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Finally Home

Yaaawwnnn. It's mornings like this one when I wish I'd spent a little more time focusing on my dream of becoming the dictator of a small island in the South Pacific. Showing up to work would be a lot easier if my job involved a thatched roof, warm ocean breeze and uncompromising control of all people I had to interact with throughout the day. After wearing my shitty corporate attire for seemingly 48 hours straight, I finally pulled into my driveway. I dragged my luggage out of the back of The Boy's hatchback again cursing the Probe as it lacks hydraulic power in the lift system of the hatchback causing me to have to prop the hatch open with my head while lifting and pulling my bag out of the back without letting the hatch slam down on any of my extremities. Fucking Probe. I then stumbled up the stairs, opened my front door and watched Eli dart out of the house and into the yard like he'd been trapped in a closet for three days without food, water or oxygen. Sigh. Where's the love???

The day had been an interesting one. Sleeping in a grain elevator kinda sucks in my opinion. The novelty wore off quickly once I realized the nightmare faced by the buildings engineers in their attempt to run an HVAC system through concrete silos. Their solution was to provide each room with it's own heating/cooling wall unit. Mine liked to turn on and off every 24 minutes regardless of the setting I chose, therefore I woke up approximately 18 times during my seven hours of what was supposed to be peaceful sleep. After participating in work meetings for a long six and a half hours, I was ready to be home. I drove to the airport, dropped of the rental and proceeded inside to the Akron airport while keeping a death grip on my luggage.

The flights were pretty bland. On the second leg of my journey, I could sense the businessman sitting next to me wanted to get all chatty, and I was able to put the brakes on that through most of the flight by pretending to sleep, working on the crossword puzzle and other activities such as picking at my feet to communicate "leave me alone". Near the end of the flight, my back was hurting and I got all shifty and let my guard down, and he seized the opportunity to talk to me about his trip, his daughter who is my age, his company retreat, blah blah blah. I regaled him with interesting tidbits of information about Kansas City such as the fact that the reason we have the second highest number of fountains in a city (second to Rome) is because in the beginning of the city's history, there used to be stockyards throughout the city and cows everywhere necessitating numerous watering troughs. When the cows moved out of the city center, they converted most of them to fountains and voilla! 2nd only to Rome. Who says you can't learn anything from TV? Go PBS!

Anyhow, its just after lunch, and I am about to fall asleep at my desk. I have 92 emails in my inbox and stacks of paper everywhere. Woe is me.

More KC Trivia: Recently they completed the construction and revamp of the Broadway Bridge in KC which crosses the Missouri River and leads into downtown. Construction was held up during the spring by a couple of birds who decided to build their nest on the bridge. Workers had to work around the mother bird and her egg until finally, the baby was able to leave the nest. I do believe that is one of the most creative excuses for a project delay ever!�Nonetheless, it is done now, and I took this shot while driving home from the airport last night.

1:01 p.m. - July 21, 2004

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