Last night I was almost thrown off my plane, flying from DC to Denver. Why, you might ask, was I almost thrown off the plane, anticipating one of my Marine-like tirades with the f word, a physical altercation with one of the stewardesses, or an attempt to bodily harm one of my fellow passengers that won't talk quietly...no, all I did was throw a pillow. Or, honestly, a few pillows.
You know that never ending business trip where you just continually cross time zones and sit on a runway in delay mode every 3 or 5 days for months on end while life passes you by? It can cause some strange behavior. I'm sure someone has done a medical study. I should probably be on drugs.
Anyway, my colleague and I had just boarded the plane, or preboarded the plane since we both have a million bizillion miles which allows us to entomb ourselves on the plane first. Joy. We tried to sit together but natch the flight was full because united grounded all their 777s and had to reschedule everyone. I got to my seat, an aisle seat, and found this stupid pillow already sitting there. I stood up and looked three aisles down to my colleague, who had a middle seat, and said "dude, have a pillow". He declined the pillow. So, for whatever reason, I threw it at his head as soon as he sat down.
The only people on the plane, at this point, were those people who fly a lot. All jaded, overworked, jaundiced consultants, abused by customers. When the pillow bounced off my colleague's head, he got mad and threw it back, and then threw his own pillow for good measure. Then he threw every pillow he could get his hands on, which was 8. The other jaded consultants started throwing their pillows at me too. I had to fire back. That's what I was taught at work. Pillows were flying everywhere.
At some point during the massive pillow throwing situation, the pedestrians started to board. Someone got tagged with a pillow and complained. The next thing I knew some cake boy in a united uniform was reading me the riot act. Separated me from my peeps, the jaded consultants. Sent me to the back row, without extra leg room, for bad behavior. Told me I was lucky he wasn't throwing me off the flight. I couldn't stop staring at his mouth as he yelled at me for being a, ha ha, "security risk". Was that spit or lip gloss? Couldn't tell from looking at him.
And that's when I knew, we in these united states have lost our sense of humor and our souls. I'm not a terrorist. I'm just an irresponsible human being who likes to throw things at people. Why not treat the guy next to me who snored and farted for 4 hours the same way? At least my behavior only caused slight discomfort.
post script:
The fight continued at baggage claim. I was hit with no less than 7 luggage tickets while I waited for my suitcase. And two e-tickets. No casualties were reported, although some were heard to actually laugh while in the airport.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Player, The Plan
I've decided to become a player. Here's a list of things I am going to do to be more player-ish:
- Start listening to more smooth jazz hits like James
- Buy some kicky shoes with really high heels (I'll just spend more time in the evening doing PT for my knee)
- Or, wait a minute, isn't night when I'm supposed to be out being a player, flirting?
- Also, I will start flirting
- Flirting with people instead of staring at my blackberry and pretending to read emails even if I don't have any emails just so I don't have to make eye contact
- Stop being afraid of midgets
- Oops, that's not really anything to do with being a player, it's just that I accidentally just saw a midget and now I'm going to have nightmares
- Not that I have anything against really little people, I just think your head and your hands should fit somewhat on your body and not be a lot bigger than your body
- Eck, how am I supposed to concentrate on being a player now?
- Fucking midgets
- I'm trying to visualize my favorite shoe. Christian Louboutin sandals made with real diamonds.
- How weird. Nordstrom does not sell Christian Louboutin shoes. But Neiman Marcus does.
- Nordstrom is supposed to have 5,000 plus shoes. What a bunch of bullshit.
- I bet there's a way to write a script to count how many shoes are on Nordstrom's web site
- I wonder if someone is selling those Louboutin sandals on eBay
- Also, I wonder if that guy sent my spinjas
- Someone was actually selling spinjas on eBay for $140
- I will probably have to hide them; I'm not sure players own spinjas
- Although it could be a good way to flirt with people
- Or would that be like asking someone to help you solve your rubik's cube
- Ahhh! There's another midget commercial. This is why I DON'T like TV. I am trying to watch a show on nebulae and they keep showing midgets, in fact a whole midget family, I think it's a show or something, but I can't watch it because there are also midget kids or they might just be normal size. I'm not looking.
- Orion Nebula is one of the most famous and you can see it with the naked eye
- The Orion Nebula has at least 700 stars in various stages of being "born"; it's called a "stellar nursery"
- The Mayans put symbols on their hearths that represented the Orion Nebula
- I wonder if a player would know that?
Maybe I will work on my player plan later...
My Finger Saga Continues
After much nagging from my customer and Clint, I decided to go see a doctor again about my finger. It still looks pretty bad.
The x-ray showed that I accidentally somehow re-broke my finger. The original break was pretty clean. This one was messy and might require a plate and pin to hold the bone together.
I am assuming that the break happened either when I fell skiing, or when I was carrying a box of manuals to my customer's site, or when some asspipe from United Airlines dropped a heavy box on my left hand. It's hard to say. I have been gifted, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with a high pain threshold. Which is good since I am allergic to every drug except red wine.
But that leads to some problems when dealing with the medical community. This morning my doctor yelled at me for 5 minutes about my finger. He yelled at me when I couldn't pin point the moment of the break, saying "How can you not know when you broke your finger?" To which I can only respond I broke the tip off my femur and then ran competitively on it for 10 years before the break was properly diagnosed by my PT. I was told by 3 separate doctors that I didn't appear to be in enough pain given the fact that my leg was broken so they never took my injury seriously. I broke my right arm and didn't realize it until 2 weeks later when the swelling went down and I realized my arm was twisted. I broke my front teeth and almost ripped my lip off my face but walked 3 miles home carting my mountain bike without realizing anything was wrong with me.
I was also yelled at for going skiing, even though I figured after 5 weeks my finger should be fixed up. My doctor asked me if I really had so little common sense. Um, yeah. I'm an engineer. We aren't exactly known for "common sense". At least I wasn't running around with a key tied to a kite in the middle of a lightening storm.
So now I'm looking at possibly having a plate and pin put in my finger. I am eating broccoli and spinach every day to see if I can head off surgery by eating super foods. Every night before I go to bed I'm visualizing my bone healing. Best case scenario I end up with a weird looking finger. To match the scars on my chin, my weird looking knee, the scar on my heel, the broken nose, etc.
The x-ray showed that I accidentally somehow re-broke my finger. The original break was pretty clean. This one was messy and might require a plate and pin to hold the bone together.
I am assuming that the break happened either when I fell skiing, or when I was carrying a box of manuals to my customer's site, or when some asspipe from United Airlines dropped a heavy box on my left hand. It's hard to say. I have been gifted, or cursed, depending on how you look at it, with a high pain threshold. Which is good since I am allergic to every drug except red wine.
But that leads to some problems when dealing with the medical community. This morning my doctor yelled at me for 5 minutes about my finger. He yelled at me when I couldn't pin point the moment of the break, saying "How can you not know when you broke your finger?" To which I can only respond I broke the tip off my femur and then ran competitively on it for 10 years before the break was properly diagnosed by my PT. I was told by 3 separate doctors that I didn't appear to be in enough pain given the fact that my leg was broken so they never took my injury seriously. I broke my right arm and didn't realize it until 2 weeks later when the swelling went down and I realized my arm was twisted. I broke my front teeth and almost ripped my lip off my face but walked 3 miles home carting my mountain bike without realizing anything was wrong with me.
I was also yelled at for going skiing, even though I figured after 5 weeks my finger should be fixed up. My doctor asked me if I really had so little common sense. Um, yeah. I'm an engineer. We aren't exactly known for "common sense". At least I wasn't running around with a key tied to a kite in the middle of a lightening storm.
So now I'm looking at possibly having a plate and pin put in my finger. I am eating broccoli and spinach every day to see if I can head off surgery by eating super foods. Every night before I go to bed I'm visualizing my bone healing. Best case scenario I end up with a weird looking finger. To match the scars on my chin, my weird looking knee, the scar on my heel, the broken nose, etc.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Jumps
This weekend Clint and I went skiing at Copper. I was coming off an 80 hour week in California and that's my excuse for forgetting to pack a jacket. Luckily I had a fleece and the weather wasn't too cold. Clint lent me a bright green shell two sizes too big for me so I officially looked like a retard on the slopes.
I started out the day wrecking on my second run. I dropped down onto a trail, caught an edge, and then tumbled about 50 feet. My skis, not to be outdone by me, slid another 20 feet past me after I managed to stop by hitting a rock. That's when I remembered, oh yeah, I have a broken hand.
Skiing with a broken hand is not as much fun as one might expect. For one thing, it hurts to hold a ski pole. Not that I ever use my ski poles, but since I decorated them with little stars and they match my boots I always end up bringing them with me. I am supposed to some day learn to stick them when I turn instead of just using them to wave around when I'm about to fall. I guess that will have to wait until next season since I think the slopes will close before my left hand does.
Since the wind was blowing really hard and I was inadequately dressed we started traversing the mountain trying to find a protected place to ski (I should mention here I also forgot my ski mittens and was wearing some mittens I keep in my car for emergencies). We ended up finding this really cool area that had a bunch of jumps. I've never done a real ski jump and decided I wanted to try. I did accidentally ski off a small cliff last year in a snow storm at Winter Park, and stuck the landing, but then fell over and tumbled about 100 feet down the mountain, with some snow boarders on the lift shouting "you suck!" for the last 40 feet of that particular fall but was informed that didn't count as a jump.
We decided that Clint would go off the jumps to make sure I wouldn't kill myself, and then I would follow him. The sum total of coaching I got for going off a jump was "point your skis towards the jump and then jump". The first jump was an easy drop off of a cornice that had formed on a rock. I didn't bother to look where I was jumping since Clint made it look so easy. I launched off the cornice, stuck the landing, realized I was going kind of fast, flailed my poles, and then slid into a pine tree. It took me a few minutes to get out of the tree because my skis had gotten stuck.
Feeling kind of cocky, I decided to try a more challenging jump. I followed Clint down to a little snow cliff and stayed about 10 feet above him while he dropped off the ledge. For some reason, it seemed like it might be a better idea to get a rolling start for the jump, and so instead of stopping at the lip of the jump and then easing off I got a running start and had pretty good speed when I hit the edge.
Had I rolled off of it the way Clint did I would have gotten a little air, hit a bump in the snow and continued down the hill. Instead I was going so fast I missed the bump entirely. It seemed like I was in the air for a half hour although I'm sure it was just a few seconds. Part of my brain was going "wheeee!" and part of my brain was going "do you really think you can afford to break any more bones?" My skis finally hit the slope, I stuck the landing, slid a few feet, and then wiped out in such a spectacular manner that Clint asked me if I was okay in a worried voice, rather than laughing at me like he usually does. Some how I got snow in my helmet and goggles, although I don't remember my face being anywhere near the snow.
I started out the day wrecking on my second run. I dropped down onto a trail, caught an edge, and then tumbled about 50 feet. My skis, not to be outdone by me, slid another 20 feet past me after I managed to stop by hitting a rock. That's when I remembered, oh yeah, I have a broken hand.
Skiing with a broken hand is not as much fun as one might expect. For one thing, it hurts to hold a ski pole. Not that I ever use my ski poles, but since I decorated them with little stars and they match my boots I always end up bringing them with me. I am supposed to some day learn to stick them when I turn instead of just using them to wave around when I'm about to fall. I guess that will have to wait until next season since I think the slopes will close before my left hand does.
Since the wind was blowing really hard and I was inadequately dressed we started traversing the mountain trying to find a protected place to ski (I should mention here I also forgot my ski mittens and was wearing some mittens I keep in my car for emergencies). We ended up finding this really cool area that had a bunch of jumps. I've never done a real ski jump and decided I wanted to try. I did accidentally ski off a small cliff last year in a snow storm at Winter Park, and stuck the landing, but then fell over and tumbled about 100 feet down the mountain, with some snow boarders on the lift shouting "you suck!" for the last 40 feet of that particular fall but was informed that didn't count as a jump.
We decided that Clint would go off the jumps to make sure I wouldn't kill myself, and then I would follow him. The sum total of coaching I got for going off a jump was "point your skis towards the jump and then jump". The first jump was an easy drop off of a cornice that had formed on a rock. I didn't bother to look where I was jumping since Clint made it look so easy. I launched off the cornice, stuck the landing, realized I was going kind of fast, flailed my poles, and then slid into a pine tree. It took me a few minutes to get out of the tree because my skis had gotten stuck.
Feeling kind of cocky, I decided to try a more challenging jump. I followed Clint down to a little snow cliff and stayed about 10 feet above him while he dropped off the ledge. For some reason, it seemed like it might be a better idea to get a rolling start for the jump, and so instead of stopping at the lip of the jump and then easing off I got a running start and had pretty good speed when I hit the edge.
Had I rolled off of it the way Clint did I would have gotten a little air, hit a bump in the snow and continued down the hill. Instead I was going so fast I missed the bump entirely. It seemed like I was in the air for a half hour although I'm sure it was just a few seconds. Part of my brain was going "wheeee!" and part of my brain was going "do you really think you can afford to break any more bones?" My skis finally hit the slope, I stuck the landing, slid a few feet, and then wiped out in such a spectacular manner that Clint asked me if I was okay in a worried voice, rather than laughing at me like he usually does. Some how I got snow in my helmet and goggles, although I don't remember my face being anywhere near the snow.
We did a few more easy jumps, and then I tried to do the rock jump again but ended up going off the wrong direction on accident so I landed on an uphill rather than a downhill, but I didn't fall. Clint tried to get me on the scary jump again but I chickened out.
The next day we went back to the same area and he took some films of me going off different jumps. I used to wonder how bad of a skier I am. Now I don't have to wonder anymore. I'm pretty horrible. But I stuck the landing on the scary jump, even if I looked stupid, and I'm heading back up on Friday to practice some more...
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