And now a brief post on business lounge decor...

I am in Miami at the Admiral's Club. Now, I don't know if you are familiar with Miami Airport but as you can see from this map it is damn big. Too damn big.



Of course since it is under construction there are few moving walkways. After about a half hour, my quest to find the Admiral's Club from the plane ended under the smoking palm trees shown below.


I got to walk from A to E!


Trees sue airport!

Smokers under glass, and the poor palm trees. This whole thing seems pretty wacky, I have the distinct feeling I photographed it last time I was in Miami. It giggles me out that their are palms in the smoking area. I wonder if it is good for them?

Anyway the main reason for this entry is because of Punk Walrus's entry last month about Balticon conference rooms, here are my pictures of similar patterns in the Admiral's Club decor.


Yuck!

What the hell is this all about? It is very 60s jet set, but it is wrong so so wrong, and they just renovated! I decided to upload this post and get it out of the way, so I am desperately seeking the business center when I run into Eva Longoria on yet another magazine. This is 92 by my count. I'm sure there is more, now I understand her presence her but what about the caribe/african female osiris painting? I mean is she fertility or is she death or both? Fertility Goddesses just aren't usually found in business lounges (well at least not in paintings) and death goddesses are kind of disturbing to show people getting on planes. I enjoyed the lounge so much I almost missed my flight. I was the second to last on board cause women on walls distracted
me...


Can someone tell me why she is here?!

On my way to the plane I ran into this ad below and had to comment. Does this happen? To anyone? Do you really have some hot chick go shopping and dress into lingerie for you just because you are in Miami?? I mean is that a pre-requisite?

I mean you can't identify with the guy unless you are super-rich, you may desire to be the guy, but would you want to be the woman? Maybe I a missing something here? I mean I like Miami, but what does this have to do with it?

All the whisky and cookies 50,000 airline miles can buy!

I really wanted to take pictures of the takeoff from Baltimore but after seeing all the TSA people in the concourse I thought the better of it. The south indian flight attendant seemed stern and short (both in height and demeanor) so the risk just wasn't worth it.

Taking off from Baltimore I looked out the window at the airport and the planes going by and I thought about the last time I was on a plane involved with a trip to Chile. That would be when I came back to the states in November 2003. My son was sitting in the window seat next to me looking out at all the planes and hangars and tower and trucks. He ecstatically counted them all, once we were in the air he would do the same with pools he saw until finally we were in the clouds. He looked out the window the whole trip.

The window seat was empty on this flight. I sat alone missing K-dude, finally risking taking pictures for him after we reached crusing altitude.

Until today I never met a south indian with a southern drawl (think Birmingham not Bangalore). Somehow that changed my whole impression of her. Her lilting voice offered me whisky and shortbread cookies, which is apparently a very good combination, even if it is Dewar's White Label.

The last time I drank Dewar's was when my friends came over to my house after I was laid off from AOL and they brought a liter. It tasted better this time, as I drank it I thought back over the past three years and am pleased with the progress that I have serendipitously made towards my goals.

* I effectively doubled my salary (even if I just quit my job)
* I'm halfway through law school
* I have four cute kids
* I'm learning Spanish and heading to Chile to boot to get law school credit!

On top of that I just developed a good buzz, and a new fetish for south asian women with southern accents. Outside of missing my family, life is pretty good right now.

As we landed I foolishly tried to take a few more pictures of the thunderheads over St. Pete.

None of them came out well. Then I tried to take some of Miami. Pictures of things far away are like predicting the future. Very rarely are they clear and often they come out differently than you would expect.

Reacharound central planning

So I'm sitting in concourse C waiting for my plane and I count... 16 TSA uniformed officers walk up and down the concourse in the half hour I am waiting, not like 1 guy walking by 16 times, but packs of them like groups of two to four. Now, I'm thrilled that I got through security in three minutes flat, but do we need sixteen officers.. in the secured concourse???

This smacks of reacharound central planning. You don't know what that is? I'll tell you.

It is when an ostensibly fiscal conservative government inject gigantic contracts toward certain companies which in essence behave as central planners of our economy.

How do republicans act like marxists you ask? They have studies performed by large contractors who provide them with solutions that can be implemented by only a few large contractors and do it all in the name of keeping me safe. Competitive bidding you say? Well if it is so competitive then why has my Halliburton stock doubled in the past year?

If you really want to keep people on planes safe put an air marshal on each flight and make him dress like a slob so he has a chance of being hidden. Other than that let me carry my pocket knife again. I think after all that has happened we can trust the american people to defend themselves from hijackers attempting to take planes.

The Quest For Flight

Just remember the cats are not the grossest things about this car ride.

BWI is so damn far from DC. Don't let them fool you with those commercials! At five o'clock in the afternoon on a friday after two hours in traffic you are
so *going* to be regretting that choice. More advice for stupid people, don't hide food from babies.

Here is how I arrived at that piece of wisdom. We managed to load the car with the kids, my mom, the stroller and four huge bags (three for me and one for my mom to send to
my relatives). We were only twenty minutes late rocketing down the Dulles toll road to BWI. We were stunned that the beltway was jammed on a friday (I
don't know why we were stunned we just were) and took my evil secret routes to pop onto the beltway to find ourselves at Georgetown Pike where we took the
onramp onto a slightly less crowded beltway. We crossed and had stop and go all the way to BWI. Now this was in our white minivan, a 2003 Dodge Grand
Caravan. It just started making this nasty grinding noise that we think means the brakes need to be fixed, but then after the beltway two step for an hour
it has found a whole new range of mechanical cacophony. This is my *gentle* reminder for my wife to see a mechanic.

Anyway after an hour my eldest son K had to pee. Then the kids were hungry. Then my mom decided, to her credit, to entertain the children. Unfortunately
she chose to go through a list of the geneaology of the cats in her family starting from the first cat my Aunt Mabel got from her Piano teacher in 1963 in
Santiago all the way down to her cat Storm who she renamed the Vulture because of the way he perches on the rooftop of her home in Culpeper. I pulled the plug on this glorious history after she started talking about the jasmine bush in Antofagasta chopped down last week.

Apparently my Mom's sisters are in Antofagasta right now. As part of the aftermath of my grandaunt Alquinoi's death they chopped down (well they paid $100 for someone else to cut down) a jasmine bush a few days ago so that they could access apartments and secret rooms on the property given up to the wild years before I was born. What does this have to do with cats? Gentle reader, it never rains in

Antofagasta. Seriously. They found the mummified corpses of two cats in the bush. That was when I put my hands up over my head in the shape of an O as the international symbol for oversharing.

The cats are not the grossest thing about this car ride.

After explaining the whole oversharing symbol thing to my mom, my daughters found the licorice I bought last week at X-Men 3 with Cyaneyed. Found as in saw it on the kitchen table, snagged it, and then asked really loud if they could have
it - which means they have to share it with K-dude and my wife who are within sight of Spike our gaping maw of a toddler. They handed a stick of licorice to my eldest son K-dude. I told him fateful words I will regret to my dying day.

Don't let Spike see you eating licorice.

In truth I thought I was justified. My youngest stodgyspike is too young for licorice, more than that, I was worried he would choke or gag on it. So out of
sight, out of mind. Right?

Here you are expecting me to say something like Spike figured it out or K-dude figured out a real inventive way to hide the licorice, but no, much worse. Everyone in the car keeps talking about cats and then all of a sudden K-dude projectile vomits.

Orange and red technicolor pre-school lunch all over his front, his integrated car seat, the foot well in front of him, the back of my seat.

Apparently the minivan bumped at just the wrong moment and K-dude gagged on the licorice.

The cats are not the grossest thing about this car ride.

My mom and I leapt into action as the acrid yet oddly sweet aroma of preschooler vomit filled the minivan. My mom liberally (until my wife and I simultaneously yelled at her) applied most of Spike's diaper wipes to cleaning up Kieran while I used napkins to clean everything I could reach. After
four kids I collect napkins from fast food resturants the same way bees collect pollen. I wonder what would happen if I installed McDonald's Napkins at a

Taco Bell. I mean would they then make McNugget Burritos? Don't laugh that is how they got those awful KFC/Taco Bell things.

I got sidetracked.

OK, so we cleaned him off and I came up with the optimal plan. Cho (my eldest daughter) and I would get the luggage checked in while my wife and SR (my younger daughter), and Spike

would park the car. Then my Mom would take K-dude and clean him up. Well we get there and SR goes off with my Mom and K-dude. And Cho and I check in! We

check in within three minutes of arriving and we go up to the security gate and check the bathroom next to the security gate.

No Mom. No K-dude. No SR.... My Mom did not follow the logical signs to American Airlines Departure. Despite the fact I am thirty minutes behind schedule.

Now this annoying lack of urgency is something my mother claims is endemic to the latin way of life. She usually claims this while shrilly proclaiming to anyone who would listen "Soy Latina!" Well, see here mother of mine. You mated with an Irish-German hoosier. That means your offspring generally like keeping schedules and drinking...in about equal measure. Hence after the tenth minute of waiting for the rest of my family I went off to look for them or a belt of whisky.

They of course walked up all together as if nothing was really the matter. Fortunately, Cho had found everyone and gathered them together. I hugged my kids
as they said goodbye and cried, I let go and doing my best not to cry myself went through security and on to the concourse.

Well the weather outside is frightful....

Did I mention that the law school does not have central heat? I remember the headaches that drilled into my skull from all the kerosene heaters used all winter long in Chile back in 1983. That was the last time I lived in Santiago in winter, August of 1983. Funny, I don't recall it snowing that much. Maybe I should bring my combat boots after all? What do you think? Too fascist? How will I stay under the weight limit with them, how will I not slip on ice without them?

Oh the angst! ;) I will have to run or dance to keep the chill away.