Tuesday, July 14, 2009

my ever so slight brush with politics today



See these two pictures? You're probably wondering what they have to do with each other...aside from the fact the President Obama is fixin' to toss/throw/pitch a baseball and Air Force One is his own private plane. Wow, that is some huge aircraft. Is that really necessary? But I digress.
I'm traveling again for work. I got to the airport this morning bright and early for my 11:30 flight to St. Louis. I wanted to take the non-stop flight to Louisville, but it didn't arrive until midnight and I knew there wouldn't be anyone willing to pick me up so I chose the St. Louis/Louisville flight that arrived at 9pm. I'm just so considerate of others you know.
The flight to St. Louis was fine...no scary turbulence, no crazy passengers, just a nice, smooth flight. I arrive in St. Louis and start looking for my connecting flight. Man, there are a lot of people here. This is one busy airport. Oh and look, everyone seems kind of ticked off. I find the information screen and see that my flight (along with just about every other flight) is delayed. I knew I would have almost a 2 hour layover but now I was looking at FOUR FRICKIN' HOURS!!
good grief. What the hell is the problem? It looks like it's going to rain, but c'mon...it can't be the weather. It's not long before I find out that President Obama is in St. Louis to throw out the first pitch in some baseball game and that is the reason we're all delayed. Our economy is going to crap and we're spending all this money to fly the president to a stinkin' ballgame?????I can't even talk about it. Then we have a problem with the plane I'm supposed to board a little later. It's hit by lightning. I saw the tail section...and let me just say there is no way in hell I would have gotten on that plane if they had just said, "Oh, it's ok, it's just a little crispy on the outside!" I would have called it a day, taken a taxi to a hotel and started over in the morning.
So by now I'm thinking that the worst is behind us...I've had a bagel with cream cheese that cost me $8.00 (they think that's a fair price) and I could only gag down about a fourth of it before deciding to go hungry. Then all of a sudden about 9 of those highly trained TSA folks (sarcasm) show up and tell everyone in gate E2 (oh joy, my gate) to have all their carry on luggage ready for inspection. What? I've never had that happen. Great, I have a bottle of diarrhea medicine in my purse and I can just see the guy pulling it out in front of the 2700 people there saying, "And what is THIS for, ma'am?" Luckily, he didn't do that...he probably travels with Imodium too. I was asked about the bottle of water I had. Umm, I purchased it right over there for a mere $3.00. pphhht. A mom sitting next to me was asked about the bottle of juice that she had for her kids. Well duhh, we had to buy them here in the airport you moron!
Time passes slowly....then a miracle happens...we're ready to board. YEAH!!! The captain tells us to get aboard as quickly as possible because we want to beat Obama getting back to the airport before they shut down the airspace. For reasons unknown to me, probably some idiot who held up the line with a carry on bag the size of Oprah's wallet, we didn't make it. So that meant we had to sit on the runway for another 25 minutes. I wanted to shoot myself, but since weapons are not allowed on board any airline....I was out of luck.
I arrived in Louisville a little before midnight. I had to get a taxi to my hotel and the driver, who's nationality was a mystery to me, kept bad mouthing Obama and saying, "He's been in office almost a year and he's done nothing, nothing but make a mess and believe me, he doesn't know what he's in for with the people of Afghanistan." Maybe he's from Afghanistan. I didn't dare disagree with him,even to correct him that Obama has only been in office 6 months.. I just wanted to get out of the 100mph taxi in one piece at my hotel.
So here I am...almost 1am and I have to get up and be ready to see patients at 8. That job at Hot Dog on a Stick is looking better and better.

2 comments:

Wonderful World of Weiners said...

$8 for a bagel seems totally reasonable to me!!

(NOT!)

Hallie :)

Amanda C. said...

Oh my goodness. You are so good at telling stories. Hey I found a blog I thought you'd enjoy
http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ they are too funny! You HAVE to check it out!