Overheard walking through the ‘port:
“I took, like, a sleeping pill. It totally freaked me out. It was, like, a Xanax.”

What the heck? Xanax should mellow people out! Maybe she shouldn’t have mixed the Xanax with methamphetamine [note: Microsoft Word doesn’t offer synonyms for methamphetamine].

So this morning as I was waiting for my Grande Soy Latte at Starbucks (which I don’t prefer, but given I consumed Folgers all week, this was a step in the right direction in my caffeinated world) I noticed that the young lady in front of me was wearing a Victoria’s Secret sweatshirt. It was not lingerie it was a sweatshirt. Weird. Weirder still was the fact that her pants had a large hole in their right buttock [20% of the total right buttock area in my general estimation]. There was some sort of fabric underneath the pants that made sure that the public was not exposed to skin, but there was an awkwardness to this for me because I didn’t know if she was wearing a long striped shirt that extended way beyond what I have seen in shirt design, or if I was being exposed to the stripy colorfulness of her undergarment. I didn’t want to be exposed to either of the options, but it was clear that this hole was a fashion. The third alternative is that there was a colorful, stripy, and stupid piece of cloth sewn into the pants, but that defeats the purpose of the hole and I did not see any thread that indicated sewing lines. And I know sewing lines in pants like I know molecular biology [which I don’t].

OK, so here’s where it gets weirder: I saw another woman walking through the airport moments later that had incredibly tight pants on that left nothing to question about her lower body structure. I imagine those pants cut off the blood circulation to parts of her body and took a large amount of time to squeeze into. Maybe they have started to make “pants horns”, much like shoe horns, only larger and more stunning in their dimensions.

Even weirder was that Soledad O’Brien is on CNN this morning talking about a coyote. The woman sitting across the airport waiting area from me was smiling a large smile as she watched the news about the coyote. It is kind of scary because I don’t want for her to enjoy coyote news. I guess I’m generally an anti-coyote news sort of guy, which is something I didn’t know about myself. Coyote news feels rather stupid in the grand scheme of things because coyotes, wily or not, just don’t seem to be a really important part of urban ecology. Sure, that could change, but I doubt it.

I have had 4-6 hours of sleep the last couple nights and I’m getting burned out on the whole ‘low on sleep thing.’ To further the issue last night I woke up several times with my brain in a near panic due to not wanting to miss my alarm. The same alarm that woke me up the other days that I was on this trip that kept my sleep to a minimum. For some reason not showing up to the office on time didn’t concern me, but missing a flight to get home where I would be alone was apparently important. Apparently I need to find a sleeping pill that is not, like, Xanax.

OK, so I’m not against change. I get it when I (rarely) pay with cash, I see it when I go back to Carson City, Nevada where I go once every several years to nearly wet myself when looking at housing prices and new development in the community. But last night our family went to Fudrucker’s for dinner because Jessica was hankering for a burger and I wasn’t hankering to fire up the grill. I should have stayed home.

When we walked in we were met by a stack of beer boxes, buckets with empy beer bottles (so as to prevent stealing), and a totally scaled down menu. When you are a hamburger based restaurant that sells hamburgers and few other things scaling down your menu is like turning yourself into an overpriced McDonalds. In fact, I think that the service at McDonalds might have been better. They had a table with kids menus on it as you wound yourself through the queue… with a bucket next to it that was empty. It was supposed to have crayons but they had no crayons in the facility. They did, however, add lots more expensive video games for people to play. I just can’t get past the $0.50 per game price. And that’s what they were starting to charge when I was a teenager. Now you have to pay $1.00 or more! Call me a cheap, old fashioned kind of guy but to play a video game that involves shooting people in front of my three year old for $1.00 you’d have to pay me $1,000.00.

And they switched to Pepsi products [which I don’t prefer]. So basically everything that I loved about the restaurant is gone and I’m going to take my business somewhere else that might change, but they might do it gradually or they might maintain a slightly more family friendly atmosphere with choices on their menu. Oh, and I asked the under-aged employee working the register if they had Fat Tire beer. His response was to say, “Fat Tire beer?” slowly and loudly as if I was an old fart who was hard of hearing. “Yes, Fat Tire beer, it’s made in Boulder, CO.”

“I’ve never heard of it before.”

Sorry young’n’, but they’re advertised in neon signs at liquor stores all around the place, most other local restaurants carry them and even Texas (who still thinks they own Colorado) has it. Don’t insult my intelligence when I’m ordering – it is not good customer service.

That is all, our regularly scheduled griping will return later.