randnix.com

Once again, my Elite status with American Airlines has failed to get me into First Class.  It has, however, gotten me into a reclining exit row seat, which, as all seasoned economy class jet setters know, is the next best thing.

I’m sitting next to the trophy wife of a family of 5 who’ve secured the rest of the row.  She’s advising the middle daughter (there may be 10 years difference between them) across the aisle as to the wisdom of pulling out what she thinks she might need for the first 20 minutes of the flight out of her carry on and then storing it in the ‘overhead bin’ until ‘the captain has turned off the fasten seat belt sign.’   Solid advice, I think, if not somewhat obvious.

"Mom" has heeded her own advice too.  She’s packed a folder.  As we’re taxiing, she begins to peruse the contents.   LAX is NOT their final destination.   I know this because inside the folder is a 232 page dossier containing every possible detail about what must be the mother of all vacations.  I see "Fiji" on one sheet; "Sydney" on another.   She flips through page after page of itinerary details.   Every child has a separate one, evidently, and she’s made copies of each which she folds and places into 3 envelopes and distributes to the pack across the aisle.   She continues flipping and I’m amazed to see one page of just names and social security numbers (5 of them).   There are photocopies of drivers licenses, passports, credit cards, pages detailing airline gates, times, even side notes containing the type of jet for each leg of the journey.  Brochures stapled to pages of notes, print outs of hotel web pages, one page listing every US embassy in the world; it’s all rather amazing, I think.

"Well, you obviously didn’t plan this out very well," I say, as she’s packing it all back up into seatback pocket in front of her.   She starts to turn to look at me and I realize this could very well turn into something that might cause a really long conversation so I fold my arms across my chest and close my eyes.

Predictably, she doesn’t attempt a reply and I settle in for the flight wondering exactly at what point do excessive organizational skills cross the line into OCD, quite sure I will never be at risk of becoming a victim of either.

"I don’t know, she has some sort of misplaced trust in your ability to behave in social settings."

–  One of my clients (the one I usually quote).   Re:   My recounting of the "work function" at which I sat (unknowingly) next to my fiances boss and, well, you can imagine what a nightmare that turned out to be.

"No problem.   I like ‘funny people’."

– my fiances boss in response to her (the fiances) attempt at damage control over my ‘ability to behave’ the night before.

SO, I don’t know what I did… I was trying to put on my comfortable, lightweight, extremely breathable footwear which are very sandal - like, but which I will not call sandals for fear of sounding a little lite in the — y’know what?   nevermind –  when something slipped and I hit the cord of the fan (which was on) in the bedroom, causing it to shift slightly right (my right, your left) and clockwise (for you, counter) and before I could really even register that this had happened, the thing (as in the fan, not the cord) starts sputtering like a . . . I don’t know – it was like the sound you’d hear if you were to take something pretty inflexible and shove it into the path of something rotating really really fast, but not really moving in any direction – so every rotation caused it to hit whatever you had shoved into it over and over, really really fast-like. It was that kind of sound.

The next thing I know, I’m reaching for the fan to figure out what’s causing it to make this sound, because I don’t see anything poking into the front of it, but I can hear this sound and it’s a pretty distinct sound, y’know, but then I stop for just a millisecond to confirm in my head that I’m not hearing something that SOUNDS like an object of some type shoved in the way of turning fan arms, but what is REALLY intense sparks of high voltage electricity spitting out from something I’m about to touch, and I do a quick visual, y’know, just to confirm that I don’t see anything that might be spitting out electricity (or anything else for that matter) and that’s when it happened: from out of nowhere, the fan attacked me; in fact, as if anticipating my worst fear… it started spitting at me.

My first thought was that the fan had come apart and all the little things flying toward me were fan casing shrapnel chunk pieces or something, which, I’ve watched enough tv to know, is usually quickly followed by the razor sharp spinning blades themselves. My second thought was that if that were about to happen, having more room between me and the source of these vicious flying death fan razors would be a lot better than if I were to continue my “approach vector”, so I backed off. But it was too late — the stuff started pelting my face.  Instantly I reached up to protect my face from the flying fan shrapnel and, at the exact same moment, jerked my head down to keep as much of my face as possible out of the fans line of fire (no, I haven’t actually had Navy SEAL training, but you’ll never convince the fan that I haven’t), and then I’m noticing that the blast radius created from the flying death fan shrapnel is actually quite wide for a little room fan (even if it is labeled “Turbo”) and in fact, I’m basically in the middle of a whirlwind of spinning flying fan shrapnel, but it doesn’t hurt! It’s like the fan sucks so bad that it’s missing with every shot, I think. Only then I realize it’s not missing – I’m just not FEELING anything.

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So in between them, in my crisis driven existence, I sometimes say to myself, (get ready for it), "SELF, " (you knew it was coming), " You oughtta go see what’s going on in the blogosphere, and, by that, I mean, your blog."

If, by the time that thought continues its journey across my frontal lobe, some other person hasn’t advised of another crisis involving their inability to convert kg’s into lbs properly, or some other greatly exaggerated use of the word "urgent", then I usually type in randnix.com just to see what I used to write about.

And I always feel like a shitheel® when I see someone who commented on how glad they are I’m back blogging — only the comment was put into moderation like 5 months ago and I haven’t blogged since.  I don’t even really remember when I put comments to be moderated.   Why would I moderate someone’s comments?   What was I thinking?   Or is that the default?   How can I build the systems that run the Fortune 500 and not know anything about why my blog comments are heading into moderation with no intelligent thought or action on my part?

These questions weigh heavily on my mind for about 6 seconds before I come up with another great idea (usually involving a can of great tasting-less filling, Miller Lite!  The beer that’s NEVER watered-down, so you can RAISE it up!)

How’s that for what we call in The Biz, "Product Placement"?   I expect an official spokesperson agreement in the mail any day now.

Actually, not to detract from what is unquestionably a great beer, Miller Lite, the ONLY beer bringing you a better, bolder summer where you could win a 105th Anniversary Edition Harley-Davidson Motorcycle ®, I’d like us to be serious for a moment, as I’ve recently had some revelations, or insight, or discoveries, or maybe just common sense that I never had before — I don’t know — but it’s about something, I think, a lot of us take for granted and we shouldn’t (and, no, I’m not talking about the Award Winning Taste of The Original Light Beer, Miller Lite!)  I am talking about something far more biological in nature: 

Poop.

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