A time to laugh

A time to cry.

Our exciting and new Nautilus elliptical trainer got delivered and setup on Thursday. I haven't taken a picture of it yet. MaxieC named it "Carl," after the fat kid in Jimmy Neutron. Well, today it claimed its first victim. Poor MaxieC was playing on it when he tumbled forward. I was standing right there and caught him by the arm, but somehow his hand hit something sharp and cut the tip of his finger.

Now, as you all know, the tips of fingers are famous for two things. First, being extremely sensitive. Second, bleeding a lot. So we got treated to about an hour of hollering before we were even allowed to put a band-aid on it. I think he's going to be fine. It doesn't look too bad to me. The Mrs. is pretty sure he's going to lose his finger, maybe his whole arm. She made this determination after recovering from almost passing out when she saw his little bleeding fingertip. Apparently, that runs in her fambily.

I learned today that mail-ordering liquor from outside Colorado and having it shipped here is illegal in this state. What kind of crock is that? Bevmo.com has prices at least 1/3 less than anything around here. Damned protectionists.

I took a trip up to Hillsboro, OR (just west of Portland) on Thursday for bidness. It was supposed to be a 1-day kind of deal, but when I got back to the airport to come home, my flight had been canceled for "weather," presumably in Denver. I think they really canceled it because it was mostly empty, and they had another mostly empty flight the next morning at 6:20am, as no one else canceled anything to Denver that night.

Here's a funny story: I'm on the plane flying to Portland, and it's like 6pm. I'm looking through the drink menu, as it's Alaska Airlines, and I hardly ever fly Alaska anywhere and I'm trying to see what beers they have. I've learned that plane travel is a lot more enjoyable if you pop the 5 bucks for a drink and never look back. They've got a crap beer selection, so I look at the liquor trying to decide between a bloody mary and Jack and Coke. They have Finlandia vodka.

What is up with airlines and Finlandia? Does anyone actually drink Finlandia in real life? I mean, besides crazed Bulgarians who refuse to drink anything vaguely Russian because of the years of oppression.

So that pushes me to the Jack and Coke. The Jack is denoted as "Jack Daniels Black Label." Now, I had recently received the latest edition of Modern Drunkard Magazine, and it had an article on Joe Namath and how he like Johnny Walker, so I'm thinking about Johnny Walker a bit, and I say to myself, "Self, I wonder what Jack Daniels Black Label is. I wonder if it's some longer-aged version of Jack." So I order that.

She hands me a coke and a little tiny bottle of regular old Jack Daniels. Which has a black label. Then I say to myself, "What the fuck? When did they starting fucking calling Jack Daniels 'Jacking Daniels fucking Black Label'? Those pretentious fucks."

I kind of have a potty mouth in my head sometimes. Sometimes, it escapes my head.

I experienced something remarkably strange when I was in Portland. On Friday morning, as I was leaving my hotel to go to the plant, it was of course raining. I looked at the rain and thought to myself, "Self, this is kind of like that cozy New England weather. " Then I realized how much I totally hate New England weather. Cold and drizzly all the time. Yuck. Somehow, I was oddly nostalgic for The Mrs's brother's wedding in CT, despite the fact that it poured like crazy and I had to spend most of the reception in the minivan with a screaming MaxieC watching Barney videos on the DVD player.

I still to this day do not know what was up with that. I think the hotel parking lot looked a lot like the parking lot at the hotel in CT.

After being stranded in Portland at the airport, I first kicked myself for not checking on the web the status of my flight before rushing back to the airport. The last thing a guy at the plant said to me before I left was, "It's too bad you have to leave tonight. It's Friday night, and we could go hit a brew pub." Then I found myself a nearby hotel with a free shuttle and checked in.

Then I called my bro, who as it turns out lives just a couple miles from the airport, which I did not know as I had never driven from the airport to his house, but had always driven from the airport to a hotel then to his house. He wasn't home. So I hit the hotel restaurant/bar for some dinner and solace. Then The Mrs. called me back and said it was my bro's wife's birthday, so I figured I was on my own.

I a few beers at the bar there over dinner. The dinner wasn't horrible, but it wasn't good. I got to see the bartender whip up drinks to go, which was an odd concept to me. I had never seen a bar make big drinks in plastic cups with lids before. But there it was. A couple in, I'd guess, their mid 50's had ordered food and drinks to go. The lady got a double rum and Diet Coke, and the dude got a double gin and tonic, and bartender poured what I would estimate to be quadruples. I looked at them, and they just looked so happy (those happen to be two of my favorite drinks). The couple looked happy, too.

I was nostalgic for way-back-when on my honeymoon when we stayed at the Islander on the Beach and they had a portable bar that got set up each evening by the pool, and they made drinks in plastic cups that you charged to your room. That was back well before we had childrens. Back when we were happy.

Ostensibly.

But then, just as I am downing my third Mirror Pond Pale Ale, which you can get on tap up there, my phone rings. It's the bro calling me back. He's coming to get me. I have a decision to make. Do I go pee before he arrives, or do I get number four and hope I can hold it until I get to his house?

I chose the former. Plus, I needed to get my jacket from my room anyways cuz it was cold and windy and raining, just like New England. It was a good choice. I don't think I could have held it, especially given the jiggly suspension in the Little Red Tercel.

Had a good visit with The Bro and his wife, plus a couple of friends of theirs. Don't know actually who they were. A guy named "Some dude" and a lady named "the dude's wife". I got back to the hotel in time to catch 4.5 hours of sleep before heading to the airport. Ugh. Saturday was painful. Luckily, The Mrs. let me take a 3 hour nap in the afternoon.

She's an angel.

Of course, so is Satan.