8:30am EST: On a plane to Chicago right now. Had to get up at 5am this morning to make it to la guardia by 6am. Jammie made me breakfast – pancakes and scrambled eggs – then took me to the airport.

I’m listening to lots of lame podcasts that I downloaded last night. Right now its the Mary and Karla Show. Before that it was 3 episodes of Digital Flotsam which were all great. Been downloading lots of random podcasts this week to listen to on my train rides to the city. Last week I listened to a group of nerds obsess over Harry Potter movies and theorize over all
kinds of mundane details on Mugglecast. I like Harry Potter but not enough to put that much time and thought into it. Also listened to lots of RBPC (Really Bad Podcast). This is all much more entertaining than the old 1940’s radio plays I downloaded for the plane ride to NYC.

Apparently I get the kids immediately after arriving home tonight, all weekend, all day Monday (no school) and Tuesday morning. Which is nice since I’ve really been missing them the past couple weeks.

Jammie has gotten me completely addicted to American Idol over the past week. This season started last week and we watched all the episodes. I think this will be the first network TV show I’ve been into since the late 90’s. Last show I remember being into was The Pretender. Jammie’s most frequent quote during the shows: “You know that guy is on your forums.” Every time some weird spaz was auditioning.

Captain just announced 50 minutes until Chicago. Now on episode 14 of Mary and Karla.

12:48 EST: After 90 minutes in the airport, now on my way to Portland. Four hour flight. Started reading The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain which Jammie found at a street vendor for me the other day. Already halfway through it since it’s very short. Reminds me of Stephen King’s Needful Things.

Colleen wrote me another email during my layover, asking if I could take the kids until Wednesday morning instead. At this rate, I’ll make up my two weeks absence by the end of this week. So yay!

Just used my Pocket PC to search for other bluetooth devices in range. At least one person has their cell phone on. OMG FAA HAX!

1:15 PST – Made it to Portland. Sitting on a city train, waiting for it to leave for the Amtrak station. If all goes well, I should be in Albany within 3 hours. This day has gone by surprisingly fast. I finished the new Mark Twain book which was a really great read.

2:45pm PST – My Amtrak is running 90 minutes late, of course. Ugh… Saw a cool arcade a few blocks away. Might go there and play some games.

10:30 PST – Man, Amtrak SUCKS. When I got there and bought my ticket, I was happy that I arrived just 5 or 10 minutes before it was scheduled to leave. The guy told me that it was running an hour late. No big deal, I sat around outside and listened to some guy play his guitar for an hour. During that hour they added another 30 minutes. During the 30 minutes, they added another 45 minutes. During the 45 minutes, they added more time. Then more. Then they teased us by calling everyone up to exchange our tickets for boarding passes and had us stand by the door to wait for the train which would be there in about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes passes, they announce that it will be another 20 minutes. It finally left the station 3 1/2 hours after it was scheduled to.

The part that really sucked was the way they kept gradually increasing the delay time. If they could have just told me from the beginning that it was going to be 3 1/2 hours late, I could have found something fun in Portland to do for 3 1/2 hours. Instead I was stuck in the Amtrak station for 3 1/2 hours. Everyone I know who rides Amtrak has these insane delay experiences. Next time I take a trip to Portland, I’m looking into Greyhound. I should find that guy in the Albany Amtrak station and punch him for assuring me that Amtrak is rarely late, nearly making me miss my plane.

It took a little under 2 hours to get to Albany, which is the normal time by train. I started up another book, listened to more Podcasts and chatted on Yahoo for most of the ride. When we arrived in Albany it was drizzling a little and I couldn’t find my unbrella in my suitcase, so I quickly walked home. House was freezing, 55 degrees, since I turned the furnace off for my 2 weeks. Colleen brought the kids over. Stayed up for just a couple hours, watched some ALF, went to bed.

Let’s see…Saturday we were lazy. Slept until after noon, bummed around the house all day, cleaned Jammie’s room, watched House and House II and we declared it no pants day.

Sunday…we were going to go pantsless on the 6 train to be part of some wacky flash mob, but it was too cold for that so we watched Creepshow instead. It’s a good thing, too, since a few people were charged with disorderly conduct for the no-pants thing. Would have been hilarious to get Jammie arrested, though.

After Creepshow, went to a psychic fair. When we got there, we discovered it wasn’t so much a fair, but a very small room to the side of a coffee shop with a few tables. The people hawking their goods at the tables outnumbered the amount of customers there. As we approached each table to look at the merchandise, the new-age hippy-looking 40-something behind the table eyed us like a vulture, pleading with their eyes for us to by something. You could see the disappointment on their faces when we walked away empty handed. This one girl had stacks of her unframed “art” for sale – water color and crayon hippie designs on posterboard. It reminded me the shit kids drew in middle school. She only wanted $40 for each of them. We quickly passed by the 3 psychic reading tables – they wanted $30.00 per reading. Considering the number of $5.00 psychics we see every other block in the city, fuck that.

Walked around for awhile, went to The Container Store, Barnes & Noble and a few street vendors. Then we went for some pizza and to an improv show at the 78th Street Theater Lab. It was a small show – the audience was only double the size of the cast. Pretty slow-paced but occasional bits of hilarity. They asked for the names of fictional movies and Jammie yelled out “Phone Losers of America” and they did a movie review on it – turned out to be a club of serial killers called the Phone Losers of America who murdered people over the phone by making them swallow their cell phones. Or something like that. I recorded the whole act with my cell phone but the quality is too horrible to put up.

Yesterday, I wandered Manhattan for an hour or so before picking up Jammie from work. Then we (Jammie, Rob, Mara and me) went to see Billy Joel in concert at Madison Square Garden! The show was incredible, probably one of the best concerts I’ve been to this century. Oh wait, it’s the only. I don’t think I’ve been to a real concert since Aerosmith in 1999. But yeah, it was great. I thought I was a hard-core Billy Joel fan, but I ended up recognizing only maybe 60% of what he played. And then I only knew the lyrics to about half of those.

Last night we went bar hopping. The first was a place called Montien. I got to meet a guy who I was in some kind of massive IRC war 10 years ago that I barely remember. We patched things up by drinking a few shots together and I gave him a PLA button as a peace offering. I guess us PLA types harassed his channel, called #stuy95. Apparently this is chronicled in some old PLA issues.

Next was Coyote Ugly. That’s a blur. It was too crowded but didn’t last very long. Then some other bar for the rest of the night until about 1am. All night people seemed to know me from Jammie’s journal, which was weird for me. At the last bar, a girl greeted me by saying, “You’re the one who gave me Corey Feldman’s cell phone number!” Met lots of people whose names I’ve heard referenced often over the past 7 months. Got home at 2:30am.

This morning I walked around about 8 blocks, looking for the post office. Finally found it. That sure was exciting. Tonight we’re watching some 80’s Eddie Murphy standup thing with Rob and Mara. Guess I’m going to try and finish up my stuff here earlyish and go to the city to wander around for a few hours. Still need to find some kind of souvineer thing for Payton. We found Emily a kickass charm bracelet the other night at a giftshop.

Later that day…

I went to Manhattan and had lunch with Jammie at the Trailer Park Cafe, which murd0c recommended the last time I was in town. I had sloppy joes and tater tots. Took Jammie back to work, then went for long walks. Visited the World Trade Center site. Then walked to Battery Park, hoping to find something for Payton with the vendors. Failed to find anything worth getting. Then decided to walk back to Times Square instead of taking the Subway, with just 90 minutes to get there. I didn’t make it. A little over an hour later, I was only halfway there so I found a Subway and got to Jammie’s work just in time.

We walked to a bar where her employees were all gathered. Stayed for about 30 minutes, then left. Got a Subway home and then napped for an hour. Rob showed up, then we went to Duane Reade to pick up Mara from the Subway. Got junk food, then went home to watch Eddie Murphy’s Delirius. Which was probably one of the best standup shows I’ve ever watched. Somehow I never managed to see it until now. Actually, I’ve never seen anything Eddie Murphy has done from the 80’s, aside from his SNL stuff which I have on VHS.

After that we all drove back into Manhattan (minus Rob) to see Underworld with Anontio, Sergei and some girl whose name I forget. Made it to the theater just as it was starting – to find out that it was sold out. Everything was sold out, in fact. Who’d have thought that the movie theater in Times Square would be sold out on a Friday night?? So instead, we all went to Antonio’s apartment and ended up watching Team America. Left his apartment at 3:30am, got home around 4:30, crashed immediately.

Last night I was wandering around Woodside for about an hour, killing time while waiting for Jammie’s train to arrive. Around 8pm, I sit down on a bench in front of Duane Reade and notice a man eyeing me. A minute later he walks over and says hello. I reply, “hi.” He asks how I’m doing and I say something like, “Oh, just fine” in a dismissing tone. Apparently I have a very good dismissing tone because he walks away without asking me for money.

But then he wanders back a minute later and asks if I can spare a dollar. I tell him no and he jokes around with something like, “What happened to the days when they asked you for a quarter? Now it’s always a dollar! Ha ha.” He apologizes for asking, we bid each other farewell and he leaves again. What’s strange about this guy is that he’s clean cut, dressed nice, speaks well and clearly isn’t used to asking strangers for money.

Here’s the bizarre part…he comes back again and apologizes, once again, for asking me for money. Then he tells me, “We’re out here looking for someone” as he walks off, and in a reassuring tone he tells me that I’m not the one “they” are looking for. A few seconds later he’s disappeared around the corner, behind Duane Reade and out of sight. Cop? Crazy man? Homo? All of the above? You be the judge…

Tonight we’re going to see Avenue Q. Last night we watched the American Idol premiere, which is only the 3rd time I’ve ever watched it in the 4 years that it’s been on. I’m having a great time here so far. Over the weekend we visited some motion picture historical place which was lots of fun. I rewired Jammie’s TV and installed shelves in the kitchen. And next week we might see Billy Joel. Here’s a few pictures…

	Jammie being a weather girl on a chromakey screen
	This is some weird strobe light animation thing. It ruled.
	After installing shelves, I OMG HAX some washers on the table.

I got to experience my very first New York tragedy today! It was so great! A big fuel tanker tipped over on the BQE, eexploded 8,000 gallons of fuel and an overpass collapsed on top of it! All right here in Woodside, near Jammie’s house. They even closed down the #7 train, which the the one we take to get to the city. We heard lots of fire trucks and helicopters so I looked out the window and saw 2 helicopters and thick black smoke. Jammie went out later and told me there were actually 6 helicopters so I turned on the news to find out what was happening. Exciting tragedies should happen more often! (It’s okay, somehow nobody was hurt during all this.) Here’s the news story on it all.

Got to the Chicago airport 20 minutes early. They didn’t have any food that I wanted so I settled for chips and cheese and Sprite. Pretty much every flight leaving Chicago was delayed by an hour or two, including mine. At some point I’m talking to Jammie when she gets a call from Nate, wanting to know what my flight number is. After I hang up with Jammie, I eventually end up calling the PLA Voice Bridge and hear Nate and Mgross (and somebody else I think) in a phone call with some airport lady, trying to contact me with some kind of an emergency. Something to do with my wife being pregnant and me being in Chicago to visit my girlfriend.

Eventually I get paged at the airport so I go to the desk and tell them that I’m Brad Carter. This really nice old man seems genuinely concerned and tells me that I got an emergency phone call from a doctor. He tells me the doctor’s name and asks if I know him and I tell him yes. The entire time, I’m on the bridge with my cell phone so everyone can hear me retrieving my message. The old man hands me a note, telling me my doctor’s name and the phone number to the bridge. He tells me good luck and that he hopes it all works out okay. I respond with something like, “Yeah, my wife, when she had her last baby she died so we’re hoping that doesn’t happen again.” Both the old man and the lady next to him give me an, “Oh my!” (or something like that) to let me know they understand what I must be going through. Then I walk away, leaving them to be confused about the statement.

So that was fun. Thanks for making my flight delay a little more interesting!

My flight finally left at 11:20 and got to NYC about 2 hours later. There was a big thunderstorm over the airport so they had to circle around a few times, waiting for the storm to pass which seemed to take forever. We landed at 3:00am. Here’s countykid’s take on last night’s events.

I just barely made my 1:30pm flight. Barely, as in running up to the gate, out of breath, just as they were going to close the door.

The Amtrak got me to the station around 12:15. Just 30 minutes late which wasn’t so bad. I resisted the urge to get into a taxi, and instead walked 8 or so blocks through Chinatown in the rain to the Max stop. By then it was 12:30 and it’s a 30 minute train ride to the airport. We arrived at the airport at 1:05.

I walked as quickly as I could to the security checkpoint, to find 3 horribly long lines. I picked the shortest one and spent my time sending nervous text messages to Jammie.

The line moved quickly enough, then the guy wanted to hand search my jacket pockets since I had so much weird-looking metal stuff in there. By now it’s 1:25. A text message from Jammie reads, “RUN!” So I do, carrying my shoes, laptop, jacket, backpack, suitcase, lucky bowling pin and my glow in the dark snorkle.

The overhead PA announces a final boarding call for my flight and thankfully tells me the gate number since I hadn’t managed to get that yet. Luckily it’s fairly close – gate A9. I arrive right at 1:30, the closest I’ve ever come to missing a flight.

I’m on the plane now and it’s 3:13 PST, drinking a Pepsi, bored to death but happy not to be stranded in the airport for the night. Only 2.5 hours til Chicago.

I skipped breakfast this morning and we didn’t even get pretzels or peanuts on this flight. I’m gonna be starving when we reach Chicago. Hopefully the bar there has decent food.

So Vanessa set me up on a flight on a Friday the 13th AND on a full moon. If I still had life insurance, I might be suspicious. Pretty uneventful train ride so far. Lots of flooding in the scenery. Looks like we’ll be just 20 minutes late arriving in Portland. Hey, Mgross, I’ll be in Chicago for an hour if you’d like me to buy you a beer. Oh wait, Mgross doesn’t use LJ. He uses Cal’s.

Ugh, our train is completely stopped right now. Maybe we’ll be more than 20 minutes late. Ah well, I should still have plenty of time to catch the plane.

It’s a rare thing for me to have a “hectic” day but I think tomorrow will indeed be hectic. Or maybe just a little stressful. No, not stressful. Worrisome. Perhaps not so worrisome as …wait, yeah. Worrisome. Just for a few hours in the morning, then it worrisome is upgraded to just plain bored for the rest of the day. Assuming that I make it to my plane on time, that is.

So tomorrow I get up, get the kids ready for school and take them 30 minutes earlier than usual which is 8:30am. (School doesn’t start until 9:00 here. WTF.) Then I speed back home, park my car, get my suitcase and backpack and WALK to the train station. Probably in the rain so add an umbrella to that. Hopefully it’s just a drizzle. But it’s only maybe a 10 – 15 minute walk. I’m supposed to be at the train station at 9:15 but it doesn’t leave until 9:45 and I don’t have baggage to check.

I’m supposed to arrive in Portland at 11:45am and my flight to NYC leaves at 1:30pm. The metro train is 6 blocks from the Amtrak station and it leads right into the airport. It takes maybe 20 – 30 minutes to get from the metro to the airport. All this is pretty easy but my worry is that the Amtrak will get delayed. And if that happens, I’m pretty screwed. And Amtrak sure seems to get delayed a lot from what I’ve observed. There’s the el_jefe incident from last year and then Nate’s delays this year. I remember my trip from Portland to Texas 10 years ago was delayed consistently for the entire trip. The Albany Amtrak guy assured me today that this is a very reliable train. It’s only got a couple of stops along the way so there’s not much that can go wrong with it. And if it’s late getting to the Albany station, I can always just run back home, get my car and drive to Portland.

If I didn’t have the kids, I could just take the 6:30am train and have hours to spare in Portland. But since this is the last time I’ll see them for 2 weeks, I didn’t want to not have them here.

I got everything packed tonight and got my laptop all primed for the trip. The damn battery is dead again. I just replaced my laptop battery a little over a year ago and now it’s dead already. It holds a charge of maybe 5 minutes. My other laptop’s hard drive quit working last week. At least my Pocket PC seems to be doing well. I just realized today why I had problems with it on my last trip – I didn’t have the box checked in the options that told it to charge the battery via the USB cable. I ended up buying a Pocket PC battery that I didn’t need. But at least I have twice the Pocket PC power now. Both batteries are completely charged for the trip. I have no book to read for this trip.

Yesterday I did laundry. And I brought my laptop with me to help pass the time for an hour. That’s when I discovered that my battery wouldn’t hold a charge. As I came back into the laundrymat from the convenience store, some guy sees me and goes, “Uhh…is that your car out there? The white one with Illinois plates?!?” I’m thinking, “Oh shit, it’s got a flat tire or he’s smashed into it or something.” Turns out he just wanted to ask me what the weather was like in Illinois.

He got a call on his cell soon after that and he told me he was receiving harassing phone calls on his cell phone. He was waiting for them to call back just once more so that he could officially file a police report. He said whoever it was wasn’t blocking their caller ID. All ready to impress him with some elite phone company social engineering skills, I asked him for the number. Unfortunately it was a local land line and that billing office would already be closed. I put the number into my laptop’s phone book database but nothing came up on it. Right about then is when my laptop battery died. It’s probably a good thing that I couldn’t find any info, because this guy seemed a little crazy and I think it was just some lady who got a wrong number and he started yelling at her. That’s what I got from his story, anyway.

Just took this picture from my back door. As I’m writing this, it’s already gone away. Yesterday the newspaper said that it’s rained for 21 days straight here and that there’s still plenty more to come. It also said that this is the worst flooding and rain we’ve had since 1996. Which I happen to remember since that’s the year I moved away from this town. The weather forecast shows at least another week of rain. Luckily I’m going to NYC this weekend. It’s raining there too, but the forecast shows a couple clear days throughout the week.