How to make your flight in 1 hour flat...

IT'S 5:50AM!!! CHRIS WAKE THE HELL UP, IT'S 5:50AM!!!

The words are still ringing in my ears and I have a very hard time not laughing to myself when they do.

These are the words that were freight-training out of my girlfriend's mouth on Sunday morning, which is the day we were supposed to leave for Florida for a short vacation. This was the first vacation to a "tropical" destination that I have taken in over two years. We had 4 days marked off to get as charred by the sun as possible before heading back to the sleet-ridden New York City.

Our flight was scheduled to leave at 7am, from Newark Airport in New Jersey. We were in Brooklyn, New York. For those of you who don't know, this requires a 1.5 hour train ride or an approximately 15 mile car ride. 15 miles, no problem, right, well along those 15 miles you have to cross one bridge over the East River, make your way across a little island called MANHATTAN, go down into the Holland tunnel, and then a wee bit more stretch of road in the scenic New Jersey eastern shore. On a normal day, this hop-skip 15 mile trek would take any driver approximately 1.5 hours, maybe 2. Not Kidding.

We had 1 hour and 10 minutes to get there.

After I realized that my girlfriend was not attempting to strangle me to death but rather was driving to get me out of bed brought a sense of reality to my morning. This is not a sense of reality I was expecting to achieve considering I was on my way to Florida and had spend 12 hours on the previous day, which also happened to be St. Patrick's day, pouring the big black beautiful Guinness stout down my welcoming throat. Nonetheless, I said calmly as I leaped from my bed, "Let's just take a deep breath, we can do this."

Luckily I had packed the night before; unfortunately I was drunk when I packed and for some reason felt it necessary to include every short sleeved shirt in my wardrobe and hardly anything for the lower half, more on that later. I grabbed my phone, tiled the stored car service number, "Be there in 4 minutes" he said, which was our first good sign of the morning.

2 minutes later, the car is honking outside our door, I'm running out with not one but two backpacks I have packed for myself, and katie's tiny little carry on; for a second I was ashamed at the realization that I had packed no less than 3 times what my lady packed. The "her clothes are smaller" argument wouldn't even cover the spread.

We hopped in the car, "Newark Airport, stat, rapido, really fast, like the wind" we said, conveying as politely as possible that we were really really fucking late and needed to basically strap a jet rocket on the back of this guy's Lincoln towncar. "Ok", he said.

The second good sign came at the crest of the Williamsburg Bridge, I could see the rest of the bridge and the Stretch of Delancey street that leads us 3/4 of the way across Manhattan on the lower east side. Very few cars and red lights, which meant that by the time we got to the end of the bridge we would be hitting green lights and no traffic.

Having a car in New York and experiencing traffic in Manhattan has provided me with a little knowledge about gauging travel times. I have seen traffic backed up all the way across the bridge back into Brooklyn, and have seen 5 lanes of cars in Manhattan inching their way, fighting for miles. This is why when I noticed these things about the traffic, it was a little bit more promise that we might make it on time. Of course I kept this encouragement to my self because I am a sucker for suspense and I wanted to keep katie guessing as to whether or not we would make it.

We hit the tunnel at about 6:19 and there was no traffic. I have hit the tunnel around 5am, when the bars are letting out and the hoards head back to New Jersey from the Meatpacking district, it is a shit show. All of these drunk, tan, over-gelled, hip-hop blasting, blunt smokin, spinner rollin, Sean John wearin, spiked hair, muscle bound suburban white kids trying to squeeze their overpriced, overfinanced, uninsured SUVs into the Holland Tunnel. Luckily we missed that; which was the third good sing of the morning.

I had a good feeling that as long as this guy knew where he was going, we would make our plane if we hit Jersey by 6:30am; which we did. The ride was smooth, until we hit the airport. I figured no one else would be flying at 7am on a Sunday but apparently due to the terrible weather we had earlier in the week, people were still trying to get standby and there was terrible traffic and the lines both inside and outside the terminal were honestly 300 people long. This was a bad sign for the morning. We bid farewell to our escort, grabbed our bags and started to walk to the line. Neither one of us said anything to each other but we were both obviously in a complete downward spiral of emotion from actually making it to the damn airport within 40 minutes of waking up, travelling across Manhattan and two states, to then meet our fate at the end of a line to check in.

Having already checked in, pre-drunkenness on Saturday, I had our boarding passes in hand, I turned to Katie, who had fear in her eyes, and said "We can't check our bags, lines are too long, we have to carry everything on."

She was fine, she had a purse and the small carry on suitcase which was mine and I knew it would fit in the overhead bin. I looked at my larger backpack, which is one of those backpacks that recent graduates take with them to travel around Europe after graduation, you know the one that is typically 2 to 3 times the size of the person and will definitely pull them over in a slight breeze. Well, it didn't quite have that effect on me but nonetheless it did not seem to be carry-on-able. I figured I would chance it and redistribute or toss anything that they wouldn't let through. This was a reality that I was immediately willing to accept. I was really looking forward to this vacation, we were running extremely late, and we were basically done-for if we did not make this flight, which was leaving in 15 minutes by this point. What I didn't realize is that my beautiful, loving, caring, adoring girlfriend was not so willing to accept having to throw away her belongings if they were refused by the TSA. I found this out when we got to the security line and we started to put our bags on the machine. She turned to me and explained that she had packed some quantities of shampoo, conditioner, etc. that exceeded the raindrop portions that are allowed on airlines these days. I told to chance it and put her bag through.

Well, much to my surprise, her back did not make it through, and mine did, as bulky as it was. The agent declared "Bag Check!!! Who does this belong to?"

My girlfriend identified herself as the owner, granted rights to open the bag and proceeded to watch the humorless agent throw the liquid hygiene products into the garbage. Katie watched this in absolute horror, and as you could imagine, this all conveniently became: my fault. In her mind if I had not gone out drinking the previous day and night, then we would not be late and would not be rushing through the security, she could have planned ahead and not brought 4 gallons of hair product. Completely understandable where she was coming from. Still in a daze from this morning's events, rather than being sympathetic, I chuckled. oh did I chuckle. Even the TSA agent looked at me saying to herself, "Keep laughing buddy, you are a deadman" as she threw out the last of the bottles. I realized the crime I was committing and said to my girlfriend, "I will buy you two of whatever that woman is throwing out" I think that just added fuel to the fire but I have since made up on 50% of that promise.

We got through security, found out that our gate had been changed to, of course, the farthest gate from our current location. We raced through the terminal, arrived at the gate at about 6:52am and made it onto our plane.

The bags fit, we had seats, and I could feel the worries peeling off like an onion as we backed away from the jetway at exactly 7:01am. We were in the sky within 10 minutes while other people somehow spent hours in lines and delays that day. We made it, we worked for it, and we really really appreciated it.

We also made up and had a fantastic trip. Hopefully it won't be another 2 years before I get down to the tropics again.

my apologies to the News Sun telemarketer

You will see a link on the right column of my blog for "my local news". Clicking this link will take you to the Waukegan News Sun website. The News Sun is a local newspaper covering news around my local county. I grew up receiving this paper, reading it, using it to cover the bottom of my dog's cage, and occasionally showing up in it. I check it out once in a while to find out what's going on back home.

So the other day I get a phone call from my home area code while I was rushing to a meeting and about to hop on a subway. I answered the phone expecting a friend calling to catch up from home but what I got was my grandmother. Well, not my real grandmother but someone who could have been my grandmother, or anyone's grandmother for that matter. In her trembling, slow, old voice she asked me if I was interested in trying a new promotion being offered by the News Sun.

I literally stopped dead in my tracks. Yes, I could hear the train coming and I was late but I couldn't just brush off grandma like she was just another telemarketer. I listened to her promotion, then politely explained that I no longer live in that area, have moved to new york city and don' t want to receive the weekend edition of the News Sun. I went on to apologize that I was running late and had to go but to have a nice day.

My heart was broken, I pictured this poor lady who can't afford her medication and can't stand long enough to be a greeter at Wal-Mart, who has to take a part time job telemarketing for the News Sun. That could have been my grandmother! Who is going to let a grandmother do this!? She is probably beat up everyday by people who don't fear or respect their grandmother's as I do and could care less who is calling them. This poor lady, my heart goes out to you. And to the News Sun, what are you people thinking, putting this poor lady on the phones, can't she file something or stuff envelopes, something that does not leave her out there to be screamed at, hung up on, and verbally beat up by disgruntled recipients of her calls.

Then it donned on me, maybe the News Sun or whatever telemarketing company they hired has figured out that no one is going to hang up on grandma! That as soon as you hear that voice, human nature forces you to stop and listen to what they have to say, which in turn would drastically increase the amount of time this telemarketer spends with the customer and would no doubt increase the sale rates and convert to more dollars for the News Sun.

Is this possible? Well I guess of course it is possible. But is this true? Not only do I be impressed that the News Sun much less a marketing company in the burbs of chicago birthed this concept but that they had the guts to implement it. On top of that, they are really on to something in general. Not just hiring old ladies to do telemarketing because you just can't say no, but for all i know I was speaking to some previously out of work 23 year old struggling actress in New York City who just so happens to do a great grandma voice. She could have been sitting in a room in a call center not far from me making 10 bucks an hour acting like poor old grams and getting suckers to sign up for weekend service of a po-dunk newspaper from a county she's never heard of in her entire life, and I am spending the rest of my day concerned that I just took the insulin shot out of my grandma's arm!

or maybe that's a stretch. Nonetheless, anything is possible, right?

way too small of a world

Two weeks ago Katie and I went to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year celebration. I am going to attach some pictures from that day, there was a huge celebration in the streets with fireworks, parades, etc. We decided to grab some Chinese food and had researched some good places to eat and decided on a place call Joe's Shanghai. There was about an hour wait to get in and there was no standing room in the restaurant so everyone had to wait outside. It was particularly cold that day so everybody crowded around the door trying to get any breeze of warm air coming from the restaurant as the doors opened. We had been waiting for about a half an hour when a couple ahead of us decided they were no longer waiting. They offered us their number (written on a small sheet of paper), we accepted, and we moved a couple spots up in line. There was also a woman and her child waiting for a table. They were of some asian descent but both spoke perfect english. the daughter was adorable and full of questions. The mother entertained every question and the surrounding adults smiled to each other when she would ask cute questions. All in all is was a good time. The small girl was getting cold so we gave them our extra number and moved them up in line quite a bit. They were very thankful and gracious. Not long after we were seated and didn't see them after that.

Flash forward two weeks. This morning Katie found out that on craigslist someone had reposted a desk from pottery barn that she had bid on two weeks ago and the buyer had backed out and we got the call to go and buy it on the upper east side. Well we rush up there to get this desk, and we walk in this studio apartment and I hear the daughter's voice again; then the mother's. And I see their faces and I am sure it is the same mother and daughter from the restaurant, no doubt in my mind. I am so sure that I decide to say something, but at the same time I was so shocked that I studdered and stumbled over my words and I think I quasi-asked her if she worked at a chinese restaurant (or at least that's what she thought I asked). She immediately said "No" and that that happens all the time. I dropped the subject out of embarrasment and said little more as we paid and moved the desk out.

Once we got back into the car I explained to Katie what exactly it was that reminded me of them and I was so sure. Well she started to believe I may be right but we both agreed that it would be so crazy. When we got home, katie went back and emailed the woman, thanking her for the desk and actually writing what I meant to say.

It was the same person. She obviously did not hear me properly and was thinking of something else but she remembered us and that we had given her our ticket.

How ridiculous is that. A city of 20 million people, 2 couples that couldn't be further apart, and we meet each other twice in two weeks on this island, and now I am typing at her desk in my apartment.

What do we do? Let it go? Make it cocktail party banter? Become friends? Does this mean something bigger? Are we meant to know these people? Or is it just pure coincidence?

I forgive you Mr. Police Officer

The audio below is an account of my morning activities. I was issued a ticket while driving home from the Brooklyn Veteran's Hospital. This is more or less safe to listen to in a work setting though I must admit there are one or two adult words. Let me know what you think.

Heroin at the UN

Anyone interested in selling Methadone to the United Nations, click on the link below.

Procurement title: Methadone
Deadline: March 20th 2007
To see the procurement notice, please visit the following link:http://www.iapso.org/supplying/procurement-notices-view.asp?id=3192
Thank you for your interest,IAPSO - Inter-Agency Procurement Services Office

Pics from our trip to Vermont

Here are some pictures Katie and I on our trip to southern Vermont at the end of January. It was pretty cold and the snow on the ground was the first snow of the season (very late). We didn't ski because half of New York raced up to the mountains to hit the new snow. We did, however, borrow two pairs of snowshoes from the owner of our B&B and took a three hour hike around a "pond" up there. It was a great hike. Thanks to Geoff at the Stone Boat Farm for the great advice on how to spend our weekend and the fresh cooked muffins!

Thanks also to the Vermont Country Store for providing us with no less than two meals during out trip. This place has more cheese, meat, dip, salsa, mustard, chips, etc. that you could possibly imagine snacking on, and it is all out there for you to try. We ended up buying Habanero and Pineapple Salsa and some hot Giardinera; it doesn't make sense and we didn't care.

Enjoy, I recommend getting up there, its only 3.5 hours from New York City and is beautiful country.