Salim Take the Wheel

I’m in Atlanta at the airport right now and I’m exhausted.  I’ll recap.

After work last night I met up with Nick @ YumYum Bangkok for great drinks and annoying service, which is just the bitter pill we agree to swallow when it comes to that place.  Had great time with him anyway.  We recently weathered a terrifying storm in our relationship (last week was a tsunami, pretty much) and it felt good to be back on a familiar current.  James stopped in for a quick hello after seeing us through the window on his way home from the gym.  Nick and I crashed at home (those drinks were seriously good) and I woke up around 4am this morning realizing I still hadn’t packed for my trip home.

Packing is always such a production with me, I can’t seem to do it simply.  i have to overthink, visualize each day and what I might need for it, and orchestrate whatever supplies I could possibly need.  This time, however, it was easy.  Going home for a burial doesn’t require a lot of planning, you know things just need to be simple and black and preferably without cat hair.  I finished packing and crawled back into bed with Nick for a power snugglenap, which is possibly the purest bliss I know.

Left the house around 10am and made it to Penn Station for the 11:01am to Trenton, NJ just in time.  We’d be @ EWR in 22 minutes — plenty of time to catch my 1pm flight — and so I sat on the seat in my train car, fresh Krisy Kremes in hand, and was just very pleased the morning had gone well so far.  I pulled out my BlackBerry and started to tinker with ringtones.  I made “Get It Together” by the Go Team my main tone and started designating fun songs to my Inner Circle.  Somewhere between assigning “Free Your Mind” to Mike and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” to my Dad, I looked up and noticed that the station we’d passed looked just like the EWR station.  Like, a lot.  And I started to ponder how weird it was that so many of these train stations happen to look alike and that if a person wasn’t paying extra close attention you could totally miss your stop… and how if that were to happen to me this morning it would absolutely fuck everything up and result in me missing my flights.  I’ve never considered myself to be a slow person, but I think it took me longer than normal to connect the dots and realize that we’d just passed the EWR station and were now running express for the next 30 miles.  FUCK.

I was too embarassaed to run to the doors, which were already closed, and sadly asked the conductor if we’d just passed EWR.  He looked at me like I was a fool and said, “Uh yeah, and we’re going express now to New Brunswick.”  We started whizzing past station after station and I began to scream inside my head.  It was 11:30 and my flight was leaving @ 1p, even if I got out at the very next stop and hopped a train backwards I’d still have to get through security and be @ the gate by 12:45.  It was over.  I called Nick @ the house and started freaking out, and he jumped on Mapquest and figured I could still get there MAYBE if I found a taxi at the next station and we flew down the NJ Turnpike.  I got up and started pacing, tried figuring how long it would take to get to New Brunswick, calculating how much it would cost me to buy a replacement ticket, dreading the phone call I was going to have to make to mom, ugh.  

At some point we finally got to the next station and I ran like hell down the platform — of course every old man and lady with a baby stroller were in front of me — and found a taxi waiting in the parking lot.  I threw myself into the backseat and said to the driver, “Listen, I might actually start crying in this cab if you can’t get me to EWR immediately.”  He laughed and said, “You want me to fly?  I have an EZ Pass!”  Suddenly my phone went off, it was a txt from the airline letting me know my flight was delayed 30min.  I began praising the Lord in the backseat and Salim took the wheel.  I got to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  Best $80 I ever spent.

So now I’m @ a Chili’s Too in Atlanta waiting on my connection.  There’s an outlet next to me charging my mac, which is charging my ipod and Berry.  There’s plenty of magazines and stuff to read in my messenger bag, I’ve been txting with Nick loads all day, and it just feels good knowing I’ll be with my family later tonight.

Loss / Gain

January 24th, 2009 / 1 comment »

G’pa died this morning.  Lisa called me @ work, she was crying.  Funeral plans are already in place, just a bit in flux.  Work knows I’ll be leaving in the next few days.  Mom’s taking this really hard.  I don’t know how I feel, pretty OK I guess.  

I lost someone important today.  But I also got somebody back.  More on this later.

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Winter Shots

January 22nd, 2009 / No comments

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O

January 20th, 2009 / No comments

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Out in the Cold

January 18th, 2009 / No comments

Got all the way home from work tonight (FREEZING!) only to realize I left my keys sitting on my desk at work.  Had to run all the way back downtown to meet Nick at his job and grab his set.  Heh, of keys I mean.  Not fun.  It’s seriously cold out lately.

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Bummed

January 17th, 2009 / 2 comments »

I spent the evening doing my taxes online only to find my return is SEVERELY less than I was hoping for.  Like way less, and way lower than the return my coworker is expecting.  How the hell does that happen?  I’m so bummed.  Last year my return was so huge I was able to pay off 2 credits cards and his year it’ll barely cover a full month’s rent, dammit.  Sigh.

I’ve been in a mood all day actually.  Nick was out with friends all night and ended up crashing on a sofa, and b/c I have grown attached to cuddling him in my sleep, I woke up very annoyed at having been Swede-less all night long.  I pouted the day away and eventually voiced my displeasure at him staying out all night w/o me (for the 3rd time this month), and it’s no big deal now.  I just miss him when he’s not around, he’s pretty cute yknow?

Yesterday after a long day @ work (even MORE drama with that woman from the other day), I took myself to dinner @ YumYum Bankok and ended up having a pretty bad time.  My drink was late and weak, my order was wrong, and they brought all my food out at once.  Afterward I popped into Don’t Tell Mama’s Lounge to say hey to Chris D and then met up with Patrick, Carrie, Mike, and James @ Barrage for happy hour.  Mike got trashed on 2 martinis so we filled him up with Chipotle and headed uptown for the Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 premiere.  The episode was weird, but I’m so glad the show is back.

Work dragged a bit today, I avoided everyone and spent most of the day watching old episodes of The L Word online.  I forgot all about that show.

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