floorpie

Family’s great, vacation is great, travelling is great…but I’m enjoying the hell out of laying on my couch watching crap TV surrounded by spent McDonald’s wrappers right now giggling like a maniac and digging the solitude.

I’m probably supposed to be jet-lagged, and getting ready to sleep, it being 1AM “my” time; but, as per my usual, I don’t DO jetlag and feel like it’s exactly the 10:11PM it actually is. I don’t know why I’m like that, though it’s honestly a point of pride for me. One that no one else cares about (or beleives) to be sure, but, it makes me happy and proud to some degree.

It doesn’t matter where I’ve travelled, or in which direction. West to Asia, east to Europe or the coast, when I get there I’m on local time, when I’m back I’m on local time. It just doesn’t seem to matter. What does this mean about my physiology and psychology? I have no idea.

Also, I’m absolutely going to play video games in my underwear tonight.

When I’m traveling, the happiest moments for me (other than while at the destination) are when I’m walking between or to gates. iPod playing something with an edge, long strides, and a self-assured air, I’m splitting crowds and know exactly where I’m headed.

I always get a little elated at these times. Shuffling my feet down the breezeway, finally breaking free just after the ticket counter, I sidestep to the left and accelerate past the masses, weave through the seats in the waiting area and I’m in the open, a giant game of Frogger ahead of me.

I don’t know why this makes me so happy. I invariably have between three and fifteen hours of sitting in a seat ahead of me, so it can’t be the anticipation. Or maybe my sub-conscience has a larger worldview than my immediate perspective does and I’m looking forward to the destination.

Or maybe I just like stretching my legs a little. When I’m moving between gates, I don’t use the moving sidewalks, I take the stairs in lieu of escalators, and I don’t use the shuttles unless I have to.

I walk. I walk quickly.
I am alone on the stairs.
I am racing you on the moving sidewalk and winning.

And I am smiling.

The Ice! exhibit (and no, the exclamation point is not my addition) at Maryland’s Gaylord National (park? center? facility?) is cold. I’m going to gloss over the “gaylord” jokes as I’ve already used them up on Twitter and Facebook…but it does strike me as odd that people would still name something in this day and age that would leave it open for ridicule and smirks. Fantastic sense of humor, fantastically out of touch, or just don’t give a shit?

But anyway.

Ice! is this indoor ice sculpture show. Swans and deer, penguins and ice-fishing polar bears all re-created and carved from tons of ice and kept indoors at a frozen 9F. Gloves are recommended.

The blue parkas that you’re issued upon entry are partially for your warmth as you undoubtedly arrived ill-prepared for it to be THIS cold, but more to provide a frictionless surface on which to careen down the two-story ice slide unimpeded.

I’m telling you, people, this is the height of Maryland good times out here. The glee-filled shouts are coming as much from the under 10’s as they are from my parents.

Cheeziness aside, this is high-art in this medium, regardless of the observer. The final scene, the nativity naturally, rendered in splendid full-size ice. Ice Jesus looked down at lovingly by Ice Mary and a little sidelong by Ice Joseph. There are three wisemen. There are goats. There is a shepherd. The gang’s all here, man. They are lit from within and their frozen beatific smiles shine down on us: the sinners with the camera phones.

I don’t know if I like it FOR its sacrilege or despite of it.

Even so, there is something peaceful about teddy bears and guitars rendered in ice, back lit and accompanied by piped-in Christmas music. It is seriously cold, as I mentioned. Enough to instantly wipe away the headache I brought with me. How can one have a throbbing headache with the blood frozen in your veins?

It’s so cold that it is beyond cold, and there is something certain, and calming in that certainty, knowing that you need only curl up with the ice tiger to indeed drift away into a cold-induced slumber and die. It would absolutely happen at this temperature and somehow the realization of the possibility, and the certainty that you will easily escape this near-death around the next turn, makes it all the more enjoyable.

OK and it’s called “gaylord”.

on the east coast anyway. This will sound weird because it is, but tomorrow, when the family goes downstairs, there will be a stocking hung by the fireplace with my name on it that was not there the night before. Which means that Santa Claus still comes to the Kleeman house 35 years on, sponsored by 67 year old parents that still have a little imagination.

It’s weird, granted; but, it’s also exactly what the season warrants. Merry Christmas, true believers.

I shoveled snow for the first time yesterday. It wasn’t even a lot of snow; but, it was enough to realize that it isn’t something that I want to make a habit of. Why do you people live here? My working theory is so that you will appreciate places like California all the more by contrast; whereas I, lazy and stupid from over-stimulation and unearned privilege, have become complacent in my love and will only truly understand so when it is ripped from my smooth, soft fingers plump from non-work and pampering, and I am instead placed, without ceremony or consideration, into the heartland of this god-forsaken country, to run disastrously a new Kentucky branch of my company.

What?

Also, my mom and I made chicken wings last night. My favorite of all time. Incredibly easy to make but the pay-off is huge. Paired with jasmine rice and some Thai hot sauce and you’ve got yourself a mouth-party people.

This is not my home, by the way, it is where my parents live. Having grown up in an Air Force Family, I don’t really have a home in the traditional sense. As such, whenever I stay here it feels a lot like a hotel for a very detail-oriented super-chain. I’m put up in a room that is decorated tastefully; but, at the same time has some items that remind me of my childhood. How did the management know that I had these juggling bags growing up? These books? This picture of me and my date from my highschool prom? These people have done their research.

Then, in the bathroom, atop the Better Homes @ Gardens magazines is this month’s copy of Men’s Health. And, just my luck, inside our tips on how to get 6-pack abs! And dress for more sex! I need both of those things! What are the odds? Strangely, I don’t believe that either my mom or dad read Men’s Health so it’s a mystery to me how it might have ended up in the guest bathroom.

I’m telling you, the management here has done their research.

Maybe it’s because there’s no xBox or television or rock show or girl or food to hold my interest, but, I get writey when I’m travelling. If not writing, I’m sketching…sometimes both.

I’m not particulalry great at either, but it’s something that I do; and, possibly strange just to me, I never see anyone else doing it as well. Travelling alone for 20-something years, and I can’t recall a single time I’ve ever seen anyone with a sketch book. If I had, I would remember the nod and pursed-lip smile/smirk I would have given him or her.

For the most part, everyone else is either interacting with their overactive kid, or, just staring into space.

Mostly the later.

What’s the deal with airplane food? I wouldn’t know, because like thousands of other holiday travelers, my flight was canceled due to inclement weather in the DC area. It has been canceled, in fact, three times already. I was supposed to be “home” (home being in quotes as I’ve never actually lived there) on Saturday, but won’t now be there until Tuesday afternoon (weather permitting, of course).

I’ve been calm, cool, and collected the whole time…likely due to the fact that I’ve learned of the cancellations and rescheduled from the comfort of my own living room as opposed to at the ticket counter in a frenetic airport…and I don’t want to make a fuss, but, shouldn’t I be getting some kind of discount or future voucher of some kind?

I know you can’t control the weather. Where “you” is everyone in existence and in particular any representative of Delta Airlines…BUT, Delta is a business who makes a contract with its customers that says, “Hey, I’ll get you from here to there, safely, and on time.” And, by being in said business they take on the risk and responsibility of their planes breaking down, or their captains being too drunk to fly, or of weather changing the plan. It’s up to them to get me there on time, safely, and with a reasonably good attitude.

I work in consumer electronics and when we make a commitment to our customers (say Best Buy for instance) if we don’t meet those commitments we get penalized. “Oh no! China was closed for New Years and you couldn’t make me my 10,000 widgets in time? That’s terrible…PAY ME!”

So should Delta reward me for them not delivering on their commitment. Does this not make sense?

In all likelihood, when I make a stink about this at the airport (assuming I ever get a confirmed flight), the representative will fold immediately and give me something…but should I really have to ask?

Which sounds cool on paper, much like “I work on satellites” did when I worked at Lockheed, but the reality is (and was) far less glamorous. I’ve “done” London before, so there was very little that I had to see. Having to see something is not, in fact, one of the things that define me. As I often will say, I could go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower…I just don’t care that much. As long as I’m having a good time, or am doing something interesting and engaging, then I could really care less if I see the thing in person that I’ve seen a thousand times in pictures.

Strangely, there has only been one person to ask, “So have you been to Paris?” (yes), and then subsequently also ask, “And did you see the Eiffel Tower?” ([sheepishly] yes…). But that! Is not! The point!

At any rate, due to circumstances being as they were, I ended up working almost the entire time I was there (which was the point). I had hoped to have one day to roam around, but that one day didn’t come. In the end, I only had enough time to make it into London proper, meet a friend for dinner, and mosey on back out to the airport again.

But this is not why London was…meh. London was meh because (I think) once you’ve been challenged by the wilds of say, China, where no one speaks English, it’s horribly depressing, and astoundingly exotic, Great Britain just isn’t all that…interesting. It’s beautiful, yes. It’s historic (old). And they have funny names for things (take away vs take-out, loo vs restroom, lift vs elevator)…but other than that it’s just watching a Faulty Towers episode with 3d glasses on.

Perhaps I’m jaded.

Perhaps my blase attitude also had to do with the girl I like deciding that she doesn’t like me anymore while I was out of town. Possible? I remain unconvinced.

Not a day after getting motivated to travel, devil-may-care into the void, I find out that I need to go to London next week for work! Great, right? It’s a quick, turnaround trip, but it’s a whole other country all the same. The UK? Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

The thing is, when faced with the very real situation of going off on nearly a whim…I have doubts. But I just got back from Japan, I haven’t even gotten in touch with my friends yet, I have too much work (even though it’s FOR work), and I have things to do, and and and…

Silly, really. That responsibility should encroach in on what should be a mini-fantasy and remind of me the particulars of reality. But then, such is non-celluloid life.

Every time I read On the Road I feel like traveling (my favorite book, incidentally)…and I don’t mean in a lackadaisical “It would be nice to go to Hawaii in the summer” kind of way, but instead in a “I’m walking out my front door right now and not coming back for a year”.

To a lesser extent, the movie The Art of Travel did the same thing. It’s no Rear Window, to be sure; but, it is…motivating.