Scary

Happy Halloween.


http://empoweredmedia.org/fire/halloween/

WN to DEN!!

Big news today. Southwest Airlines announced today they will begin service to Denver next year.

This is good news for me, because conceviabley I will have my choice of 6 different airlines (ATA, Froniter, American, Southwest, United, and Ted) flying non-stop to 2 Chicago airports. Wow! This should really bring fares down. Its always been relatively cheap to fly to O'Hare or Midway, but lately the cost has been going up.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with ATA's gates and service out of DEN. They've always had 4 daily non stops to Midway. Recently, they started a non-stop DEN-PHX on a 757. Given TZ's bankruptcy protection, code-share agreement with WN and the routes they recently dropped, I wouldn't be surprised if we see ATA disappear from DIA by next year.

I'm also curious to see what effect this will have on Frontier. Seemingly, WN will not affect Frontiers operations overall (at least in the beginning)--there just isn't the space at DIA for another airline to come in and take a huge chunk of gates. You could argue that Southwest can get you to as many cities as F9 can, but Frontier can do them all non-stop on a brand new Airbus A319 or A318 with PTVs at every seat. Southwest will just move you on like steerage and play the hokey pokey with you.

Stay tuned...this should be interesting.

Love Is Never Simple...

Ok, so I'm back after not blogging for awhile. The past week hasn't really been busy, but I was still getting over being sick and just wasn't motivated to write anything.

I thought I'd share some pictures of some things that have happened recently in lieu of writing about them. People only come here for pictures anyway, right?

Two weeks ago, it was "All Creatures" Sunday at church. Mr. Tripp got blessed. Here's a picture of him and Toni Cook, our minister. Holy crap my face looks fat.

Later that weekend (or maybe it was the weekend before) Mark ran the Chicago marathon. I have a picture but its on my computer at home and I'm at work right now. I'll upload it later. Stay tuned, Mark fans!


Yesterday after church, I had lunch at Old Chicago in LoDo with Matt, John, and Brandon. Football was all around and so were the drunk girls in pigtails.

The title of this blog entry comes from the wonderful Bangles song, "Complicated Girl," written and peformed by the lovely and talented Michael Steele. Whenever I see Brandon I get this song in my head because it reminds me of when we first met. I fell for him kinda hard in a romantic sorta way, but knew from the get-go that it would never work out that way. He was a lot younger than I was (6 years) and we really did live in different worlds. Fortunately, we've been able to work past that and I still consider him one of my good friends.

~Why bother making rules
You know she will not follow....

Some day she'll find a way to remedy
This lovely mess he's made of you....~

Later that night, I got the Pho jones. I called Hamm, but I think she is still mad at me for wiping the floor with her at Connect Four the other night. I was however, able to talk Matt into trying some chicken Pho and all was well.


Things are really starting to go well with Lenny, previously known as L.S. here on munderblog.blogspot.com. He's proof to me that love is never simple. Sometimes I think we're kind of an unlikely pair, but it really seems to work. He's the first boyfriend I've had that actually seems to give a shit about me and treats me well consistently. He was over Sunday night and showed me the website of his hometown, Bracketville, Texas. Click through to their site and check out the Bracket News. Yee haw! This place is the way I always pictured Texas. I wonder if I can get Cutty at the Alibi Lounge. Hmmm...

Tonight on Monday Night Football its the Colts v Rams. Matt and John, the famous Colts fans, are having a little get together at their house to watch the game. I'm bringing Lenny. He's never met any of my friends so this is going to be interesting. Matt, John, Samm, Lusty, Lonz, Haggis....yikes!!!

Farewell Scooter

A few weeks ago when I was in Bloomington, a stray dog showed up on my sister's doorstep. They live in a fairly rural neighborhood so a random dog showing up every now and then isn't that unusual. Typically, its some dog from down the street out for a walk. Paul, Patti, Katie, Mark and I were out and about and were planning to go to the orchard to get some cider to drink later that night. When we got back to the house, this dog was just sitting on their front porch at the door looking like he was waiting to come home.

The mystery pooch was all white with a few black spots and was not wearing a collar. He did have a cut on his neck and there was a noticeable bulge where an infection had been festering for awhile. Otherwise, he was fine. He was pretty friendly, played well with Alex and was super happy to see us all. Kate gave him some food and it seemed, judging by the speed at which he cleaned out the bowl, like he hadn't eaten in days.

Since the weekend was busy and Katie and Mark didn't really know if they could take on another pet at that moment, they took him to a shelter where we thought he'd get medical treatment for his infection then, hopefully, placement in a good home.

To our surprise, the shelter wasn't too eager to take him since he was injured and they didn't have a vet on on staff. They finally agreed to take him and told my sister they'd call her with an update later in the day. The shelter called later and let us know that they were able to find a microchip in the dog so they would start the process of locating the owner.

My sister just emailed me to tell me that the vet the chip tracked to had no record of any owner of the dog. Furthermore, the dog didn't pass a "temperament" test so it was deemed unsuitable to be adopted and has been euthanized. Katie feels like she killed the dog.

I'm really bummed right now.

Having a pet will change you forever. You look at life completely differently. The biggest mind fuck is having a relationship with another being that is neither human nor speaks English, yet is one of the most intimate relationships you've ever had.

I don't know if this dog had a name, but I'll call him Scooter. Farewell, Scooter. I'm glad we got to meet and I'm sad we couldn't become better friends.

Apathy

Ok, so I admit I haven't really been keeping up with this Harriet Miers nomination stuff. All I can think is she strikes a ressemblence to a woman that had done Colorado proud. If only I could think of a term of endearment meant for a woman that starts with a C....hmmmm....

Lifetimes

Ok! I'm back after my trip to Indiana and the subsequent resting needed after my late arrival in Denver Monday morning (read on).

The trip was a lot of fun. Last Wednesday, Hamm took me to Denver International Airport via Sonic for my flight to Indianapolis. Most of you know how much I love airplanes so any trip to the airport is the highlight of my week no matter if I'm flying myself or just picking someone up.

I flew on United Airlines for the first time in about 3 years. I needed to use miles to take this trip and United came through for me. I was lucky to get a non-stop flight from Denver to Indianapolis on a 737-500. The picture you see is N927UA--the actual plane I boarded! This is an older picture so the aircraft no longer has the "Shuttle by United" titles on the side. As soon as I got on board I plugged into channel 9 on the audio system which allows you to listen to all the communications between the cockpit and ATC.

As we taxied out we were behind two UA Boeing 777-200s. The aircraft you see here is N794UA (777-200/ER) that was in line in front of us for takeoff. This aircraft was operating as UA289 and the voice from the cockpit was female. I was wondering if it could have been the famous Meryl Getline, who writes a column in the USA Today travel section, "Ask the Captain".

The flight to IND was pretty uneventful until the end. There was some severe weather just west of Indianapolis which caused us to fly around a bit. I heard ATC clear us to land on runway 23R at IND and I was mad because it was cloudy and I wasn't going to be able to see the visual details of our arrival. But, just as I heard that, the clouds parted and I saw the pyramids. We turned right just over the Keystone area, zoomed over downtown Indy, then were cleared for an ILS approach to 23R.

Once I arrived, Brian picked me up and we did some running around. I hadn't been in downtown Indianapolis in years and I could definitely tell I was in the midwest. I'm not used to seeing huge entrances to elevated freeways in the middle of old neighborhoods. The number of trees also blew me away. From here we drove down to Elletsville to my sister's house and my weekend began.

My friends Craig and Marly got married and I was an usher in their ceremony. Specifically, I was given the title "Captian of the Ushers." I had 4 other ushers on my team and we definitely had our work cut out for us. Not only did we have a bride with a meticulous eye for detail on our hands, we also had to seat 200 guests in the Oak Room of the Caynon Inn at McCormick's Creek state park. The ceremony went off without a hitch and reception was fantastic. I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time, including some guys that were my floor mates on Curry 4 my freshman year at IU. Wow!!

After everything was over on Sunday, I had to fly back here to Denver via O'Hare International Airport in Chicago. The return trip was a total mess due to weather in Chicago and I didn't end up getting home to my apt until 3am Monday. Ugh. I apologize for not having all the fun aircraft details I collected from my outbound trip, but the conditions didn't allow me to get them. I can tell you I had the privilege of flying on a 757-200 from ORD to DEN which pretty much made the trip worthwhile. The 757 is definitely my favorite civil aircraft and I don't get to fly on one very often. Its true what they say though...high thrust. Really good sex is the only other thing that can compare to riding on this rocket ship.



Some high level highlights of the trip:

• Economy plus on the way to IND
• Being picked up and driving to Bloomington with Brian
• Spending time with one of my best friends
• Seeing my sister and brother in law
• Upland Oktoberfest
• Listening to Sheryl Crow's wildflower
• Celebrating Craig and Marly's love
• Realizing that I'm not alone and I have some of the best friends and family anyone could ask for
• Learning a lot about love and what it means to be good to yourself.
• Realizing that you should never settle for second best and the true reward in life is to have relationships filled with unconditional love and laughter at all times.
• The 757 on the way home

We could live lifetimes in a single day

No matter what you do, I'll love you anyway