The not-delayed delayed flight.

Monday night saw me traveling back home from San Diego. I was flying Southwest so the boarding procedure was the "group system". I printed out my boarding pass the night before, so I got to stand in the "A" line. In front of me was a woman, probably in her 50s, who was talking loudly on her cel phone. She sort of reminded me of Dame Judi Dench, only not British.


Not-Dame Judi also kept fidgeting with her two bags that she could never seem to balance correctly. I wondered why she insisted on keeping them stacked together as opposed to letting them lie on the ground separately while we waited to board.

But it wasn't her bag-fidgetiness that bothered me, it was more the fact that she really had no consideration for the people around her as she yapped away loudly on her phone. I don't know who she was talking to, but when she told the person on the other line, "...my flight has been delayed about a half hour," my hatred for her was sealed.

Of course the flight wasn't delayed. She was staring right at the sign on the gate that said "Flight 979, 8:25pm, ON TIME."

What a freakin' LIAR. She stayed on the phone with the person up until we boarded the plane and then finished her call with, "...gotta go, I'm getting on the plane now." What? Didn't you just tell the person your flight was delayed a half hour?

I can only hope the people she was supposed to be visiting weren't too jazzed about seeing her anyway.

Champion of the Day: Circuit Breaker Dude

There's a new 24 Hour Fitness Lite on Piedmont Ave. That name is deceiving -- this is one of those circuit training gyms and there's nothing "lite" about constantly moving from station to station in non-stop intervals. The gym itself is pretty small, just workout equipment, a bathroom, and lockers. No pool, aerobics, weights, or locker rooms. You just show up, work the circuit and leave.

First you start by warming up on a treadmill or elliptical machine, then after about seven minutes you move on to the equipment. There are machines that work every part of your body -- I really hate the bosu ball, by the way.


So the object is to move from station to station and go all out at each machine for about a minute. A chime goes off on the overhead loudspeaker to let you know when to move on to the next exercise. I've done this a couple of times already and it kicks your ass pretty good. So last night, I was getting into the swing of the circuit when all of a sudden there's this guy sitting at the bench press machine and he wasn't moving. He was doing regular sets of presses. I was like, "...umm...excuse me, are you doing the circuit?"

And he goes, "...nah...the place is pretty empty so I figured..."

Figured what? You'd just screw up everyone else's workout by doing whatever the hell you want? Nice, jerk. I just moved past him to the next machine and watched the other people get annoyed when they came up on this guy using random machines. Finally an employee went up to the guy to set him straight. Dummy.

Clever boy.

One of the regular occurences on Piedmont Avenue is seeing people asking for donations. Not panhandling (but there's plenty of that, too), but people looking for you to contribute to whatever cause they're out there for. It's admirable work, but hitting up Piedmont Avenue is like shooting fish in a barrel considering all the richie rich and bleeding hearts walking around (not a knock, just an observation). I however, am just a man trying to make it in the universe (just like Jango), so my most important worthy causes include rent and groceries.


Last week on a grocery run, I stopped on a corner where some high-school kid was signing people up for something. He saw me getting ready to cross the street and said, "Excuse me sir, can I talk to you for a little bit?"

I looked at him and threw out, "I have to get going, sorry," and then started to cross the street. I got about halfway across when I heard him say just loud enough for me to hear, "...sorry people help."

Wow. He hit me with that like a pro. Well-timed and well-delivered. I wonder how many people actually turned back from the guilt and gave him money?

The dead-neighbor scare adventure.

I was sitting at my computer waiting for my laundry to finish when there was a knock at my door. It was CanadaGirl from the apartment upstairs. She explained she needed my help to check on the elderly woman next door to her. The old woman had left her keys in her door and they'd been there for two days. CanadaGirl called the building manager and he asked her to check what was going on, but to bring someone with her.

So I put on my beanie and my jacket and headed upstairs in my pajamas with CanadaGirl. As I made my way to the door I could see the keys in the deadbolt. CanadaGirl threw out a warning, "...watch out for the spider." She wasn't kidding. Hanging down from above the front of the door was a GIANT SPIDER. Kind of like Kumonga, the spider on Monster Island that spit out all that random webbing into the air and somehow managed to trap Godzilla.


We acutally had to duck under Kumonga's web to get to the door. So there we were stuck between two horrors. A giant spider behind us and a possibly very dead neighbor in front of us. So not cool.

CanadaGirl had made an attempt earlier at knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, but got no answer. It was my turn to do that, too, and I got the same results. Next I nervously turned the key in the deadbolt to unlock it. I pulled out the key trying to make as much noise as possible with the hope that if anyone was alive on the other side that they'd come and answer the door--or we would stupidly get shot for breaking in to someone's apartment.

After moving the key to the doorknob and unlocking it, I turned the knob and threw out a "Hello?" into the open crack. I quickly found that I couldn't open the door all the way because as CanadaGirl put it, "...THERE'S SOMETHING ON THE GROUND BLOCKING THE DOOR..."

I just about pooped my pants.

It was at that point we both started yelling into the apartment to make sure somebody was in there, and I slowly kept pushing the door open to move whatever was on the ground--and really really hoping an arm or a leg didn't plop down on the floor.

I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw the old woman come shuffling down her hallway from inside the apartment towards us. CanadaGirl let out a huge, "There you are! We were so worried!" And we saw that it was a bag of groceries that was blocking the door. After some apologies, we gave the old woman her keys and I headed back down to my place--just in time to catch the beginning of the Lex-mas episode of Smallville.

The hungry Ektorp delivery man.

I hate when you're given a ridiculous window of time when waiting for a delivery or some sort of service. In my case I had to be home today from noon to 4pm to wait for my Ektorp couch from Ikea.

So I came home from work early and waited. I started some laundry and made some lunch. Then I threw Batman Begins in my DVD player so I could watch it for like the fifth time. Finally around 2pm my doorbell rang to herald the arrival of my 3-piece sofa.

I opened the door and told the guy this was the place -- he was sort of the big Biz Markie type. So i shuffled some of my existing furniture out of the way and waited for the couch to come up the stairs. After a little while I noticed that the delivery guy was by himself -- what the hell was that? What company sends its furniture delivery guys out by themselves? So there's my new 7-foot long couch wrapped in plastic teetering precariously on a hand-truck -- the couch was stood up so that it towered over the lone delivery guy.

After some fancy hand-truck work, the couch was finally in my apartment. I knew the etiquitte was to offer the delivery guy a drink, but before I could even do that he asked, "...are you baking some tasty treats?"

Wha?

That really caught me off guard. I took a whiff of the air and confusingly said, "...umm...no, I just had some leftover chili for lunch. Do you want a bottled water?"

After he left I figured out he was probably smelling the snickerdoodle candle I had lit earlier.