I am standing at an AT&T Public Phone 2000i in the Miami International Airport. I’ve got several hours to kill here and I thought I’d check my eMail. Unfortunately, although I love the redesign at Hotmail.com, I can’t figure out how to retrieve my POP mail. It’s very frustrating. I doubt I have any interesting eMail to read, but it would have been a cool way to spend $.25/min for a while.

Otherwise … not much to say about Miami. It’s swelteringly, oppressively humid outside - even at 6:45 am. To me it’s only 3:45 am and I’m cranky, tired, and low on fluids. Heh. And of course the first person that tried to talk to me here was annoyed that I don’t speak Spanish. Bah.

My boss was concerned that my flight might be cancelled because of an airline pilot strike in Atlanta (or something like that). I used the handy Delta Air Lines flight-lookup thingamajiggy and was told that flight 1886 is a-ok. And I learned that I’ll be on a Lockheed TriStar L1011-1. My boss, who is also a pilot, tells me that this is a huge plane. A monstrous plane. A great, big plane. Plus, I get dinner and a movie! (I hope it’s not Bounce.)

Those hep cats at Expedia.com have a cool little tool you can use to track all your frequent flyer miles in one place. Quelle nifty.

Service Interruption
I’m off to visit my friend Chris. Regularly scheduled blogging should resume when I return from San Diego. Be good, eat your veggies, clear the table, and do the dishes.

San Fransisco is cool. I promise I’ll be back soon. Go Gators!

Take a sad song and make it better.

Chris is on his way to Californication. I imagine a whirlwind of chaos and destruction billowing behind the big blue Chevy as he crosses the country. I rather like to imagine this. I will miss him. Unclefucker.

I just hopped on expedia.com and got Chris directions from here to Sarah Scott’s place in New Orleans. With any luck, he and Chuckles will have a place to stay in The Big Easy on their way to San Diego tomorrow. I love the internet.

Sylvia and I went to Itchetuknee Springs today. I’m not sure if that’s how you spell it. I’ll check the brochure later. We both got fricaseed in the blazing Florida sun. It was a very slow, leisurely 3 1/2 hour inner-tube ride down the perpetually 72-degrees-F Itchetuknee River. Afterwards we went to Karen’s Sandwiche Shoppe and ate chicken tenders and french fries. We had fun.

I feel so dirty. I’m hanging at the in-laws in Miami right now. There’s a pseudo-game-show on the WB (it’s a channel, for those of you that don’t get all 600 networks on American TV) called Crush. It’s typical mid-Saturday, WB network fare. A guy is presented with three girls, one of whom has a crush on him. They all act like they have a crush on him, and he has to guess which one really does. It is perversely entertaining. I can actually feel the brain cells committing hari-kari as they are bombarded with culture-schlock. Please help me!
I’m sure it is pointless and nobody will believe me if I say that the last three hours is about the most television I’ve seen in months. I watch Sportscenter all the time, of course. And the X-Files, Simpsons, and Family Guy when I remember. That’s about it though. I really don’t like to watch TV. Hrrrrmm … okay … well … except for football (that’s NFL football, kids, not soccer). I haven’t missed a Monday night game in two seasons. So except for those exceptions I loathe TV and everything it represents. (imagine me laughing here) I know that it sounds silly. There is just so much bad television out there. Sheesh! My brain hurts right now.
(Note: I just saw a commercial telling me that - in Miami at least - Crush normally airs at 6:00 pm on weekdays on the USA network. … in case you want to watch …)

In the spirit of yellow, I offer you a ‘Back in Florida’ haiku:

jetlagged, hungover
wish I was still in LA
the sun is bright here

There is a channel in LA that just shows a map of all the freeways and where the traffic accidents are.

I love Los Angeles and really wish I could afford to bring all of you out here to have this kind of fun with me and my friends.
(even though Tricia keeps calling me fat)

Did I mention that LA rules?
I got my income tax statement from the accountant in Miami. Julie Federal Expressed it to Jorge’s office and I will send it to the IRS tomorrow morning. It’s pretty nice of the government to give me back most of the money I’ve been loaning to them all year!
Jorge and Mike and Lanie and Rod and Marc and I did a bunch of Kamikaza shots last night at the country bar. Mike talked a waitress in a John Deere cap into slapping the crap out of me for no reason. Ouch.

I find it incredibly cool that I can still check my eMail and pop off a blog or two here and there while I’m 3000 miles away from home. If anyone’s reading, tell me!

Now here’s when the vacation really started. I got up at 6:30 am and finished packing my stuff. Drank some coffee. Read the paper. I was showered, dressed to fly, refreshed, and on I-75 North to I-10 East by 8:30 am. Ack! What an unbearably boring drive. Hung over. Anticipating burning wreckage.

A n y w a y … I was at the Jacksonville airport by 10:30 am, drove lost around the construction of new parking lots until I figured out where the place you’re supposed to leave your car was, and was on the plane by 11 am. I used priceline.com and got an eTicket from Delta. Now, I am a sucker for most eThings, but I have to tell you that this eTicket idea is really the best way to fly. If you’re not checking any bags onto the flight, you don’t have to stand in any lines or do any snookering. You just get to the airport and get on the plane. If I had remembered to bring my SkyMiles plastic card I even would have been able to use the little ATM-type terminal to get my boarding pass! Very cool.

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Officially this was the first day of my vacation. I was at work all day, so I don’t know if you can consider it a vacation day; but I had that peculiar sort of flick it attitude that one gets the day before one leaves for a vacation. It was about the best day at work I’ve had in months. When I got home I spent an inordinate amount of time reading blogs and drinking beer and not packing. See, I hate to fly. No, I mean I really hate to fly. I don’t actually mind the whole airborne thing. It’s just that whenever there is any turbulence I am scared to death that the pilot is getting as drunk as I am and has the same vague notion of how to fly a plane that I do. Whatever. So I was avoiding getting all my stuff packed and drinking so that, hopefully, I would be too tired on the plane to be worried and just get to sleep all the way to Hollywood. Oof. Bad idea. I managed to get done and in bed by 2:30 am on Thursday so at least I would be really tired as I fell from the sky to a fiery death.

Just so everyone remembers:
I’ll be flying from JAX at 1140 EST on 2000.04.13 and landing at LAX at 1545 PST. The other way is leaving LAX at 1152 PST on 2000.04.17 and landing in JAX at 1605 EST, with a one-hour layover in Dallas.
Jenny and I will be at the Less Than Jake concert at the Brick City Music Hall on 2000.04.22
I have two extra tickets if anyone wants to go see the best performers ever. They put on such a great show that I would go see them once a weekend if I could.
I finally got the two LTJ posters I ordered from Speed a few weeks ago.
ps: listening to Sheryl Crow and the Eagles and Blink 182 and Alanis and Less Than Jake on the changer to try and get Kurt out of my brain.

Sylvia is still in India. She won’t be back until 04.23.2000 so I guess I should stop whining about it. She certainly is getting quite a pile of mail here. I love getting snail mail almost as much as I love getting eMail. I think the best part of going on vacation is the big pile of mail I have when I get home. That doesn’t sound very stable … forget I said it.
(thebestpartofavacationisgettingto
seenewthingsandIwouldneversend
myselfmailwhileIwasonvacationlik
ehowIsentmyselfallthosepostcard
sthelasttimeIwenttoLA)
I’m really very stable. Why do you ask?