flying to meetings is ass

Today I flew to another city for a 1 1/2 hour meeting.

I wasn't even the presenter at the meeting; I was merely one of many attendees. After my long morning of fighting traffic to get to the airport, waiting for my flight, getting on and sitting through my flight, and finding a cab and fighting traffic to get to the meeting, I could only think of how ridiculous it all was. My carbon footprint had grown, my company's purse had shrunk, and my patience had been strained - all for a meeting that could easily have been held by netmeeting or video conference. And I wouldn't have been forced to look at the presenter's icky sweat stains (which, btw, were both large and numerous).

Today's one happy event occurred when I was killing time before getting back on a plane. Thanks to some idle time-killing shopping, my house key is now garnished with this fantastic loungefly key protector (yes, that's a little bit of Florence in the background).


I've been flashing it around like it's some sort of Olympic gold medal. So far nobody's given me much of a reaction, except maybe the small child who stopped crying to squint his eyes, then managed to focus on the loungefly, and then started crying even harder. But he was like 8 months old and wearing a raunchy velour one piece outfit, so I'm not sure anyone should be listening to his pronouncements on design.