Weird Week

The work week is nearly over and I'm relieved. It's been a weird week. I had to go Washington DC and West Virginia this week for a couple of days and let's just say the WV experience was really, um, different.

The oddness started Tuesday morning when I settled into my First Class seat on the flight to DCA (Reagan National Airport). I hadn't seen the flight attendant working First when I boarded. Imagine my shock when I looked up to find Uncle Fester of "The Addams Family" fame asking me if I wanted an orange juice.
Slap a blue polyester uniform and wings on him and he's working the friendly skies!

I kid you not. So for the entire flight I had the snappy "Addams Family" theme song in my head. It was a trip. Anyway, got to DCA sans incident. You can tell that the Congress is on holiday. The airport was an absolute ghost town at 9AM when I arrived. Normally it's a total mob scene. Getting a cab was a snap. Had several hours of board meetings and then I had to head up to Dulles (IAD) for the prop flight of death to Parkersburg, WV. Believe it or not, one of my major vendors has a customer center across the river from Parkersburg and I needed to make a visit. Dulles does a fine job of not using the air conditioning in the commuter terminal so by the time boarding was called, I was a wreck. My state of mind was not soothed knowing I was boarding a hammered Saab 340. There were 12 of us on board and as usual a few of us were asked to sit in the very back for load and balance purposes. Never a comforting thought. Good news was that it was a quick flight. And then the games began.

The Parkersburg airport gets two - count 'em, two - flights a day. Our government has made sure that there is a ridiculous amount of TSA on hand for the walloping average of 24 passengers a day. I think there was one TSA person for every passenger. The airport restaurant pulls an interesting crowd. But the real fun began when I went outside to wait for my ride. (Note - it took my coworkwers an hour to get from the hotel to the airport. Normally a ten minute drive - an hour if you're directionally challenged.) As I was outside, I happened upon a family that brought every West Virginia stereotype to life. Grandma and Grandpa were getting on the flight but were outside for a bit. Grandpa needed to suck down the last of his homemade cigarettes. Grandma was feeling the heat and using the bottom of her shirt as a fan, revealing more than anyone EVER needed to see. Their daughter, her husband, and two kids had come along to see them off. It was more like the teen father was using the time to practice his screaming voice on the children. What did I learn while I was watching this (I got to hear all this since apparently screaming is the only volume known there) - Grandpa didn't wear shoes until he was nine. The daughter then announced that she got her first period during her first trip on an airplane. As I live and breathe, I'm not lying. Upon hearing that, I went back into the terminal, wishing for the sweet relief of death. Instead, I got to see the return flight leave and see the lights turned off in an airport terminal. Never seen that. My coworkers finally got me and it was off to the haunted hotel. Again, I told you it was a weird week. The next day was fairly normal and flew out of Columbus, OH, and got home fine.

Today I once again weirded out while giving blood. There was a blood drive at work and I made sure I had eaten well before my donation time. All was well until just before they were removing the needle. All of the sudden I got wicked hot...and on came the cold compresses and the chair went into full recline mood. No passing out this time but felt just as stupid. I have got to figure out why that's happening.

So no run tonight. CAL has announced she wants to run a race with me in October in Charlotte, NC, so we'll start that training shortly. That's going to be fun.