Friday, February 09, 2007

I Am Having a Party...

02/09/2007

Today begins my 64th year on the planet.  This is hard for me to fathom, and at the same time it is not.  I am having the time of my life just living it.  One of my sales reps refers to this as “Living the Dream.” For me, it’s just Another Day in Paradise.

I believe I have mentioned a book by Gail Sheehy that she wrote in 1976 entitled “Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life.” I think this should be a must read for everyone.  In it Sheehy says the decade of one’s fifties is the most contented of one’s life.  I agree totally with her assessment, for I was very content while in my fifties.  I find these days my sixties are an added bonus to that contentment.  I have to say I am happier now than I was last year and the year before that and the year before that, and so on…ad infinitum.  This is now and yesterday is over.

Not long ago The Nancy showed me an Outback Steakhouse ad in the newspaper.  I really don’t quite remember what the ad said, but I assume the basis of it was “Eat at Outback.” What stood out, and what I remember most, is the part in it about the Australian aborigines which said the aborigines did not have words in their language for “the past or the future.” I suppose that is because of life in the Australian Outback was so very harsh they really didn’t have time to dwell on what happened yesterday or what might happen tomorrow.  Life was hard and they had to live in the “today.” What a concept, eh?  Living your life without looking over your shoulder at what was or at the baggage you drag behind you.  Living in the ‘now,” being in the moment, that is what life is about, isn’t it?

Anyhow, (God, can I pontificate or what?) that is the way it is for me these days.  It comes from attitude, I suppose.  Everyday is a party.  I cannot be concerned with the past, and as I progress in age I can’t be too concerned with the future.  The future will be what it will be.  This doesn’t mean I don’t plan ahead.  Retirement scares the hell out of me.  But I will not base my future on hopes and dreams of which I have no earthly control.  That kind of stuff is like planning your life after you win the lottery.  The future is all about commitment and action.

Life is a party and I don’t need a hat.  Happy Birthday to me and that is all I have to say about that…

Thursday, February 08, 2007

One More Flight Story and That's It

02/08/2007

Okay, I promise, this is absolutely the last story wherein I am anywhere close to an airplane.  You can count on it.

Tuesday I traveled out of Baltimore Washington International on an Air Tran flight to Dayton, Ohio.  These days I travel on whatever airline will offer me a non-stop flight to and from my destination.  Tuesday it just happened to need to get to Dayton, Ohio, and Air Tran offered a round trip, non-stop airfare of $183.80.  What a deal, eh?  I took it.

Tuesday morning I drove the 110 miles from Beautiful Downtown Berkeley Springs (aka Town of Bath), WV, population 711, to BWI for my flight.  Along the way I listen to various weather reports.  The purpose of my trip was to work with one of my co-workers and travel from where he lives in Dayton to Cincinnati to see some customers.  The drive from Dayton to Cincinnati is about an hour under normal conditions.  Key word – normal.  I knew if there was a big weather issue, my guy would have called me and let me know before I made the trip and wasted company money.  Since he didn’t, I decided all was well.  This day proved to be anything but normal, and all was not well.

At 11am I boarded the plane and took my window seat, 2A, in the first class section (note: I paid $40 out of my own pocket for the privilege of sitting up with the elitists).  I got to watch everyone board and make their way to the back cabin.  I noticed one gentleman board the plane with the exactly the same bag I had, except I checked mine as I typically do.  I hate to carry a bag onto any plane, and I don’t think much of people who bring bags on the plane that I believe should be checked, but that’s a different story.  I watched him as he loaded the bag into the bin above my head.  This little vision plays an important part later in this episode.

As the Air Tran plane descended from the heavens into the Dayton airport I saw the snow, light snow, but nonetheless, snow.  It was very cold, something like three degrees.  Snow was blowing around but didn’t seem to be sticking to the roads.  My guy picked me up and we traveled down the interstate to Cincinnati to see the customers we had planned to visit.  The further we went the faster the snow started to come down.  The sixty minute drive turned into an hour and a half trip.  The snow was piling up and we were afraid we were not going to get to the appointments we had made, and were worried that the places we were going might be closed due to the weather when we got there.  Well, we got to the two places we needed to visit, did what we had to do, and then began the trek back to Dayton.  We had to travel a slightly different route back to Dayton, and the route we took added a few miles to the trip, but it was a judicious decision.  The weather had worsened and it took us nearly three and a half hours to get back to Dayton.  The interstate we had used earlier from Dayton to Cincy was closed due to an accident.  What a day!!!

Here’s where the fun starts: I was supposed to stay two nights in the Dayton area and return home on Thursday (today).  We had plans to go back to Cincinnati to see people at a couple of Cincinnati’s finest public schools.  The inclement weather wreaked havoc with our plans: schools were to be closed on Wednesday in both Dayton and Cincinnati.  There would be nothing for me to do.  I could attempt to change my ticket or layover in the hotel and do little or nothing constructive – maybe e-mails.  I made the decision to stay and do nothing constructive.

My decision held until I woke up at 3:28am on Wednesday morning.  I lay there thinking about how little I could do in Dayton and much more I could do if I simply went home and back to my office.  I got up, fired up old Betsy (my damn laptop), called Air Tran and paid the $194.00 to change the ticket.  I justified the expense against the cost of the hotel and meals my company would have to pay if I stayed the extra night.  Same flight as I was to take on Thursday, a 7am, getting into BWI at 8:20am.  This long, boring story is about to get exciting.  Hang with me.

I called the front desk of the Hampton Inn and spoke with the desk clerk, a very nice lady named Toni.  Toni hooked me up with a ride.  She asked me what time I wanted to be picked up.  I asked her how far the airport was from the Hampton.  She said about eight miles.  I said 6am.  Wrong move!!!

The ride was a little late in getting to the hotel.  I arrived at the airport at about 6:35am and got in the back of a very long line at the Air Tran check in counter.  Man, I screwed this one up!  All along I knew the flight left at 7am, but somewhere in my little cerebral atrophying brain I began to fixate on the flight time as 7:30.  I approached the counter to get my boarding pass and the agent tells me the flight is closed and I cannot check in.  I panic.  But, I managed to talk him into checking me and told him I would carry on my bag.  It worked; he checked me in and told me I would be hard pressed to get on the plane because the door was about to close.  I maybe had five minutes to get through Security and on the plane.  All I had to do was get through security and run like hell to the gate.

Security went rather quickly, after I discarded my toiletries that where liquids in containers more than three ounces.  I grabbed my computer bag and suitcase and my sweater and my overcoat, and without putting anything back on or my computer in the bag, I hightailed it into the terminal running as fast as my old body could go.  I thought I was going to die.  The gate, as luck would have it was the last one in the terminal, about as far as one could go from the security checkpoint.  I was huffing and puffing when I heard my name called over the PA system very nicely saying something about my ass being grass if I didn’t get it to the gate in two minutes.  I made it with about eight tenths of a second to spare, but I thought I would keel over and pass out at any moment.

Here’s the part that seems so weird to me.  The Nancy and I are very fond of saying “there are no accidents.” This comes from the Millennium workshops we did (http://www.millennium3education.com), and we both subscribe to it.  Early in this piece I mentioned seeing someone with a bag just like mine.  Mine is not small, and I would have never guessed it would have fit in one of the overhead bins in an airplane, but I saw a guy put one just like mine in one.  Now, I never really notice what kind of bags anyone has.  It is of little interest or significance to me, but this time I did.  Carrying mine on was the only way I could have gotten on that plane.  Otherwise, this old boy would have been trapped in Dayton, and very unhappy about it, but only for three minutes or so.  Coincidence?  You decide, or you can just call me “Lucky.”

And that is all I have to say about that…

Thursday, February 01, 2007

A Conversation with Victor

02/01/2007

Just a few minutes ago I got off an agonizing phone call with a United Airlines reservation clerk.  The gentleman, who gave his name as “Victor Smith,” has me ticked off and in stitches at the same time.

I was attempting to book a flight from Washington, DC to Indianapolis.  A very simple procedure, or so I mistakenly thought, since both flights, to and from, are non-stop and Victor is a trained professional.  I had been to United’s website and had all the flight information ready for those I wished to take.  The issues began when I asked to use a voucher I had been given when I was unable to take a flight in March of last year.  The experience took a turn for the worse, and went down, down, down into a burning ring of fire.

In just over an hour, I spoke to three individuals at United, all with very Anglicized names, but with very Indian accents.  The last was most annoying: “Victor” put me on hold at least six times during the 3000 minutes (about 40) we spoke, as he had me repeat over and over where I was going, when I was returning, how I was paying, the credit card number, the expiration date, my billing address, my phone numbers…and on and on, and if he said it once, he said it a hundred times, “Give me a moment?” If I could have reached through the phone I would probably have choked him.  He has given me a headache. 

The last thing he said to me, after he gave me the locater number for this reservation, was that I must “within twenty-four hours take the voucher to the nearest airport in order to get my ticket.” This after all the time we spent repeating crap over and over.  I could have done all of this in a few minutes at the United Airlines ticket counter at Dulles.  In the time it took Victor to get all this stuff down, I could have driven halfway to Dulles, which is a nifty 90 miles from Beautiful Downtown Berkeley Springs (aka Town of Bath), West Virginia – population 711.

I am over it now.  The rage has passed.  The desire to kill is gone, and I am back to being my benign, soft-spoken self.  I am calm and cool. The headache is dissipating.

There seems to be a trend these days to pull these kinds of call centers out of the US and ship them to India.  I suppose it has something to do with the wages paid here and there.  I remember seeing something about a lady in India who sewed strips down the pant leg of warm-up suits for 17 cents an hour.  Perhaps that is what United pays Victor Smith.  One thing is for sure, they get exactly what they pay for. 

And that is all I have to say about that…

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Something Fun, for a Change...

01/30/2007

Within the past couple of days this website saw its 31,000th hit.  To celebrate this I have decided to compose something lighthearted but thought provokingly laughable, and maybe even funny.  Now all I have to do is to think of something.  So here goes….

Things on my “To Do” list:

1.  I am going to declare my vegetarianism at an end on August 11th of this year.  Why?  Just so The Nancy will not have to tell everyone when we go out to someone’s home or to a restaurant that it is what I am.  I hate it when people have to plan around my dietary considerations.  Now this doesn’t mean I will immediately or ever take up eating critter.  I still believe one of the reasons I have not been sick in the last twelve years (actually it won’t be twelve years until August 11th, but I am rounding up) is my shunning of animal flesh.  So, come August, if you invite me to dinner, do not cook around me.

2.  Fix the bathroom door.  Do any of you, if you are old enough, remember the Ma and Pa Kettle series of movies?  Pa Kettle was a slightly built, skinny little man.  Ma Kettle was the family authoritarian.  She was large and robust, with a man-sized voice and a hearty laugh.  They had about a million children of all ages.  The Kettles, in one movie, lived on a farm.  Their farm was in a state of complete disrepair, everything needed some kind of fixing.  Every time something fell off or fell down, or broke off, Pa Kettle would say, “I need to get to that someday.” Now the door of the bathroom that is part of our master bedroom doesn’t close well.  Something with the little gizmo that comes out of the doorlock and into the door frame - you know the male looking thingy into the female looking thingy - is messed up.  It is off about an eighth of an inch and doesn’t catch unless you slam the door hard or pull up on the handle as you close it.  Well, The Nancy and I about it each time we go in the door.  We make a mental note it needs to be repaired and instantly forget about it as we exit the bathroom.  I need to get to it, one of these days, but not right now.  Right now I am busy, but I will make a mental note of it.

3.  I have my company’s annual meeting coming up next month.  I have made myself a promise to lose a little flab between now and February 18th.  While none of the other attendees give a healthy crap whether or not I gained a couple of pounds (okay – about fifteen, but that is still just a couple of couples), it is always nice to hear someone say, “My, are you losing weight?  You look great!” I like that, and since the annual meeting is about the only time of the year I give a real shit about how I look, it’s time to begin.  Actually I began the weight loss program on January 3rd and I dropped a little weight in the process, but five days of denying me the epicurean delicacies I love to shove into my oral cavity in copious amounts was about all I could stand.  I altered my program - euphemism for “chucked it out the window” – and soon gave way to renewing my beer consumption to its pre-January 1st Resolution.  I am now on a weight gain program.  The proof is in lack of breathing room in my newly acquired trousers with the waist measurement of forty inches.  I do refuse to ever purchase pants with a forty-two inch waist, and that is a promise to me that will never be broken...at least in the near future.

4.  One of my Resolutions for 2007 is to complete the painting of the walls in our basement.  Just so everyone knows I don’t always renege on these promises to myself, I have made a conscious effort to start the painting, and I did.  I started it and thus far I have about finished about 1/8th of the job.  I ran out of ambition.  Painting on hold until I can refill my ambition tank.

This thinking is way too exhausting for an old guy like me.  I need to rest now.  So, that is all I have to say about that….