The following was scribbled in lavender ink from a borrowed pen around midnight last night:

Stuck in an airport cafe writing on a napkin, surely approaching a state of extreme overcaffeination. My eyes starting to burn and my skin growing hotter, and we're nowhere near the end of this senseless ordeal. KS's plane, which was supposed to be here at 11:15 pm, hasn't left the ground in Pittsburgh yet, being 'broken' as he put it in a call from a borrowed cell phone. And you've got to love the sense of security you get, being put on a freshly-patched up airplane that they really want to get here at any cost; the last flight I took was delayed by a dent(!) in the airplane eventually deemed 'within the safety margins'. That delay earned me a hundred dollar voucher from Delta, which I'll be lucky to use while they're still solvent.

At least he's not stuck on the plane all this time - having been through a 3 hour ordeal like that once myself when a KLM shuttle had its gear collapse on landing at Heathrow.


It's an hour later and they still haven't off the ground in Pittsburgh. Cup o' Joe cafe is the only thing left open here now (and thank God there's no bar, considering my attitude right now). So I take a walk downstairs to baggage claim, eventually tracking down the sole remaining representative of US Airways - the left baggage clerk - who inhabits a small glass walled office like a solitary French functionary sweating his life away in a lonely outpost in colonial Morocco. He, like me, wants something to happen - fly it, cancel it, do something. We all just want to get home.

A fucking 25 minute flight. If he had rented a car at 10 pm, he would have been here by now.

I notice two things: I haven't passed a single security checkpoint to get here, and;
There's still quite a few left bags sitting on and around the carousels. No one around them.

Sure, they've all been checked, but it's somewhat chilling to realize how easy it would be for someone to come in from outside, carrying a case that hasn't been checked at all.

At 1 am, they finally cancel the effing flight. Great, but now one of us have to come back tomorrow morning.


Postscript: A tortuous hour and a half ride home ensued. Just about every aspect of my personality - especially the part that usually prevents me from becoming a cranky misanthrope - shut down in an effort to keep me going: Everything threatened to set me off - especially noise. With our driver exhibiting a stunning talent for finding Britney Spears and Lil Jon on the radio, I began praying for a short bout of hysterical deafness; when DS started getting hyper, her voice hitting a range of 'keening' that I cannot adequately describe, I began concentrating on swallowing my own tongue.