Today was a travel day--starting out in Victoria and ending up in San Jose.
The Victoria International Airport, which has at least two flights to and from Seattle daily, because I've been on them, is a nice airport for what it does, which is providing commuter hops to the majors. Flights in are a mix of medium to large turbo-props, and smaller jets. There's a Las Vegas gambler special that looks to be a retrofit 737, and that's the biggest jet I've seen land there.
We ended up getting to the airport early because Chuq and I had no idea where we were going to clear customs and immigration. On the ferries, you clear immigration before you get on and customs afterwards. At Vancouver Int'l, you do both before you get on the flight to the States.
Well, we didn't do either in Victoria. We did go through security at the airport, which was pretty close to what TSA does in the States, but a bit more relaxed.
Then we waited for the flight to show up. Since we knew we were taking a Q200 turbo-prop out of Victoria, we knew what was going to show up at the door. In the meantime, we watched the smaller jets and larger planes all doing their rendition of the last five minutes of "Airplane!", or at least coming darn close to it.
The plane showed up, disgorged its 20 or so passengers, and we got on. There were about 20 of us on the 37 seater, and once we were all in place and the baggage in the hold set up properly (in this small of a plane, you have to pay some attention to not making things lopsided). We took off. We had a fairly stiff wind coming out of the north, and between starting out 10 minutes early (the joy of commuters--if everyone has arrived, and you can get a slot on the runway, you *go*), we ended up at SeaTac about 30 minutes ahead of schedule. Which, by the way, was darn close to having us show up earlier than we were supposed to have taken off.
The flight attendant told us that there would be someone from customs and immigration to take us off the plane, and run us through both. Aha! First we had to collect our luggage and promise to not open it unless we were asked to.
It took about 10 minutes to get through both immigration and customs, mainly because they were on different floors. Then it was off to security *again*, so the TSA could check us out before we were allowed back in to the main part of the terminal.
And then it was off to terminal C. Oy. Today is one of the *big* travelling days in the US--all the people who took off for Thanksgiving come back in. So, of course, flights are going to be late. And over-subscribed as well--every flight that was called started out with "okay, we sold too many tickets, and we need this many people to volunteer to not fly out until tomorrow, and those lucky people will get put up for the night and get a free round trip ticket to wherever we go! (Followed by descriptions of much better places than most were going to that day).
When the terminal looks like you could find open crates, chickens, and old ladies in babushkas wandering about, it's *too* crowded. It was too crowded.
Note--I do the SJC/SEA round trip every six weeks or so. I have the C&D concourses of SeaTac memorized. I have never seen the place look like what it did today.
So, our 2:35PM flight, which was rescheduled for 2:53 PM, and was oversold by 7, finally left the ground at 3:02PM. We were told by the Captain that 1) we had a nice strong north wind that would get us in to SJC in about 1hr 28 min, and 2.) we would have a nice clear flight.
Well, #1 was correct. #2 was a crock. We hit turbulence in southern Washington and it followed through Oregon. This is the same place we hit the last time, and it's over the same effing coastal range we now fly over because no one wants to be near Mount St Helens when it blows up.
Feh.
One of these days I will meet the person who designed the Boeing 737, and I will kick the living shit out of him. That has to be the most uncomfortable jet currently available. And it must be cheap to run, because everyone keeps buying more of them. The damn thing bounces in turbulence like a ping pong ball in a pot of boiling water. Trouble is, Alaska only seems to run their MD80's north, which means there's either a pile of them somewhere, or they make a big loop to come back to SJC. In any case, I can't seem to get an MD80 going south, so every time I head back from SEA, it's the "E"-ticket freakout ride.
And no ice cream this time, either. I think Alaska pulled the more interesting snacks for Thanksgiving week, because the amateurs don't know any better. Believe me, there is no better way to get a bunch of computer types on the "taking the I-5 at 32K feet" run to get quiet and happy than to hand out the Dixie cups full of vanilla ice cream. Shuts them up for at least 30 minutes, and on a 2 hour flight, that's remarkable.
So, without much more hassle, we landed at SJC. Looks like we brought the weather with us--there's frost in the forecast tonight.
At least, that's what I thought--I had pain and tingling through my left ankle radiating down through my left foot. I had recently "twanged" an ankle ligament (those of you who have done this will know exactly what I mean--at the time it happens, the ligament acts like a slack guitar string), so I wrote it off as the aftermath.
Then then pain radiated up past my knee and into my outer thigh. Okay, more of the same--I was driving 6-8 hours a day, and it wouldn't be the first time I had caused a secondary injury by overcompensating around the joint.
Then there was the night when I couldn't get to sleep because both feet burnt and tingled so badly. And I couldn't sit comfortably, because the cramping and pain in my lateral quads and hamstrings were so bad. First I thought it was beause I had been way overdoing it on the hamstring machine. Cutting down on that didn't do any good. Taking hot baths didn't help. Slathering my feet with liniment and wearing socks to bed didn't do anything but make the skin on my heels really soft.
And did I mention that my toes had taken on a life of their own, along with the soleus and gastrocnemius? And that my hands had decided to join the fun? As bad as it was, trying to find a comfortable position that wasn't completely prone, it was not being able to type because my hands were spasming, or so sore from the spasming that drove me into the Doctor's office.
He took one look at what was going on, and said--Calcium deficicency. Now, I've been the poster child for the dairy industry for most of my life, and I *like* eating leafy greens. How the heck did I develop a Calcium deficiency? And then the bloodtests, and finding the Magnesium deficiency that came along for the ride.
So, serious Calcium and Magnesium supplements. Nothing happened for a couple of days, and then *zing*. Or better yet, lots less *zing*. The major pain and cramping went away.
It keeps getting better every day, but it looks like I'm going to spend the 80% of the recovery time getting rid of the last 20% of the symptoms.
I'd really, really like to wake up in the morning, toddle off to the washroom, and not have my toes dance. But I'll take actually being able to properly *feel* my feet as a major victory.
And I can finally get my fingers to type again.
I'm in Canada, but most of the functionality of my phone is not. I could understand no web on the phone, but no SMS? Nope--SMS is part of "Sprint PCS Vision", and not part of the standard service.
And here's the kicker--there is a Sprint Canada, and *they* offer text messaging.
It's not like I'm somewhere in the bush where I ought to be using satellite phone, either--I'm in Victoria, which last time I checked, was still the provincial capitol.
Maybe Sprint has it in for the BC gov't.....
When you realize that this is the first day in two weeks where you haven't had to carry your lunch around from one meeting to the next.
My current record is two complete round trips between two buildings over 2 1/2 hours. I finally gave up on lunch at 3PM that day.
Part of being multiply degreed is that you also get multiple alumni associations. Even better, when the school you graduated from splits into two or more schools--well, then you get to hear from all of those schools.
So, within the last week I've received mail from Purdue, Stanford, and San Jose State.
What did I get?
San Jose State sent me an offer for alums from Blockbuster. I've noticed this about SJSU--they seem to go out of their way to try and find goodies for the alums. They still hit me up for cash, but at least they're attempting to offer something in return.
Stanford sent the on-line course catalog. This is like being four years old again, and getting the Sears Christmas catalog four times a year. I note that the "spacecraft design" class has returned for a second quarter. Hmmmmmm
Purdue hits me up for money. This time through, the school of Science wants me to hand over some cash so they can have a more diverse student body. The wording is odd--they make it sound like they need to bribe the students to attend. On the other hand, having attended Purdue, maybe that's not so far off.
I wish Purdue would make some sort of effort to offer something, anything, to the alums who aren't sending them $100K to the athletic dept (yeah, the "you can get tickets to the Rose Bowl--all you have to do is hand over six figures to the football team fund" deal they pulled still stinks. And so was selling tickets meant for the student body to the highest bidder.). They're shameless--completely and utterly shameless.
But it must work, or else they wouldn't keep at it.
In this week's Maclean's, there's an interview/excerpt by Peter C. Newman about the exceptionally unlovely and uncharming Barbara Amiel.
Those who don't follow Canadian or UK media or business might only recognize Amiel as the wife of Conrad Black, who is currently in really deep yogurt regarding his business practices.
Amiel makes Ann Coulter look like a socialist. Nope, she makes Ann Coulter look like a socialist who alternates chronically ingesting Ecstacy and Prozac.
Newman gives us all a lovely view into the wreck that was going to take almost 40 years to come ashore. Yeah, he made a lot of money off of her, although my usual reaction to seeing one of her columns was to roll my eyes and move on--I guess she attracted a lot of readers who wanted to see the latest installment.
But given her antics in the workplace, and outside of it, you'd think that someone would tried to stop the trainwreck to be. From the looks of it, she caused a lot of people a lot of grief over the past thirty years, and you have to wonder how much of that could have been avoided if Newman had been more interested in dealing with the problem than profiting off of it.
Mount St Helens didn't take the week off. Here's the volacanic activity statement.
The lava dome has been rising as well. At this point, I'd think the volcanologists might have been happier if Mount St Helens had gone off and settled back down.
I work on the 14th floor of a large office building, so I spend a lot of time dealing with the elevators. I was headed downstairs when one guy got on the elevator, immediately pressed the "door close" button, and when we arrived, put his hands between the elevator doors, and tried to pry them apart to get out of the elevator a couple of seconds faster.
Time for that guy to switch to decaf.
An update--the polling place did everything but put paper ballots and marking instruments in our hands. We were asked multiple times if we wanted to vote using paper ballots. We were told that if we did paper, there was no wait after sign-in. At sign-in, we were asked again.
Not every polling place in Santa Clara county is attempting to force people to use the machines....
Arrived at the poll at 7:30AM. Finally got to vote at 8:20AM. When I left, it looked like the wait was going to be about 60-90 minutes.
That's with 5 electronic voting machines, and the option at the time you sign in to do electronic or paper.
That's a *massive* turnout for this precinct.