Natalie says that Molly doesn't like to be swaddled. She likes to strech out and cries when she is wrapped up in a blanket. I love this picture because she has obviously taken a break from crying to be like, "Look, I don't know what you people are thinking. You know what's going to happen, so why don't you just go ahead and unwrap me, or are you some kind of sadists? Can we just be reasonable about this?"

Laugh out loud.

Last Friday I went to a showcase of the winners of the San Francisco Comedy Competition. I don't see a lot of live comedy and I was kind of concerned that I might not laugh enough. I know, that's weird. Back in the glory days of cable television, I found that watching stand up brought out, at best, the occasional snort. Not as much snorting as I do when listening to Katie's running commentary as cute guys walk by. But something about seeing comedians perform live makes it so much funnier. I was actually concerned at one point that I may have laughed too loud.

The headliner was, of course, the winner of the competition, Jay Wendell Walker. His style was definitely "old school" in style but modern in content. Jokes about cell phones, jokes about eBay. He was able to spin stuff off the top of his head, playing with jokes from the previous two acts, interacting with people in the audience (this was in Mill Valley, so they really needed a laugh). In person, I have a new appreciation for how tough it must be to perform live comedy. At least if you're acting you don't really know how it's going over because people are supposed to be quiet. okay, they could get up and leave, but chances are, they aren't going to stand up and shout, "You suck!"

Best Books of 2006

The New York Times has published their Top Ten Books of 2006, and with it is the nifty photograph below.
Isn't that fun?

The text of the article is below. I'm not going to make any pronouncements about how I plan on reading every book on the list. Even if the Times thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread, that's not going to make me want to... hmm... actually these all do look pretty interesting. None of that Southern-childhood-incest drama like Oprah's book club selections always seem to be. I've heard some good buzz on Amy Hempel so that might be good to check out.

ABSURDISTAN
By Gary Shteyngart. Random House, $24.95.
Shteyngart's scruffy, exuberant second novel, equal parts Gogol and Borat, is immodest on every level - it's long, crude, manic and has cheap vodka on its breath. It also happens to be smart, funny and, in the end, extraordinarily rich and moving. "Absurdistan" introduces Misha Vainberg, the rap-music-obsessed, grossly overweight son of the 1,238th richest man in Russia. After attending college in the United States, he is now stuck in St. Petersburg, scrambling for an American visa that may never arrive. Caught between worlds, and mired in his own prejudices and thwarted desires, Vainberg just may be an antihero for our times.

THE COLLECTED STORIES OF AMY HEMPEL
Scribner, $27.50.
A quietly powerful presence in American fiction during the past two decades, Hempel has demonstrated unusual discipline in assembling her urbane, pointillistic and wickedly funny short stories. Since the publication of her first collection, "Reasons to Live," in 1985, only three more slim volumes have appeared - a total of some 15,000 sentences, and nearly every one of them has a crisp, distinctive bite. These collected stories show the true scale of Hempel's achievement. Her compact fictions, populated by smart, neurotic, somewhat damaged narrators, speak grandly to the longings and insecurities in all of us, and in a voice that is bracingly direct and sneakily profound.

THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN
By Claire Messud. Alfred A. Knopf, $25.
This superbly intelligent, keenly observed comedy of manners, set amid the glitter of cultural Manhattan in 2001, also looks unsparingly, though sympathetically, at a privileged class unwittingly poised, in its insularity, for the catastrophe of 9/11. Messud gracefully intertwines the stories of three friends, attractive, entitled 30-ish Brown graduates "torn between Big Ideas and a party" but falling behind in the contest for public rewards and losing the struggle for personal contentment. The vibrant supporting cast includes a deliciously drawn literary seducer ("without question, a great man") and two ambitious interlopers, teeming with malign energy, whose arrival on the scene propels the action forward.

THE LAY OF THE LAND
By Richard Ford. Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95.
The third installment, following "The Sportswriter" (1986) and "Independence Day" (1995), in the serial epic of Frank Bascombe - flawed husband, fuddled dad, writer turned real estate agent and voluble first-person narrator. Once again the action revolves around a holiday. This time it's Thanksgiving 2000: the Florida recount grinds toward its predictable outcome, and Bascombe, now 55, battles prostate cancer and copes with a strange turn in his second marriage. The story, which unfolds over three days, is filled with incidents, some of them violent, but as ever the drama is rooted in the interior world of its authentically life-size hero, as he logs long hours on the highways and back roads of New Jersey, taking expansive stock of middle-age defeats and registering the erosions of a brilliantly evoked landscape of suburbs, strip malls and ocean towns.

SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS
By Marisha Pessl. Viking, $25.95.
The antic ghost of Nabokov hovers over this buoyantly literate first novel, a murder mystery narrated by a teenager enamored of her own precocity but also in thrall to her father, an enigmatic itinerant professor, and to the charismatic female teacher whose death is announced on the first page. Each of the 36 chapters is titled for a classic (by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Carlo Emilio Gadda), and the plot snakes ingeniously toward a revelation capped by a clever "final exam." All this is beguiling, but the most solid pleasures of this book originate in the freshness of Pessl's voice and in the purity of her storytelling gift.

NONFICTION

FALLING THROUGH THE EARTH
A Memoir.
By Danielle Trussoni. Henry Holt & Company, $23.
This intense, at times searing memoir revisits the author's rough-and-tumble Wisconsin girlhood, spent on the wrong side of the tracks in the company of her father, a Vietnam vet who began his tour as "a cocksure country boy" but returned "wild and haunted," unfit for family life and driven to extremes of philandering, alcoholism and violence. Trussoni mixes these memories with spellbinding versions of the war stories her father reluctantly dredged up and with reflections on her own journey to Vietnam, undertaken in an attempt to recapture, and come to terms with, her father's experiences as a "tunnel rat" who volunteered for the harrowing duty of scouring underground labyrinths in search of an elusive and deadly enemy.

THE LOOMING TOWER
Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.
By Lawrence Wright. Alfred A. Knopf, $27.95.
In the fullest account yet of the events that led to the fateful day, Wright unmasks the secret world of Osama bin Laden and his collaborators and also chronicles the efforts of a handful of American intelligence officers alert to the approaching danger but frustrated, time and again, in their efforts to stop it. Wright, a staff writer for The New Yorker, builds his heart-stopping narrative through the patient and meticulous accumulation of details and through vivid portraits of Al Qaeda's leaders. Most memorably, he tells the story of John O'Neill, the tormented F.B.I. agent who worked frantically to prevent the impending terrorist attack, only to die in the World Trade Center.

MAYFLOWER
A Story of Courage, Community, and War.
By Nathaniel Philbrick. Viking, $29.95.
This absorbing history of the Plymouth Colony is a model of revisionism. Philbrick impressively recreates the pilgrims' dismal 1620 voyage, bringing to life passengers and crew, and then relates the events of the settlement and its first contacts with the native inhabitants of Massachusetts. Most striking are the parallels he subtly draws with the present, particularly in his account of how Plymouth's leaders, including Miles Standish, rejected diplomatic overtures toward the Indians, successful though they'd been, and instead pursued a "dehumanizing" policy of violent aggression that led to the needless bloodshed of King Philip's War.

THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA
A Natural History of Four Meals.
By Michael Pollan. The Penguin Press, $26.95.
"When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety," Pollan writes in this supple and probing book. He gracefully navigates within these anxieties as he traces the origins of four meals - from a fast-food dinner to a "hunter-gatherer" feast - and makes us see, with remarkable clarity, exactly how what we eat affects both our bodies and the planet. Pollan is the perfect tour guide: his prose is incisive and alive, and pointed without being tendentious. In an uncommonly good year for American food writing, this is a book that stands out.

THE PLACES IN BETWEEN
By Rory Stewart. Harvest/Harcourt, Paper, $14.
"You are the first tourist in Afghanistan," Stewart, a young Scotsman, was warned by an Afghan official before commencing the journey recounted in this splendid book. "It is mid-winter - there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee." Stewart, thankfully, did not die, and his report on his adventures - walking across Afghanistan in January of 2002, shortly after the fall of the Taliban - belongs with the masterpieces of the travel genre. Stewart may be foolhardy, but on the page he is a terrific companion: smart, compassionate and human. His book cracks open a fascinating, blasted world miles away from the newspaper headlines.

This last book is the only one I actually have. I'm listening to The Places In Between right now on CD and expect to make a lot of headway on it this weekend because I'm driving up to see CMW and Mr. CMW in Sac-town. Let me know if you'd like to give it a listen. Then, just as soon as I get back, I'm picking up the new Christopher Moore, You Suck. Looking forward to the latest from Mr Moore, hopefully silly, and yummy with lots of great dialogue and sex. His books area such a light read that you're always surprised to get to the end and realize you genuinely care about the characters.

If you have any book recommendations, write me a quick review and I'll post it. We're always looking for a good read.

SOTU drinking game

Now this is the kind of State Of The Union activity I can get behind. Ah, drinking and politics... I really miss college!

Mind Games

Having a conversation with my mother is like playing Mad Libs. Now I no longer have to remember the details of my own life, but of hers as well. And I’m held to a high standard, there’s no margin for error as she gets quite grumpy if I can’t immediately identify the missing noun. This particular conversation was had yesterday evening while I prepared dinner and Scrumpy held court in my pint-sized kitchen with a glass of wine.

“I went to see that movie… you know, the one with that actress I really like. You know, what’s her name?”
“Helen Mirren.”
“No!”
“Judy Dench.”
“Yes, that’s her. She has that new movie with, um…”
“Cate Blanchett.”
“Right, so we saw that movie, and I can’t say I cared much for it. It was very dark and a bit nasty.”
“Mmmmm…”
“Then we went over for that hike I really like… you know the one…”
“Sobranes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, it’s far too cold to go to Sobranes. The other one.”
”The other one?”
”Yes, you know the one I mean… err….”
“Point Lobos.”
“Right, Point Lobos. Obviously. Why do you think I would go to Sobranes?” glares over rim of glass. There’s really no reply to this, so I just keep pulling out plates and washing things.
“Anyway you’ll never guess who we saw at Point Lobos.”
“You’re right, I probably won’t.”
“The old art teacher! From the high school! The one who left!”
Ooooh, this one is tricky. She’s mentioned this person before during one of these monologues, but I’m not sure I’ll get the name. She stares at me expectantly.
“Hmmm… Ann?” An eyebrow goes up. Wrong answer. Suddenly it comes to me.
“Laurie!”
“Yes, so we saw Laurie…"

Inserting the missing words into my mother’s conversations has become second habit for me. I find I half listen to everyone’s conversations and end up inserting words that I think they’ve forgotten. I find myself doing it constantly at work, and even to strangers. It's a matter of time before I insert the wrong word into the wrong person's conversation and get myself in serious trouble.

Tidbit

Santa Cruz City Parking Enforcement collected $759,756 in 2006. If I hadn't let my meter expire while I was at the optometrist, it would have been $759,732. You're welcome, Santa Cruz!

"This is not just."

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Day.

Below is an excertp from a speech Dr. King gave at a church New York City on April 4th, 1967, in which he explained his opposition to the Vietnam War. Not surprisingly, it is a popular speech this year, what with so little about war changing between 1967 and 2007, between Vietnam and Iraq. I heard to part of it when I woke up this morning, huddled in my bed, listening to the patient voice of a man killed eight years before I was born as he pleads for peace at home and abroad.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

Molly's here!

6lbs, 15oz: how can a person be so tiny? It's amazing. 10 fingers, 10 toes. Full head of hair. Momma Natalie doing well. Daddy Michael much relieved and ready to spoil his daughter.

Miracle of life, people. It's freakin amazing.

Mrs. MLE's Celebrity iTunes Playlist

I had to ask my friend "Emily" why she called herself "Mrs. MLE"... well, if you say the letters out loud... and you're not dumb like I am... it sounds like her name! Mrs. MLE was Ms. MLE when we started law school together. We were both paralegals, in the part time program, and on the same side of the fence politically. Since then, I've been delighted to find out more and more things that Mrs. MLE and I have in common, including fabulous taste in music! The photo below is the day Ms. MLE became Mrs. MLE in a beautiful Hawaiian wedding. Her husband, needless to say, is referred to ask "Mr. MLE."



DISCLAIMER: It was a very difficult exercise to narrow my playlist down. I resorted to listing to the ipod on shuffle and picking out songs that I really really like, don’t get sick of or automatically start dancing around to. I just had to stop myself at some point meaning the list is probably missing a lot and too long at the same time :)

Kiss Off
Violent Femmes
Violent Femmes
Basically any song off of this album gets my head bopping and feet bouncing. Just think of someone of someone who dumped you or really pissed you off and you are compelled to rock out. I almost chose “Add It Up” because it has the fantastic line of “I look at your pants…and I…I need a kiss.”

Do You Wanna Hold Me?
Bow Wow Wow
This song always puts a serene smile on my face and causes me to jump around. Now it makes me think of the beach and marrying Mr. MLE. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of it.

Blasphemous Rumors
DP
Catching Up With DP
Did I mention I am an 80s girl? And was a chronically depressed teenager? I reminisce of those days, dressing in all black, writing dark things in my journal, not comprehending how the hell Reagan was re-elected (scary thing is now that doesn’t seem so bad!), getting disgusted with anybody who didn’t “get it” and buying Smiths’ tapes at Tower Records. It was between this and Somebody off of Depeche Mode 101, but Somebody was just a touch too positive. I really thought I was deep at 15 and that these lyrics profound.

September
Earth Wind & Fire
Earth, Wind and Fire: Greatest Hits
Maybe it was the sparkly, flowing outfits or the giant afros. Perhaps the tight horn section or, most likely, the scores of happy, singing and dancing people on stage when I got to see them on TV (B&W of course). Whatever it was, I loooooooooooved this group when I was little and I still love this song and many others. Makes me think of a happy, racially diverse environment a la Sesame Street (ie before reality finally crept in when I was about 9 and some girl called me a “prejudiced white bitch” for no particular reason). Did I mention I grew up in the bubble of Berkeley?

Lo Que Pidas
Julieta Venegas
Sí
I can’t have a list without any Rock en Español.
Julieta Venegas totally rocks! She’s the strong Latina
woman that is encompassed is so many Mexican and South
American novels. Not the siliconated bubble heads you
see prancing around wedgy pants and white boots on
Univision. She just simply rocks like sox in a box.

Ain’t That a Kick in the Head
Dean Martin
Capitol Collector’s Series: Dean Martin
I love me some drunken Rat Pack singing! This is one
of the best with Dino and a punctuating horn section.
You can practically taste the scotch swirling around
in his glass.

Ain’t Nobody
Chaka Khan
Epiphany – The Best of Chaka Khan
Excellent dancing-while-driving music. Good for
self-esteem, too. It’s got that 80s electro-poppy funk
R&B thing going on.

What I Am
Edie Brickel
Shooting Rubber Bands at the Stars
Kind of an anthem for me I guess. I listened to this
a lot following a big Tori Amos/Chris Isaak/10,000
Maniacs phase and right around when I stopped taking
myself so damn seriously. Some lines still make no
sense to me, but that’s part of its charm, I suppose.
Plus, it’s got a good beat and I can dance to it.

Sex and Candy
Marcy Playground
Maybe I just like songs that have lines that make no sense (“like disco lemonade”). I dig this guy’s voice. Groovin’ tune.

Sir Duke
Stevie Wonder
Songs in the Key of Life
Awesome horn section, groovin’ bassline, and a good message. I think I’ve actually scat out loud to this song. My poor children will likely be subjected to it over and over as my form of education!

For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her
Simon & Garfunkel
Simon & Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits
Um, it’s pretty. And romantic and stuff. No other reason, really ;)

The Noggin Song

In Newcastle I found a box set of ambient tunes on sale. Ambient is my favorite putzing-around-the-house music. The first CD has one of my favorite songs, “Lovely Head” by the British band Goldfrapp.

Check out the lyrics:

Starts in my belly
then up to my heart
Into my mouth
I can't keep it shut
Do you recognize
the smell?
Is that you how tell
us apart?

I fool myself
to sleep and dream
Nobody's here
No-one but me
So cold
You're hardly there
Why can't this
be killing you?

Frankenstein
would want your mind
Your lovely head
Your lovely head

It sounds overwrought, but when you hear it you can appreciate how marvelous it really is. It’s the phrase, “your lovely head” that really does it for me. Who thought that? It’s not just the mind that is the focus here, but overall cranial appreciation, including skull shape and hair distribution. There should be a new category of music called Silmo. It’s music that’s kind of emo but appealing in a silly way.

Sydney Fireworks

Here's two very brief videos of the fireworks from the Sydney Opera House on New Year's Eve. I took these with my digital camera, so the resolution isn't super, but it gives you an idea of how impressive the display is. You can see the "emerald" on the bridge. Sydney is known as the "Emerald City" and the theme for this year's NYE was "Diamond Night in an Emerald City."

This is from somewhere in the middle:

This is the very last part of the finale of the fireworks on the bridge:

Ok, I'm not that sorry.

Katie gives a long, long explanation on her blog (see Katie's Adventures on the right. I'm too lazy to HTML a link right now) as to why she looked like a crazed person when she was eating a lamb shank in the photo of her a couple posts below. But the truth is, everyone knows Katie looks like this at every meal. Right, Katie? Here's another photo, of Phat Pantz and our new Scottish friend Fiona, who didn't realize how enthusiastic Katie is about food. Look how calmly they are eating. Look how Katie rabidly attacks her food.


In case you can't get a good enough look at her molars, I've provided a close-up below:

Stay tuned, I'm sure there'll be plenty more!

I'm sorry, Katie...

...but this photo is far too good to stay in the camera.
As Hoov said, "That's just a big meat lollipop!"

There's no place like home.

To add to my legendary difficulties at the Honolulu Airport, my flight was delayed last night for 4 hours. Right before I got on the plane I heard one of the crew say, "Well, they took it on a test flight and they think they fixed it..." Great... We arrived in San Jose a little after 1am. By the time I got my luggage and my car and drove home, it was 3:30am. I'm going to post more about Australia, and more photos, tomorrow. I'll probably continue to complain about airport drama and how much I hate Hawaiian Airlines.

Right now it's time to head up to SF for Hoov's birthday dinner at Betelnut. Hoov's Friday was even worse than mine, and it was her birthday. Suck-diddly-uks. Can't wait to see the other Ya Ya's who weren't in Australia and will therefore be subjected to endless re-tellings of the same stories and explanations for why they are so damn funny.

Trapped in Honolulu

Dudes. This is not good. Short story: I missed my flight back to San Jose yesterday and can't get home until Friday night.

Long story: I'm well-known for my penchant for getting to the airport long before it's necessary. It's not unusual that I arrive before they actually start checking people in for the flight. Back when Southwest issued numbered cards I had the first one more times than I can count, and was always one of the first ten. It just don't like feeling rushed, or stressed out that I might miss the flight. When I travel with my boss or my mother, typically the last people on the plane (not the same plane, you understand) I end up in a state of near-hyperventilation.

On my way to Sydney from Honolulu, I arrived so early that I spent several hours wandered the airport at night, after most of the shops and restaurants were closed. However, when I left Sydney for Honolulu, it took a total of 20 minutes to check my bags in and get to the gate, thanks to the combined efficiency of the Sydney airport and (gasp) Air Canada. I was determined not to spend the entire afternoon wandering around another airport.

Unfortunately, since I was in Honolulu for only one day, and didn't turn on the tv or pick up the newspaper, I apparently missed the fact that the airport was in total chaos. The only thing I've seen close to this kind of airport mayhem when I was in Heathrow two days before the Hajj. I did call the airline that morning to ask about baggage restrictions and no mention was made about how far in advance I should arrive. Apparently the chaos arose from the fact that people have to wait in FOUR separate lines. So, the lines. First, you start out in the agriculture check line, where they look through your bags to make sure you don't have plants or animals that shouldn't leave Hawaii. This line is about an hour long because a) it is run by the federal government, and we all know how efficient that is; and b) for some reason many people leaving Hawaii seem to think that it's a good idea to bring a lot of food with them. I'm talking about boxes of fruit, ice chests with fresh fish, pretty much whatever you can imagine. Now, I'm a fan of the fresh food here, but I wouldn't take a bunch of fish, slap it in an ice chest with some ice and wrap it up with duct tape. I saw this done several times, with some very difficult situations involving how to dispose of the several pounds of fish that were not going to be allowed to leave the state.

The second line is to check into your flight. That line looked long but I wouldn't really know because I got about halfway through the agriculture line and realized I was going to miss my flight. The third line is where you take your bags after you've checked in, because you can't hand them across the counter like you can in every other g*dd*mn airport in the developed world, you have to take them over to a separate baggage area. Where there is another line. Then, after all this, you get in the line to go through the security check of you and the belongings you would propose to take on the plane. With more confiscation of fresh fruits and other plants and animal life.

So I get in the "special services" line to change my flight and when there are only two people in front of me, the woman working at the counter leaves. And no one else comes over. Some enterprising soul found out that she was on her mandatory lunch hour and no one else was authorized to work that line. The line is snaking through the airport because at this point many people have missed their planes. We begged for some kind of supervisor or manager to come out and tell us how to arrange to get on another flight, but every person in a position or authority refused to come out and deal with the customers. You know, the ones who pay their salary. The people in lien were unhappy, but optimistic that they would be able to get on a place that day. When the line shut down, and no one else could help us, things started to fall apart.

The girl in front of me sat down on the ground and began to sob. "I have nowhere to go." she kept saying. The guy behind me was supposed to be in Seattle at 8am the next morning to sign a contract to join a minor-league sports team. I didn't ask which team, or even which sport. No one was really in the mood to chit chat. A guy behind us in line had a total meltdown and started running after anyone in a Hawaiian Airlines shirt, screaming profanity at them. Another woman who missed the flight to San Jose had called the airline on the phone, since no one was at the counter any more. She eventually found out, as I did, that despite the fact that we arrived at the airport in what should have been plenty of time, we would not be "bumped" to the next flight, but would have to pay to change out flights to the next one. I ended up having to book a first class one-way upgrade to leave on Friday. If I had waited for the next available seat in economy, I would have been here until Thursday. Another family from the San Jose flight, a couple and their two young children, were going to have to wait for that flight. His wife told me they had already called the hotel where they had stayed but it was sold out. "I don't know where we're going to stay." she said. "I'm more worried about what I'm going to tell my boss." her husband replied.

Oh, that's right. I have a job. I had been so determined to find a flight I forgot I still had to call my boss and tell him I'd be out another two days, on top of the three weeks I'd already been gone. I recalled giving advice in similar situations before, usually it involved sending a very unsympathetic letter telling the employee to be back at work on X date or they would lose their job. Karma's a real bitch. When I did call him, I think he could hear the tension in my voice because he was actually pretty cool about it. I got him a "thanks for not making this worse" gift this morning.

I wish I could say I was using this time to hang out with J, but he's still on the mainland, so it's more of me wandering around Waikiki alone. I did get my marine geek on at the Aquarium this morning.




There are worse places to be trapped. And there are worse things that can happen to a person than this kind of airport drama. I could be in Sierra Leone. Or Ithaca. But it's been a long trip, and after three weeks, I really just want to go home.