multi-hyphenated-me

3:00 AM the harp ringtone melodically sings my wake up alarm.
3:20 AM my eyelids are finally forced open and I jump in the shower
3:45 AM my awesome husband gets up to start the car and, judging road conditions by the amount of snowfall, decides he’ll drive me to the airport. Hurray!
4:00 AM Leave for the airport. Brrrr-isk!
5:00 AM STARBUCKS!!! Coffee infusion.
5:45 AM Flight departs for Kansas City Missouri via Denver.

Here’s why I can’t work on a plane. I’m in the aisle seat with a couple in the window and middle seat. The wife is petrified of flying and is twitching and jumpy and flopping in her seat. The husband says “Relax” at least 100 times prior to take-off which did nothing to calm her. Why does this always happen? “Relax” is not a calming word, don’t use it. As soon as the wheels left the ground, the guy passed out and the woman shifted about nervously until she too fell asleep. Peace. All was well for about 10 minutes. Diagonally to the right, across the aisle, a man had a little Chihuahua in a Louis Vuitton carrier stowed under the seat in front of him. This little itty bitty dog proceeded to explosively fart and crap all over his carrier. The owner was responsive and took the dog and carrier to the bathroom to clean up (note: no one used the bathroom afterward). Over the course of the flight, the owner/dog/cleanup occurred three times. We just had to deal with the vile, make you gag stench left in the cabin. Horrible! This is a great reason why, just because you can, you shouldn’t, take your animal on a plane. For everyone’s sake. Poor dog. Poor owner. Poor us. I found a Hall’s Cough Drop in the bottom of my purse and covered my face with my scarf to prevent breathing in the rancid air. Mentholyptus to the rescue!

Denver Airport was my walking workout for the day. Whenever I fly through Denver, the gates between connecting flights is always 30-40 gates away. Then, after you reach your gate, you walk another mile onto the tarmac to board your plane.

The guy I sat next to on the flight from Denver to Kansas City was mellow, a reader, excellent. All was well, the plane was quiet as we all waited for the door to close and plane to take-off. The woman behind us decided this was her personal space and made several phone calls to discuss how month end had to be wrapped up before she could do her gig, whether her friend would pick her up or if she needed to rent a car (why wasn’t this determined earlier?) and her final call was the best when she detailed every item she packed in her suitcase. I was annoyed by the volume of her call and disregard for others but Mr. Mild Mannered next to me became unhinged! He was so agitated! He turned in his seat and glared at her and, playing into her call, started reciting what he had packed – while she was still on the phone! She got pissed and they had a brief exchange of words after her call. Mr. Mild-turned-Psycho gave me a lesson on the illegal but available phone jammer (thingamajig) that he has to scramble cell calls. I let him rant, then turned to my book and we all went our separate ways in Kansas City.

Happy to be on terra firma, I realized I had an hour drive to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, southwest of Kansas City Missouri. In case you don’t know, Kansas City Missouri and Kansas City Kansas sit opposite of one another in their own state. What genius thought this was a good idea I’ll never know but I’m sure there’s a story out there.

I’ve only been to Lawrence KS once before, in 2008 but remembered Wheatfield’s an awesome bakery café with wifi where I set up shop and worked this afternoon. I stopped by another find from 2008, Shark’s Surf Shop. The surf shop logo is a guy standing in a wheat field holding a surfboard that has a big shark bite. Surf Kansas! I bought my husband a new t-shirt. Driving to my hotel tonight, I passed Billy Vanilly’s Cupcake Shop. I love a town with a sense of humor.

The town is abuzz with a Kansas Jayhawks basketball game tonight. I thought about getting a ticket to the game but opted to work, blog and sleep instead.

Tomorrow’s blog topic: snow, polar vortex, arctic wind warning and an architecture job fair. Good times ahead.