NP: Vinnie Colaiuta, Vinnie Colaiuta

Had my first business trip in something like five years this week, which only goes part of the way to explain why I haven't been posting. The sheer amount of stuff I have to do before leaving for Germany in June has come into sharp focus lately. I'm hoping this is just my usual process of working myself into a panic well in advance of the point where I'm going to totally run out of time.

I was also reminded that, try as they might to make it look otherwise, Midway is a minor-league airport. There's something about the security check-in that just seems glaringly unprofessional to me. It didn't really move that slowly, but it was an unorganized mess that didn't inspire any confidence that you would reach the front anytime soon. Then, any delays on the runway reverberate noisily through the entire system, as there just aren't enough runways to deal with any kind of disruption.

The trip out was an interesting study in entitlement. The guy behind me in the security line tried to sneak in front of me at some point. This made no kind of sense. One place in line? What does that even get you? Unless I was just the first ring on a long chain of surreptitious movement. Then the guy sitting next to me on the plane kept sighing like Al Gore in a presidential debate every time our status was updated by the pilot on the runway. This was followed by more surreptitiousness (no, I didn't just get a word-of-the-day calendar), as he would call somebody on his cell phone well after being instructed not to use it. From what I could tell, he had some back problems as a result of carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Then there was the screaming baby to end all screaming babies, which made me very happy that I found my headphones that block out a goodly chunk of the outside world. God bless the iPod.

Dulles might just be under construction, but it didn't seem like a very nice airport. Got more quality time there on the return leg, but nothing really disabused me of that notion. The continual announcements to ignore the solicitations of cabbies is amusing. Makes me wonder if that has to do with lobbying.

Also, the "Club Lounge" in my hotel was in room 666. This could explain a lot about our government.