Random Ramblings

- The Moose, who just started first grade, is interested in US Presidents and has a couple books about Presidents and likes a few YouTube videos with songs about the Presidents. Because of this, he can now list all of the American Presidents in order. It is really, really amazing, and I felt a little dumb as I needed to double-check if he was right. Do you know that the 11th-14th Presidents in order are Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, and Pierce without looking it up?

- As a bit of a tangent, you don't hear about many (any?) kids named Rutherford or Millard. These could be ideas for names for boy #3.

- Last week, I received a phone call, a text message, and an e-mail all at the same time with my child's bus information. That's efficiency! Of course, he doesn't take the bus to school, but we know the bus number and times if he did.

- The Moose's school had an open house along with a carnival last week. Near the end of the event, Pedro Tulo (age 3) decided that he wanted to climb up one of the giant inflatables. The only problem: he was a little scared about coming down, so I had to climb up and slide down with him.

- Over the weekend, I participated in an auction fantasy football draft via a video conference. At the same time, I was at my niece's birthday party with my The Moose at a trampoline/bounce house place. As expected, both when poorly. I didn't do a very good job with the draft, and I basically ignored my son during the entire party. (He was busy jumping and then eating, so he was fine...I hope.)

- Five years ago, I spent $64 on quarterbacks Cam Newton and Matthew Stafford as part of the auction draft. This year, I got the same two quarterbacks for a combined $6.

- Thanks to a free trial of Showtime, I'm finally watching Homeland. I just finished the amazing first season, but I'm not sure if I should continue. While I've enjoyed the first two episodes of season two, I heard that the show goes downhill after the first season. I guess I'll stick with it.

- I also watched a show called Search Party that aired in late 2016 on USA. Search Party stars Arrested Development's Alia Shawkat and is a "single-camera dark comedy about four self-absorbed twenty-somethings who become entangled in an ominous mystery when a former college acquaintance suddenly disappears." It's an odd show with several unlikeable characters but strangely worth watching because of Shawkat and guest appearances by Ron Livingston and Rosie Perez. The show actually had a really cool ending, and I'm curious to see if there's a season two. I don't know where the show would go from the end of season one, but I would tune it.

- On Tuesday night, 19 year-old Frances Tiafoe took arguably the greatest men's tennis player of all time to a 5th set in the first round of the US Open. I really wanted Tiafoe to win. If you've never heard of him (which is likely unless you really follow tennis), this Washington Post profile about him is definitely worth a read.

- Finally, here's something very random. Someone I know wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about North Korea. I definitely wasn't expecting to see this on my Facebook feed!

How I Escaped Tropical Storm Isaac

Did you know that I travelled to Florida this past weekend? Probably not since I posted nothing about this here, on Twitter or on Facebook. I arrived in West Palm Beach on Friday afternoon just in time to see only the third film I’ve watched in the theater this year, The Expendables 2. I didn’t see the first film, so I worried that I wouldn’t be able to follow along. It turns out that there wasn’t much plot to follow other than lots of shooting with people and things getting blown up. (Should that have been a spoiler alert?)

Anyway, on Saturday afternoon, it appeared that Tropical Storm Isaac would cause havoc on South Florida meaning possible flight cancellations. US Airways posted a travel advisory that you could change your flight without a change fee, but that only applied to flights departing on Monday or Tuesday. My 1:30 Sunday afternoon flight was still on time, but I had some doubts. Finally, around 8:15 on Sunday morning, I received an automated call from US Air notifying me about my flight cancellation, wishing me good luck in getting out of South Florida and expressing disbelief that I spent $64 between quarterbacks Cam Newton and Matthew Stafford as part of an auction draft in a one QB fantasy football league. The recording didn’t actually state the last two sentences, but I know the voice was thinking this.

Time to evaluate options. I needed to get back Sunday night to see my family and to get to work on time Monday morning. Every flight out of Palm Beach or Fort Lauderdale to Washington, either Dulles or National, was booked. US Air could get me on Monday morning flight, but there was no guarantee I would get out particularly since the worst weather was expected for Sunday afternoon/evening and most school districts already cancelled school for Monday.

My solution: rent a car and drive north. The US Air agent admired my resourcefulness (though she didn’t comment on my fantasy football drafting results) and even though everything was booked from Orlando, there were seats for me on a flight from Jacksonville to Charlotte and Charlotte to Dulles. Daytona Beach is actually closer than Jacksonville, but who knew that they had an airport? (Apparently, not me. I ended up calling US Air on the road and learned that a flight out of Daytona Beach would get to Charlotte earlier, but I would still be on the same Charlotte to Dulles flight.)

So I had a relatively uneventful 275-mile drive to Jacksonville Airport. I arrived at the US Air ticket counter around 2:05 with plenty of time for my 3:30 flight. However, I decided to ask if there were any possibilities to get into DC earlier. The agent stated that there was a 2:30 flight going directly to National (I’ve been on this flight several times), but that since it was after 2:00, boarding already started, and it was too late to get on the plane. Jacksonville isn’t that big of an airport, so I figured that I had a chance to arrive at the gate before the plane doors closed. I walked briskly to security and amazingly made it through security in record time. It was at this point that I realized that I had a legitimate chance to make the flight. Therefore, I channeled my inner OJ (minus the “alleged” murders).



I made it to the gate as the last group got called and approached the gate agent…who informed me that the flight was full. Oh well. I ended up flying into Dulles through Charlotte and was able to see my family before bedtime. Then, I picked up my car from National Airport on Monday morning before work.

I should have an exciting conclusion or morale of the story, but unfortunately, I have neither. I guess I can share that US Air's customer service folks and gate agents were extremely nice and quite helpful. Actually, I do have a unique experience that occurred on my trip down to Florida, but I’ll save that for tomorrow.