Day 1171: Always Worth A Trip To Wisconsin
November 10, 2008 - Filed Under family & friends, midwest, photographs, travel, wisconsin
My hopelessly-cute, twin godsons in their tuxedos. Don’t miss their little Chuckies!
Day 1166: O’Bamapalooza
November 5, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, family & friends, government
My buddy, Mike, joined Athenae and friends to watch Barack Obama at Grant Park last night. I’m so jealous! Mostly because he got to hit Kitty O’Shea’s, one of my favorite Irish-American establishments (best potato leek soup on this side of the Atlantic - just don’t ask the bartender for an Irish carbomb or you’ll get a real one), before the shindig at the park. The closest I got to this pairing was wearing a Guinness t-shirt to go vote.
… The bar was strictly enforcing its rules for capacity, letting an equal number of people in and out, and in about 10 minutes we found some room inside next to a couple from Crystal Lake waiting for their son. The two decided that afternoon to come down for the festivities, which included corned beef sandwiches and for Mike Poper, remembering growing up in the city and playing ball with Richie Daley at Thillens Stadium off Elston on the northwest side.
They voted for Obama, and it turned out that typically GOP-loving McHenry County went for Illinois’s junior senator, too, as did most of Chicago’s collar counties. What turned the Mrs. off about McCain? The choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate and the way he ran his campaign the last month or so.
… I wandered off for some water, passing on the $10 barbecue Cuban pork sandwiches on the way. Further proof Democrats aren’t socialists: water was $3 a bottle.
… I think I may have been in one of those toilets when one of the first loud roars happened, laughing about my fate being taking a leak as history is being made. But I think the inevitable happened after I finished talking to the guy who was selling the $3 water, who originally was from Kalamazoo and could relate to a Chicago guy like me trying to wrap his head around what was happening in a city where less than 30 years ago a black guy became mayor for the first time after a really ugly campaign.
Hell, Obama got his political teeth cut community organizing about 10 miles from Grant Park, using Catholic churches where my parents went way, way back in the day - in a day when the tribal rules of Chicago meant you stayed with your own kind. Chicago got the first Irish Catholic elected, the Chicago way, less than 50 years ago.
Change, indeed.
Day 1140: One From The Annals
October 10, 2008 - Filed Under funny, the game of life
Going through old notebooks, I found a “piece” penned by ten-year-old me, which I somehow managed to save from Kuwait. A precocious little turd, wasn’t I?
How To Tell The World To Go Suck An Egg
a.k.a. Ways To Make The World A Better Place For Me To Live In
1. Make all shops sell Poffak and Tang. (Poffak was the Arab equivalent of cheese puffs. No, not Cheetos, but cheese puffs. I had my priorities, people.)
2. Walk away from it. Find people who are smart and make them leave, too. (Sounds like this was around the time I first came across the concept of Galt’s Gulch.)
3. Study hard, work hard and become the most technologically advanced person in the world. (Ahh, youth, if you had only watched that awful Lawnmower Man or taken Frankenstein seriously back then.)
4. Buy a great big house and fortify it with strong, nuclear-war-proof material. Make your house completely self-sufficient. Horde food and works of art. (A touch of Hermann Goering combined with a premature case of hurricane bunker-ism?)
5. The world is destroying itself. Destruction started at the dawn of civilization and will end soon. Make yourself survive. If you care enough about yourself, you will. (If you only knew then that you now cannot even make it out of the house in the morning without a strong cup of coffee.)
6. Make friends all over the world and plan a time to flush all toilets on the planet at the same time. (Still has a lot of potential for funny, I say.)
—
E remembers his youth as well.
Day 1117: La Reine Est Morte! Vive La Reine!
September 17, 2008 - Filed Under carnival, new orleans, the game of life
New Orleans has lost one of its most endearing characters and a former queen of Krewe du Vieux. Condolences to her family, friends and fans.
I had the honor of meeting Colleen earlier this year at a krewe dinner and soon found out that, through her old age and infirmity, she retained a great and unexpected sense of humor. Former krewe royalty were introduced by year of their reign. GiO stood up, said hello and jiggled her chest in true GiO fashion. When it was Colleen’s turn, she looked at GiO, tried to jiggle her chest (as seen above), couldn’t, picked up her chest to wave it about, laughed out loud and sat down, still chortling. The room howled at her! Only in New Orleans, baby, only in New Orleans.
Thanks for the memories … and mammaries, Colleen.
Day 1116: The Irony Of A Preemptive Ike Evacuation To Ohio
September 16, 2008 - Filed Under family & friends, hurricane ike, midwest, travel, weather
September 7th, 2008 - I was all set to leave for Chicago on Friday, September 12th. D, in his infinite freak-out-itude after Gustav, warned me that once Ike entered the Gulf and neared Texas towards the end of the week, the chances of planes flying out of MSY on Friday would be slim to none. Ok, I’d stay in New Orleans following Friday’s flight cancellation. There was nothing doing - D would not leave me behind here in case Ike erred on the northernmost end of its cone and I had to evacuate, especially since he did not want relaxed consumption of adult beverages with friends in Las Vegas disrupted by worry over my possible last-minute evacuation. *sigh* An entire Sunday afternoon on the phone with Delta and $155 (including the helpful Change Fee) later, my weekend flight was rebooked to leaving on Thursday to … Columbus, Ohio. Rebooking the Chicago flight to Thursday would have cost me $460 extra, over and above the $300 I’d already bled on the initial booking. No thanks, this would be a great opportunity to hang with the fam whom I don’t get to see on a regular basis anyway.
September 11th, 2008 - D was right about not being able to leave on Friday. On our way to the airport early Thursday morning, we saw the first of Ike’s bands and then came the showers. I’m not the airsick sort, but Ike-related turbulence that hit the aircraft between here and Atlanta almost made me lose my Cheerios on the person seated next to me. Once on Ohioan ground, all was well for the rest of the weekend, barring worrying about Houston and the occasional political brawl over great home-cooked South Indian meals.
September 14th, 2008 - Mom, Dad and I looked outside that afternoon and saw nothing but falling leaves and branches and tall, sturdy trees swaying in the wind. We doubted that any flight out of Ohio would take off that evening, but decided to make the three-hour trek to Columbus because Delta’s website stated that the flight was taking off as scheduled. On I-71 south of Mansfield came gusts so forceful that Dad had a really tough time keeping the car on the road. At one point, between the corn silos and the sky turning a bizarre shade of grey-green, all I needed was a small dog and a couple of flying monkeys to re-enact my own version of The Wizard Of Oz. What we didn’t realize until we got to Columbus was that Ike had crossed Illinois and Indiana and into Ohio very rapidly and that we were driving against its hurricane-force winds. One would think strong local weather warnings and Delta canceling flights was in order, but no.
After negotiating an obstacle course of hollow orange drums and flying traffic signs in the circle of construction surrounding the Columbus airport, my parents dropped me off curbside and took off for home. One look at the long lines and my flight not even showing up on the monitor and I knew I was screwed. Delta ticket agents soon informed us, “the Columbus airport is closing, all flights are canceled, get home safely and call the Delta 800 number for rebooking.” What.
Although the city was experiencing CATEGORY 1 WINDS and the airport was running on its backup generator once power went out ALL OVER COLUMBUS, Delta was the only airline that hadn’t outright cancelled its flights that evening IN THE HOPE THAT IT WOULD FIND A WINDOW IN WHICH TO HAVE FLIGHTS LEAVE. So, Delta wasn’t officially cancelling the flight but we were discouraged from boarding it because it may or may not take off. Why not make a firm decision like the other airlines and cancel the flight? I could have just stayed at home, not have had my poor dad drive me only to get stuck in a bad storm and have rebooked my flight on the internet or over the phone. From, did I mention, the safety of my home! Something told me to stay put and get in the long rebooking line right there at the airport. I called my parents and told them to come back. Why would my sixth sense guide me so, you ask? Follow.
- a) Delta Internet Sucks: When I called my brother (far enough away with power and a working internet connection) and instructed him to rebook my flight online, he couldn’t as the website showed me as checked in for a flight that was still set to depart that evening although THERE WERE NO FLIGHTS LEAVING COLUMBUS THAT EVENING. If you’re checked into an itinerary, there is no rebooking it without a long conversation with a human ticketing agent.
- b) Delta Phones Suck: The Delta phone agents are blockheads. They were blockheads when I spoke to one and a manager a week earlier regarding the Chicago-Columbus rebooking and they were blockheads while I tried to get help from Columbus. None of them had heard of a flight cancellation - of course not, Delta hadn’t canceled the flight, never mind the FLYING FRAKING COWS outside - and insisted on charging me an exorbitant fee to change my flight out to the next day. While in line, I got the attention of a local ticketing agent and asked her why we were being told to contact the 800 number for rebooking when they don’t even know what’s going on on the ground in Columbus. This was honestly, really, absolutely her response, “Those agents are in Dallas, India and wherever, and they don’t know about the weather we’re having in Columbus. Just get it rebooked to tomorrow and follow their instructions and we’ll take care of the rest tomorrow morning.” Um, lady, have you heard of the WWW DOT INTARWEBS DOT COM? Do you at Delta SEND ADVISORIES OVER THE EMAILS? Jeezus Backwards-Ass Christ On A Popsicle Stick With Mustard, where am I and who are these people? Delta - we love to fly and it blows. Regardless of the obvious incompetence, I waited while the phone ticketing agent put me on hold three times to “check on something” and then HUNG UP ON ME.
- c) Waiting Is The Hardest, But Only, Part: My only choice was to stay in the three-hour-long line at the airport and get rebooked. After an hour of moving three feet every fifteen minutes, other passengers said no one was even picking up the phones at the 800 number and Delta internet was still hosed. How are you supposed to change the itinerary for a flight on which you’ve already supposedly departed? Great. My parents drove back to the airport and patiently waited while I stood and stood and stood there.
Once rebooked on a Monday flight, my parents and I left the airport for home. Only to find that Columbus really had no power, no traffic signs worked and there was little to no power in many of the little towns along the highway we were on. I drove us out of the airport and to where I thought was sufficiently far away from airport traffic, after which my dad got in the driver’s seat (my eyes work for crap at night). That’s when the true misery started. The rain was coming down so hard that the wipers couldn’t keep up, on and off ramps had no traffic or street lights whatsoever and we couldn’t see where the GPS unit wanted us to go. After driving around in circles in a northern suburb of Columbus, almost getting killed by cars that refused to stop for dead traffic lights and a turn into the wrong lane of traffic which could have gone very disastrously BECAUSE WE COULDN’T SEE ANYTHING, we made it back to I-71 North towards home. On the way back, my brother called to inform that his power was out, a lamppost on his street had fallen and was blocking traffic and to be very careful as power lines had fallen all over the place to the point that local officials and the energy company could not keep up. Doesn’t this stuff happen in Louisiana or Texas?
September 15th, 2008 - I made it back to New Orleans, but only after one major anxiety attack (and attendant chest pain) on Sunday evening when I thought we were all going to be killed by oncoming traffic or a falling tree and a major onset of the weepies once we made it to my parents’ place. Fortune has smiled on me and I don’t know why. Enjoy every sandwich.
This post is dedicated to my father and mother, who have taught me through their actions that being a parent means not shying away from danger to support and protect your child, even an incorrigible one like me. That love is more intense than any 75mph storm. So is customer dissatisfaction. Here I come, Delta.
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