I was afraid an air marshal was going to be in our very near future when one of the ladies said, "there's something under the seat in front of you..."

The man looked down, and his little black pouch had fallen to the floor.

I had been watching him intently anyway, and as soon as he made eye contact with me, I raised my eyebrows. And waited. And kept looking at him until he apologized. Then I kept looking. The second apology actually sounded sincere.

And once again, ladies and gentlemen, I listened to more than my fair share of folks say how the flight they had just taken was the worst ever. And that they weren't going to fly (insert airline) ever again.

One of them tried to engage me in conversation with that opening line. I smiled slightly, shrugged my shoulders. Said I take four flights a week on Delta and rarely have any problems.

Maybe I should wear a "Se Habla Good Karma" button or something.

Oh well. Have resisted urge to reread this, thus avoiding possibility that I would backspace the jetlagged musings. Will hit post, and hope for the best.