Hello
from Florida,
I
am writing you from Miami (Sunny Isles, to be exact). I am working on the "Case Studies in Structural Heart
Disease and Intervention" program at the Trump International on Miami Beach
Hotel and Resort.
The
day started with a balmy 6 degrees below zero and the taxi picking me up at
5:30 this morning, taking me to the Rochester airport. After boarding the plane – which was frigid,
due to some issues with the space heaters that were placed onboard to warm it
up overnight (I never did understand what the pilot was talking about), so we
wore our coats on the ride from Rochester to Minneapolis.
Since
we had to wait for the plane to warm up a little, and then have the plane
de-iced, we were a little late in getting to MSP airport. By the way – I have found another of the
“worst jobs ever that I would never want” jobs.
Plane de-icer. First off, no one
ever calls you when the temp is 75, only if it is zero or below. Then you are in a truck bucket, extended 20
feet in the air, spraying de-icing liquid onto the plane. Of course, the wind is spraying the mist back
into your face. It would just be sucky.
Anyway
– we land in MSP at gate #C18 (seemed more like C1000), and have 30 minutes to
find some breakfast and get to gate G2.
Needless to say we made it. On
the way, maybe due to my punchiness (I was hungry and tired), I made a few,
what I thought were, clever observations.
While
walking through one of the food court areas, I saw a restaurant called
“Einstein Brothers”. Naturally, the
cartoon bubble in my head had me walking up to the counter, asking if the food
was good, and the clerk answering, “eh, relatively.” Maybe not so funny now, but at the time . . .
I was greatly amused.
Another
observation – there are a number of scissor lifts parked throughout the airport,
for doing maintenance on the lights etc (if you don’t know what one is, it is
like a rolling electric ladder/hoist to lift you into the air for working on
ceilings, etc). Anyway – the name of the
scissor lift is Sky-Jack. Seriously, is
that the best name for a product inside a major airport? Just wondering.
After
getting on the plane and de-icing, we get off the ground. Much to my chagrin there was a “gentleman”
(notice the quotes), who was talking endlessly.
He didn’t say much, but used a lot of words in doing so. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he didn’t
have one of those soothing, easy to listen to voices, but rather a loud and
raspy voice – along the lines of Harvey Fierstein. No offense to Harvey, he cracks me up, but
for 3 hours on an airplane? No, not
really. If the guy hadn’t been big
enough to mop the floor with me, I would’ve offered him $20 to stop talking for
10 minutes. But he was, so I
didn’t. As the flight wore on, his
language skills decreased, until the last half hour was littered with 4-letter words
that I shan’t use here.
We
finally arrived in Miami. Our driver who
took us to the hotel apologized for the temp being so cold (it was in the low
70s). After explaining that our home
temp was 6 below this morning – he stopped apologizing, and vowed to go home
and tell his whining kids to quit complaining about the weather or he’d send
them to Minnesota, where it actually does get cold.
Well
– in a nutshell, that’s it. Tomorrow is
the pre-conference meeting with the organizers and hotel staff, the set up and
the meeting starts on Thursday.
Oh,
just one more thing – I pulled out the couch to get to an outlet to plug in my
computer. When I pulled out the couch, I
found an old dirty sock! Should I be
appalled at this? I’m thinking,
“EEEEWWWWW!” but just want to be
sure. Thoughts? I think The Donald will be receiving a letter
about this. There – now I’m done.
Be
well. Be warm!
JBD
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