Far South of I-10

I bought the airline tickets for our vacation yesterday. I had to modify my original plan, which was to fly to Rome, and take a commuter plane or a train to Paris. I waited on a call back from a travel agent though...almost too late as we crossed an invisible barrier between reasonable tickets and freakin expensive tickets. The rome tickets went from $700 to $1300 in a day...oh well, best laid plans and all. I went with the $650 tickets to Paris and pushed the buy button. I then made the mistake of calling continental to try and upgrade those tickets using miles....the agent didn't even laugh as she said "that'll be $450 plus 20000miles each way. per ticket. My brain's only response was to think "do I get a blowjob with that?" My mouth wisely stayed silent, since one of my employees was sitting 5 feet away. (my homerfication is almost complete: "hmmmm, blowjob") All I need now is about 8 different hotel reservations, some train tickets...

I'm traveling today and tomorrow, making a trip to Liberal, Kansas. Tornado country. Toto et al country. It's cold as heck here, I thought it would be springtime with wildflowers blooming, instead the snow covers the ground, and it's sleeting. A very sucky trip on a two engine propeller plane. It sucks to go somewhere that is only a few hundred miles from Houston, and it takes longer than it does to get to Europe. Not helped by having to turn around and return to Denver when some warning light lit. Oh well. The holiday inn has comedy central, so I got to see the darthifcation of Chef. Good lesson learned, don't piss off the writers of southpark.

The Scifi channel is showing the movie "The Day After", and I've paused in my channel surfing to revisit an event that I thought was a virtual certainty to happen when I was younger. In the new orleans of my youth, every couple of years they'd cycle through scare stories about the levees breaking, or back in the 70's and 80's they'd also cover the Soviets attacking. There'd be map of the city, with different range circles for different attacks...military only or if they attack population centers. Either way, our house seemed to be covered by the 'all dead' circle. Of course in New Orleans there is nary a cellar or basement, if we got hit we'd be, as they say in spanish, jodido. So better dead then red, was a chant, but with possibly deadly outcomes. And it seemed so certain to happen back then. Did that really happen? The people in Iran should watch this movie. Maybe I can buy them a copy on Amazon and send it to them. Maybe they...

Dennis the Peasant has a hilarious post , or at least hilarious in a sad, true to life way, on blogging for money. Since I've made some similar missteps that pissed away buckets of hard earned money, maybe I should continue my same methods and try blogging for cash. I missed the 80's, since I was still in school and had no money to piss away. But the 90's I pissed away enough money, especially at the end of the decade on etrade...I was gambling so much there (I mean investing) that they should have at least given me free drinks. Or as the peasant says: Now this time it might have all worked... except for that one last bit of bad luck. Things started out so well, after all. You took a large position in Hogs O’Million (a small pork rind factory in Grapevine, Texas) at $5.25 a share and then watched the stock soar to $100.50 on the basis of some hot news from a couple of internet stock picking sites. You have paper profits out the wazoo, and decide to celebrate your n...

I got a free trip to the rodeo last night. The company has a suite there at reliant stadium, and a friend had a spare ticket and some clients he wanted me to meet. Nice place, free food, free alchohol, just a little too high for my viewing pleasure...I spent most of the night watching the big screen monitors instead of the live action. I could have done that from home, just without the free food and alchohol. The other big benefit of the suite, and the reason it is called that is there is a bathroom in the suite. I started to walk out into the thronging mass of people to go find a bathroom somewhere, when I noticed the open door to our bathroom. Sweet! The rodeo action was pretty interesting. I didn't really know what is 'good' though, I had the same feeling I get when I watch hockey. Lots of fast action, but I can't really tell what the heck is going on. The part I liked best was the chuck wagon races, like nascar with horses. Or maybe more like the scene fr...

I've been vicariously enjoying Acidman's vacation down to Costa Rica, where he's been chasing women and living the relaxed beach lifestyle for the past few days. It used to be a dream of mine (or at least plan B) to twist off and head down to costa rica to open Joe's tequila bar on the beach. [twist off is an oilfield term for quiting, similar to how the drill pipe will sometimes break or "twist off"] Now, the A-man is posting that he spent the past couple of days sick with montazuma's revenge. I feel for him...I travel enough that I've had that same thing several times. I've found the best answer is not to use immodium unless you're on an airplane, just drink a thin soup of onions and salt...maybe it helps if it's made by a kindly woman... and you'll soon feel better. The immodium route just drags out the drama for a week or two. You're going to pay the toilet now, or pay it later. It's better to get it over with.