Is There a Twelve Step Program for This?

I was unpacking from my trip and putting things away when it dawned on me that I have a problem. I was only gone for a couple of nights so I just had a small carry-on bag. After emptying it of clothes, toiletries and TSA inspected dirty underwear what was left in the bottom was the evidence that opened my eyes.

Taunting me from the bottom of that bag were the objects of my obsession. Bottles of hotel shampoo, conditioner, and skin lotion, and bars of hotel soap. The realization hit me when I brought them into the bathroom to put them away. Under the vanity resides one of those plastic laundry bags also taken from a hotel in which my booty is kept. When I picked it up it felt like it weighed about eight pounds and two thoughts hit me. The first was, damn I've been traveling alot. The second, I think I might have a problem.

Whenever I check into a hotel I immediately begin to plan my strategy to get as many as I possibly can in the time I have. I start by putting aside one bar of soap and one bottle of shampoo to use. Then the rest goes into my suitcase, completely out of sight of the maid. I try to make the bar and bottle I'm using last as long as I can and everyday when the maid leaves a fresh supply, into the suitcase it goes. I can't help myself. The stuff is like crack. If I'm walking down the hall of the hotel and there's an unattended housekeeping cart it's all I can do to keep walking. I tell myself that there's no challenge in simply raiding the cart. I must play the game with the maid for it to bring satisfaction. We must dance our little dance of supplier and addict. When the quality of the hotel and thus the quality of the merchandise goes up so too does the desire. The spa quality stuff is a huge score but it's also the hardest to get a lot of. The maids are stingy with it. The bargain level stuff is easy to get but doesn't bring as much of a high. The absolute worst are the hotels that have dispensers of liquid soap, shampoo and conditioner mounted in the shower. I have to force myself to stay. Of course in those cases (which are rare) it's also a practical matter. It gets a little frustrating having to pump the stupid button a hundred and twelve times to get enough shampoo to wash your hair. At least that's what I tell myself.

On this trip because I wasn't checking any bags the thought occurred to me that I may have a problem with TSA bringing all those little bottles through airport security. I mean, my god, I didn't have a one quart ziplock bag. And if I did would they all fit? Even that didn't stop me from taking those tiny little devils along for the ride. And the Denver airport was there for me, ready to encourage my habit. They provide free ziplock bags! And a table where you can repackage your liquids and gels. The BASTARDS!

I do try to make some good come of my obsession. When we packed up our house before moving from Florida I discovered there were two full drawers in the bathroom full of bounty. They filled at least two grocery store shopping bags. My wife could only shake her head. It turns out that women's shelters are happy to take these items as donations and that's what we did with them.

Then of course I immediately began to rebuild my supply.

They say that admitting you have a problem is the first step. I think I need help. I wonder if that place where David Duchovney is being treated for his sex addiction has any openings. And if they have free toiletries in the rooms.

Home again, Home Again, Jigety Jig

Okay, let me first start out by saying in no uncertain terms that

I HATE UNITED AIRLINES!!!!!!

I have traveled to Boulder three times in the last month and a half. To get to Boulder you fly in and out of Denver. I am a government employee and as such we have to book our travel through our contracted travel agent and we are required to use a government contract carrier. United is a government contract carrier. Let's forget about the fact that the cost of a roundtrip ticket has cost the taxpayers a minimum of $500 when I could've gotten a ticket on Southwest for half that. Let's forget about the fact that on this last trip because it was booked on the same day as my travel it cost $1,000. Let's forget about the fact that every time I've gone to Denver on United I have had to sit in a middle seat for every three hour trip because our contracted travel agent couldn't get me a seat assignment because the flight was overbooked and when I checked in there was nothing else left except the Economy Plus seat (with about 0.638 inches of extra room) that you have to pay extra for. Let's forget all of that.

On the return flight of each trip my flight has been delayed. The first time it was about an hour. Not that big a deal but still, delayed. The second time...four hours. The inbound flight was late getting in. Then right before we were supposed to board it developed a mysterious mechanical problem. "We'll update you in 30 minutes" times eight. And oh by the way, we can't get this plane fixed in time so we're going to use a different plane but it's not here yet. And we're going to change gates. FIVE TIMES!!! Yes, five gate changes. And the one we ended up leaving from was one I had been to two hours before. Then of course we're all about to board and guess what? No flight crew. Then the flight crew shows up and it's the same crew from the original flight and they tell us that the first plane was fixed and they were sitting on the plane at the original gate waiting FOR US! Welcome to the fucking three stooges airlines.

Then there was the third trip. That was yesterday. I was booked on an 11:45AM flight. On Friday we weren't sure we could get all of our work finished and thought we'd have to meet yesterday morning so the boss decided we should change our flight to the 3:30PM flight. So far so good. By Friday evening we realized we could finish so we changed flights again, this time to the 10:43AM flight. Even earlier than the original, hey I'm all there.

I leave the hotel at 8AM to drive to Denver. Drop off the car and get to the terminal. Security is pretty short so that wasn't really a problem even though I was a male traveling alone with no checked bags which got me the extra personalized attention of being puffed by air in a booth (I was blown at the airport) and the "Sir, step over here and do you mind if we look through your dirty underwear?" Still, so far, so good.

I'm at the gate by 9AM. At 9:45 the inbound flight lands and unloads. At 10:00 the announcement comes..."Folks maintenance is checking out a mechanical problem with the plane...AND WE'LL UPDATE YOU IN 30 MINUTES." Fuck.

Then it was, "we have the part and we're fixing the problem", and "we're fixing the problem but it's going to take until 5:00PM (this is a 11:30AM)." Then at noon the only gate agent left says that the next update will be in, yeah, 30 minutes, but she has to leave to go to another gate. A new gate crew will be here at 12:30 to update us. Bye!

At almost 1:00 still no gate crew but an announcement is made over the general airport PA system. It sounds like a drunk with a speech impediment ordering a bag of tacos from Jack-in-the-Box at 2AM after a night of partying. The general consensus of everyone in the gate area was that it was something about our flight and something about 4:30PM. Fuck again.

I go to customer service and stand in a line that doesn't move and while I'm there I call my government contract travel agent on their "emergency" number where they don't answer. Finally a United rep tells us that the flight is on a decisional (WTF?) delay until 4:30 and we can't rebook until it is actually canceled.

Beer. I need beer. Fortunately there is a bar close at hand where I have lunch and a few pints of Guinness which dramatically improves my demeanor. I even bonded with an old couple who were watching the Notre Dame/Michigan game. And I don't even watch football - though it's kinda in my genes to root for the Irish. Then it's off to a quiet spot to do some work on a book proposal I'm putting together. My wife calls at about 3:15 to tell me that the United website is showing the flight as canceled. Would've been nice of them to announce it AT THE AIRPORT.

Back to the customer service line that doesn't move and on the phone to the travel agent who finally does answer. At this point, the only thing available to get me into the Washington area was a 4:30 flight on Frontier Airlines getting into Washington National at 10:00PM. She rebooks me and I'm off to a different concourse to find Frontier.

Minor problem. When I left Washington on Wednesday night, I flew out of Dulles airport which is the current location of my car. My sweetheart of a wife ever on the ball, talks me down off the ledge then researches shuttles and has me a reservation on the SuperShuttle from National to Dulles before the Frontier flight even takes off. From that point on everything went smoothly and it was just a matter of doing the actual traveling. I got to National at 10PM...right on schedule, was at Dulles by 11:30 and home by 1:00AM. Only about eight hours late.

This was my first experience with Frontier but it was a good one. They charged extra for every little thing like food, DirectTV and movies but they tell you that up front and who isn't charging for everything these days? At least the food was reasonably priced and actually pretty good for an airline. Everyone from the gate agents to the flight attendants were on the ball. And remember that $1,000 price for the round trip on United? The one way price on Frontier that was booked an hour before the flight...$169. My head hurts.

There's one final twist of the knife from United. When I checked in on online Friday night, I payed $30 extra out of my own pocket to get the Economy Plus just so I could get an aisle seat. A seat I never got to sit in. Of course you know where I sat on the Frontier flight.

It feels good to vent but the important thing is that I made it home safely. While I had all those hours to kill at the airport I watched quite a bit of news coverage from Texas about hurricane Ike. It kept reminding me that I was being inconvenienced but there were others who were having a far worse day than I was.

Oh, and did I mention that I hate United Airlines?

Where In The World Is Bruce?

First off, let me begin by saying that when I found the above picture my first thought was "if I knew that Carmen Sandiego was that hot I would've looked a lot harder for her". Hot cartoon babes. It's a guy thing, what can I say?

Okay. Guess where I am. Need some clues?

• It's not the first time I've been here
• It's not on the East Coast
• It's where the good guys settled in Stephen King's "The Stand"
• It has mountains
• It's about an hour North-West of the city that hosted this years Democratic convention
• It rhymes with "Older"

Give up? Okay. One more clue. When I think about the circumstances of being sent here this time it leads me to say...

OH! Look at that. You guessed it. Boulder, Colorado.

Yesterday was my youngest daughter's birthday. She turned thirteen. Still can't believe it. I planned to leave work early to be able to spend more time with her and make the dinner she requested. At noon I had just finished asking my boss if I could leave a little early and of course she said , no problem. I went back to my office and, I swear, not five minutes passed when I got called back to her office and she handed me the phone. It was her boss. Informing me that he was asked to go to Boulder and he wanted me there with him. We had to leave RIGHT AWAY.

FUCK!!!!!!!!

We had to rush my travel orders and arrangements. I got on a 9:20PM flight out of Washington so I had time to go home, make dinner, spend a couple of hours with my daughter and family, do the cake and presents thing, and dart out the door. I got to my hotel at 2:00AM Boulder time (4:00AM my time) and had to get up at 6:00. Right now it looks like I'll be here until Saturday.

Somebody really needs to declare the "emergency" that's been ongoing for almost three months now, OVER. We really need to stop running around with our hair on fire, take a deep breath, and concentrate on fixing the problems that have been identified. Not everything that is urgent is important and not everything that is important is urgent. And some of this nonsensical shit is neither urgent nor important. It certainly isn't as important as my kid's birthday or anything else having to do with my wife and kids.

My How Time Flies

Greetings from beautiful Boulder, CO





It's been a very long time. I've gotten messages form many of you and I'm sorry if I didn't get back to you. Life has been insane and my summer completely evaporated. In the past two months I've dealt with a Plutonium incident, written Congressional testimony, met with Congressional investigative staffers, become very well known (despite my best efforts) to the very senior management of my organization and traveled rather extensively. And oh yeah, tried to fit a couple of critical moments of personal time in there too. In the past three weeks I've gone from Maryland to Boulder, CO to Maryland to San Francisco/Sonoma to Maryland to Boulder, CO and tomorrow I'm heading back to Maryland then immediately leaving to drive to Florida. Next week I'll drive back to Maryland, then at some point in the next several weeks travel back to Boulder.


I've mentioned before that I work in health & safety. Suffice it to say that we had a major safety incident in June and life has not been the same since. I won't go into details but here is a link to publicly available information for those that may be interested.


In the midst of all the craziness I did manage to squeeze in a few days alone with my wife in Sonoma, CA to do the whole wine country thing. It was wonderful. I plan to blog a bit about it and share some pictures but it's going to have to wait.


I'm not back on a regular basis (yet!) but I did want you all to know that I'm still here and that I miss you guys. Until I can post again I hope you all are well and I will be back.


Namaste.