It's hard not to be a jaded fucker when all of your negative thoughts are consistently reinforced. I realized this about 5:30 am, while standing in the cold, shortly after the hotel was evacuated.
I'm getting too far ahead of myself, let me back up. I woke up Friday morning, my stomach letting me know that the seafood I ate the previous night was an ill choice. Checking out of the hotel took approximately 40 minutes. "We are having technical problems" the clerk informed me. The sky then opened up with a torrential downpour. I just knew it wasn't going to be my day. It is times like this when I wished I owned an umbrella, alas, I'm not that sort of guy.
If i had taken a 5 gallon bucket of water and dumped it over my head, I would have been less wet than I was when I arrived for work. Luckily, just as I dried off, it was lunch time and I could repeat the process.
Repeat the previous paragraph for the airport arrival. I really look like shit at this point. I had plenty of time to dry off though, as my flight would take off 4 hours later than it was supposed to.
At least I would get a pleasant flight? Right? Wrong.
The man in the seat next to me on the flight asked for the seat belt extender. I don't think he needed it though, you see my body was wedged in so tightly against him, he wasn't going anywhere. In some ways I guess I should be thankful, after all, we were flying through the previously mentioned storm, and it was nothing short of terrifying. Lightning blazed outside the window and the turbulence was constant. I was quite sure that death was imminent. This did not help my fear of flying. In fact, I would have cried if the whole situation was not quite so hilarious.
Looking on the bright side, I did make it out of Florida and back to Texas. The kicker was it was 1 am, i missed my flight to austin and my luggage was M.I.A. At 2 am I settled into bed at the Houston airport hotel. Being completely exhausted and with pneumonia quitely setting in, I immediately passed out.
I was dreaming of the Virgin Mary when the sirens first went off. I guess there was a fire or something, all I remember was that it was dark, I was in my underware and couldn't find my clothes. It was 5 am, and I was running on 3 hours of sleep. "Please evacuate the building.", a pleasant tone was repeating.
So I did. And then I stood in the cold for a while before we were ushered back in.
I did get to sleep for another hour, but this did not leave me in the best of moods. I arrived again in the airport, grabbed a breakfast sandwich and headed to the waiting area. An odd older man sat across from me and kept staring. I couldn't figure out why. Later after I had boarded the airplane, the same man was boarding, stopped in front of me and said, "You left your trash behind in the re. (My mcdonald's bag in the waiting room).
Straw.
Camel.
Back.
"Thank you for that valuable piece of information.", was what I said, although in my mind a string of hateful obscenities were brewing.
That's it. End of story. I finally made it home, cleaned up the house and washed my new silverware.
