Telling it like it is

I've been in Oklahoma over the past couple of days on business. We were warned last night of an ice storm today and when we went out to the car this morning, it was cocooned in a layer of diamond-hard ice. The ice filed down the plastic scraper it was so hard. But it got more interesting when it came time to fly home. We had finished early so I bumped my flight for an earlier one. When I got to the airport, that flight was oversold so they put me on a 2pm flight in order to give me an upgrade. That flight was a filler. The plane had been grounded in the morning because is the ice storm but it needed to get back to Salt Lake City. So two other passengers and three deadheading aircrew were put on it along with it's assigned crew to get it home. Problem: during the storm they had de-iced the plane thinking it was going to be used. When I wasn't, it was parked on the ramp and the de-icing fluid settled in the bottom of the engine cowls. It was so cold that the de-icing fluid th...

With my videogame-like attention span these days, I don't make enough time to do certain things any more. I have something like 34 days-worth of music in iTunes now but I have no real idea what some of the older stuff is. That's why random play is useful. And in random play today, an old Frankie Goes To Hollywood track came up. Not Relax, but Welcome To The Pleasuredome. So on my puddlejumper flight to Oklahoma, I made time to listen to the whole album, end to end, probably for the first time since 1987. No remixes. No DJs. Just The World Is My Oyster right through to Bang! Now I love Relax. It's pretty much my go-to track for just about any occasion. But I remembered today how much more awesome it is when listened to in context with the whole album. I guess what I'm getting at here is that if you're sick and tired of the 3 minute Justin Bieber specials that pollute the chart nowadays, dig up and old album you have lying around and listen to the whole thing. Make ...