Disorderly Content

By a strange coincidence, my sister and I both picked this particular weekend to visit my parents in Florida. In my case it was expedience; I was in New York on business and decided to head south for the weekend before returning to the Left Coast. I don't know her reasoning, but do know her decision predated mine.

In any event, that led sister, niece and me to escape from the mind-deadening experience of a couple of noncommunicative octogenarians and head over to Fort Lauderdale for a little bit of tourist wanderings. We ended up in Los Olas, a trendy area of shops and restaurants. After taking in the sites by car, we parked and gave the area a closer look. We also noticed flashes of distant (but steadily less so) lightning and the rumble of thunder, managing to make it back to the car before the storm got serious.

Which it did, mere moments later. I drove ever so carefully back toward the Interstate, through flooded streets and occasional flashes of visibility, wishing the wipers in my rental had another setting above "high". When I got on I-95, I was surprised that traffic was not snarled, that everyone was driving well below the limit and that at least here things were draining properly. Oh, and at the noise and the brilliant bolts of lightning that showed no signs of letting up.

Finally we reached our exit, and I hoped things would get better as we headed west. That, however, was not to be; the traffic jam we didn't get on the way to, or on, the Interstate had finally arrived. After crawling and sitting for quite some time, we got close enough that I recognized the intersection with a commuter rail line. Whose lights were flashing and whose barriers, I assumed, were down. And so it was; apparently the rain had fooled the system into thinking there was a train approaching the intersection. But finally somebody reset it and we were able to get away.

It's moments like that that remind me why I don't live in Florida. Now if only I could avoid visiting...

A few days ago I read a blog rant (I tried that as blogrant but it looked kind of wrong, like it was some kind of variation on vagrant, which isn't a vague kind of rant, although it could be) about the stupidity of cell phone manufacturers. The problem is with those bleeps a phone will make when the battery gets too low. And the problem with that? That the phone will make them whenever the condition is discovered. Including in the middle of the night, when you're happier to sleep and possibly miss a call than be awakened to deal with a cranky baby bit of technology. The author of said rant pointed out quite reasonably that the phone knows what time it is, so why not hold off on the bleeping until a more civilized hour?

Seemed a good idea when I read it, although it took on rather more urgency this morning. It seems I neglected to recharge my phone since leaving New York for Fort Lauderdale on Saturday. And this morning around 5, the phone decided to complain about it. Loudly. And then again a few minutes later. And I, in a what was I thinking? moment, had left the case with my charger and other cables in the rental car. Which meant getting up, getting dressed and getting said case, in case my parents called. And again I ask, who owns whom here?

On Saturday I flew from New York to Fort Lauderdale to visit my parents. I'll avoid a rant on my feelings about southern Florida, at least for the moment. Instead I want to focus on the experience of flying a couple of days after the latest terror threat. What was remarkable about it was how largely unremarkable it was, at least for me. Granted, I didn't suffer from the inability to bring baby food or medications on board, and I have nothing but sympathy for those who did or do. And my flight was short enough that any inability to reapply deodorant mid-way wasn't going to cause a crisis of olifaction, which I hope is a word. No, what strikes me now, two days after that flight and a few hours before my next, is how easy it is to see the cynical hand of government at work in all this.

I'm not dismissing the possibility of a real attack, or even that these attackers in London were serious, determined and possibly even capable of pulling it off. But how am I to read the news that British authorities had the perpetrators under surveillance for months, that they wouldn't be ready to attack for months more, and that the arrests and announcement of the plot (and subsequent draconian security restrictions around Britain and lesser ones here) were because the Bush Administration insisted on haste? Could it be that there was more than concern for its citizens on the mind of the people in power? Could the announcement coming mere days after another stinging rebuke at the polls be more than coincidence? It wouldn't, after all, be the first time an elevated terror threat came conveniently after a report that made the Bush team look like incompetents, opportunists or outright criminals. Or even the tenth time, for that matter.

And of course the plea for more powers to wiretap every American sound strange after you learn that it wasn't anything like that that caught these would-be terrorists. No, it was old fashioned police work, helped along by a neighbor who noticed something suspicious and reported it. But of course how much easier would it be if we could have no secrets at all from our government? And how much easier to handle airport security if they just made us all fly naked? Wait, let's think about that one a while longer. Especially if included those Virgin Atlantic flight attendents...

(I was gonna classify this under travel, but now I think it really belongs under politics.)

Just two days after returning from a sweltering Chicago, I was on my way to a not much more temperate New York. It was my first flight on JetBlue, an airline I had heard mostly good things about. Sadly, there's not much any airline can do to make a long flight go by, although they do try. Not their fault that 35 channels of DirecTV doesn't offer much of interest on a Sunday afternoon, is it? And for a moment I thought I was in luck, as we arrived in New York a full 45 minutes ahead of schedule.

Yeah, right, I hear you experienced travelers snicker. And so you might, as we first had to sit in a holding pattern for thirty minutes, followed by another fifteen on the ground waiting for a gate. That was followed by the hell that is JFK, the long wait for my bag (at the wrong carousel, and then at the right one - I'd rant about that, but as long as I was forced to wait, does it really matter where?), and then the incredible 45 minutes on line to get a taxi. Basically, I spent almost as much time between arriving in New York and finally getting to my hotel as I did flying cross-country.

Which should have been the end of the adventure. Except then I had the cab driver who went right past the hotel and, when I informed him of his mistake (new hotel to me as well, but I saw the sign as we drove by), reversed his way half a block and then into a right turn. Fortunately, there's very little traffic around Little Italy that time of a Sunday night.

I checked in and asked if there was a place to eat nearby, breakfast being nine hours and three time zones ago. Turns out there was a place attached (I almost wrote "attacked") to the hotel, so I went to my room to drop my bags, admired a room so small I had to step out into the hall to change my mind, and went down to find that attacked restaurant. Opened the door and was transported to something out of the Casbah: a Moroccan restaurant with boatloads of atmosphere, no patrons beyond that group in the corner with the hookah (seriously) and about as much light as the average movie house. With a burned out projector.

But still I persisted. I asked to see a menu, which was plainly impossible under the circumstances. So the waitress gave me the short audiobook version, I ordered and settled in to not-read the book I'd brought down with me. And after the meal we had the fun time of trying to figure the tip and the total when neither I nor the young waitress could actually read the bill.

Which pretty much ended the adventure for day one. And left me wondering: do they still call New York Fun City?

Another long pause between entries. This time I have an excuse, as I'm home just briefly between my last trip (Orange County, Los Angeles and Chicago) and my next (New York and Fort Lauderdale). But this is too... well... good isn't quite the word. Interesting? Unusual?

Anyway, in the spirit of the family comedy version of The Shining and the teen comedy version of The Ten Commandments, I offer Harry Potter recast as Pride & Prejudice.

Personally, I'd never have thought of Ron as the Darcy type. Maybe if we reversed the roles. Ron as Lizzy and Hermione as Darcy? Could work.