So I woke up last night at 2 a.m. Frankfurt time, and that was after sleeping five hours. Unfortunately I knew right away that I wasn’t going to get back to sleep any time soon so I decided to call home and then do some reading. After the call and an hour or two of reading I clicked on the TV and started surfing through the 40 or so channels of TV that the hotel carries. In the process I discovered some interesting things:
I’m still trying to figure out what kind of guy would get worked up with some supposed woman sending him messages like "U R so hot U R mkg me…" Of course the wireless services here are so far ahead of ours in the US that it would be a good bet that they deliver high quality video to pervs’ phones and they’re just using "SMS" in the same way that some people call all sodas "Coke". Either way, you don’t see the "commercials" or the wireless p-rn back in the states.
Hopefully that will be the extent of my German television reviews since I’d like to get at least a little sleep over the next few days.
On my flight from Charlotte to Frankurt I sat next to a little German boy named Constantine who was approximately five years old. Constantine didn’t speak a word of English and my German is limited to counting to ten and saying “please” and “thanks”. Fortunately the boy’s mom was sitting in the row behind us with his brother and was able to provide translation services
Throughout the flight I was under the impression that Constantine had a bladder the size of a peanut because he went to the bathroom approximately 43 times. It ends up he had an upset stomach which I figured out when the cabin lights were turned on so the crew could serve breakfast. That’s when Constantine awoke with that wide-eyed look you get when the smoke alarm goes off at 3 AM and started saying “nein” over and over really loudly. That’s also when he assumed that belly grabbing pose that is the universal symbol for “I’m getting ready to blow chunks.”. Unfortunately for me the meal cart was parked next to me which meant I was fairly certain I was going to be wearing chunks of something if I didn’t move fast
Constantine’s mom handed him a barf bag through the gap between the seats and I’m hear to tell you that when you’re staring down the possibility of a five year olds hurl those bags don’t engender a lot of confidence. Meanwhile the stewardesses all assumed that Constantine was my son despite the fact that we’d been communicating with each other via grunts and hand signals for six hours. That’s why they didn’t act with what I felt was appropriate urgency when I informed them of the situation. When I told them that he wasn’t my kid and he’d probably be happier with his mom the stewardesses moved the cart so mom and I could trade places. I think my look of desperation also helped
In the end we landed safely and Constantine gave me a sweet smile on the way out.
Why do I feel like this is going to be a really long trip? Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Sitting in the terminal at Charlotte waiting for my flight to Frankfurt (Germany, not FrankfOrt KY) and they’ve announced that the flight is oversold. They’re looking for 15 people to voluntarily drop. Only airlines could do business this way
FYI, I’m flying US DespAirways
Hopefully this isn’t an omen for the rest of the trip. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
This is a story that Chicken Little would love. A piece of piping hot metal fell out of the sky, punctured the roof of a Delaware woman’s SUV and came to rest on the floor behind the front seats. It happened to hit her SUV while she was shopping in a drugstore. The FAA and the military say that it didn’t come from a plane, and some of the people leaving comments on the story surmise that it’s space junk or something ejected from a machine in the vicinity. I’m liking the space junk theory, what with me believing in Martians.
This is also one of those stories where you ask yourself if the person involved is lucky or unlucky. If you’re a glass-half-full kind of person then you think she’s lucky because she wasn’t in the car when it hit, but if you tend to take a negative view on life then you’re probably thinking she’s the unluckiest woman around since she managed to be the only person on Earth that had an unidentified piece of piping hot metal pierce through the roof of her new SUV just a few days before her wedding.
Whether this gal’s lucky or unlucky if I’m someone in her wedding party I’m angling for the end of the line farthest from the altar. No reason to push my own luck.
The annual ConvergeSouth to-do is kicking off tomorrow in Greensboro and once again I won’t be able to make it. My problem is that they continually schedule these things when I have other work-related things I can’t get out of which leads me to ask, "Have they no consideration?" Do they continually have to schedule this thing when it’s convenient for them and not for me? Sheesh.
Anyway, I wish I could be there but I’ll be helping run the 2007 Competitive Intelligence European Summit in Germany so I won’t be able to do the Converge thing. (Yeah, I know it sounds cool running a show in Germany, but when you consider that I don’t speak a lick of German, that I’ll be confined to a conference hall for seven days, AND I’ll miss my daughter’s birthday it gets considerably less cool sounding). I’m sure ConvergeSouth will be great and I’m fairly certain I’ll get over my disappointment by this time next year at which point I’ll probably be disappointed again. So if you’re anywhere near NC A&T tomorrow you should definitely check it out. They want people to pre-register so they can feed them, but if you’re willing to not eat I’m sure they’ll let you in. And tell ’em I said "hi."
One of the kids came home from school with a corrected essay that had been written for language arts, which in my day was called English. One of the corrections was the word "ficticious" being circled accompanied by the word "fictitous" as the correct spelling. At the end of the paper the teacher wrote "Always check the dictionary."
Indeed.
Is it just me or does calling English "language arts" seem a little too vague? After all couldn’t the study of Spanish or French also be called "language arts?" Did the English teachers’ union decide that they needed a fancier title or was this foisted on them by some bureaucrat with nothing better to do? Am I sounding like Andy Rooney, only less wrinkled and slightly less stooped?
Celeste, who really should have her own blog but I’ve given up that fight for now, asked me to share this tale of great customer service. Yesterday she went to the Office Depot on Hanes Mall Boulevard to buy a certain electronic item that they had on sale. They were sold out and when she asked if she could have a rain check they said "no". To his credit the man helping her, a fellow named Tim, offered to call the other stores in the area to see if they had one. He did and informed her that one store did indeed have two units but there was no guarantee they’d be there when she got there. She didn’t have time to go, but Tim offered to call her and let her know if his store got more of the units in the next couple of days. She gave him her cell number and thought that was the end of it.
This morning Celeste got a call from Tim. He’d driven to the other store, gotten one of the units, brought it back and had it waiting for her behind the counter and said she could drop by any time to pick it up. Tim, who asked that she not give his last name, definitely went the extra mile and the folks at Office Depot should take note. If he hadn’t gone the extra mile I’d be writing a post about how they’d lost a sale because of their silly rain check policy. Celeste had already identified a store with a price matching policy where she could get the item she was looking for, and had Tim not called she’d have gone by there today. I’m thinking Tim deserves at least a bonus, if not a raise.
Befuddled 