How Soon is Now?

Neal: What's the flight situation?

Del: Simple. There's no way on earth we're going to get out of here tonight. We'd have more luck playing pickup sticks with our butt-cheeks than we will getting a flight out of here before daybreak.

Neal: I guess we'll find out soon enough.

Del: Yeah, but by the time the airline cancels this flight, which they will sooner or later, you'd have more of a chance to find a three-legged ballerina than you would a hotel room.

Neal: Are you saying I could be stuck in Wichita?

Del: I'm saying you are stuck in Wichita.

-Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Stuck in Detroit, a victim of last night's winter wonderland along the Gulf Coast.

Yes, that is a bloody mary, and yes it's a little after eight in the morning. Don't judge. The Evil Creator dropped a pube in my drink, which I fortunately fished out before drinking it anyway.

Or maybe it wasn't really a pube. The geriatric bartender appeared to be shedding like a collie, with a part as wide as my forearm. Poor lady. She really was nice.

After I took this photo I found a glass and poured myself a nice big draw of orange juice, only to notice a big lower lip print along the rim. I drank from the other side. The Evil Creator won't win this one.

One of those early middle-aged jerk offs working for some alphabet soup of a corporation just parked next to me, inserted his Air Buds, and started blathering about exceeding their goal of shipping 215,000 units, by ten units. He is not modulating his voice.

Ten units on a total volume of 215,000 seems cutting it sort of close, eh? I sense a little worry in his triumphant tone.

Jayme just called to ask if and when I was showing up at the farm today, and to talk about liability insurance, gates around the pond, and paint for handicapped parking spots. Normally I'd grouse, but it was a welcome distraction. The guy with the ear buds shot an annoyed glance, then moved to another seat outside of earshot. L' jerkoff c'est mois.

Peg certainly sent me on my way with the implicit message that I'm a jerkoff. Neither of us much likes these trips that separate us, but this one is shaping up to be the act of quixotic stupidity she inferred it was. Why travel when you're just going to get stuck? I reckon she was right about that, but I felt like I needed to try. I've never spent the week before a jury trial doing much of anything other than getting ready for trial--building witness outlines, editing exhibit binders, making sure the jury instructions were correct, getting ready for in-trial motion practice that could be largely dispositive of the case. It's a lot.

I had tentatively scheduled a fifteen-minute in-person hearing in another case tomorrow. I figured I'd be the in town anyway, so why not show my face around the courthouse? I'm hearing scuttlebutt about myself to the effect that I've moved to New York permanently. Part of me wonders if this rumor emanates from the soon-to-be former firm, as a neutral explanation for my departure. It wasn't us--he just moved.

So there seemed to be a little utility in being seen at the courthouse and the yacht club and maybe Tom's Hot Dogs for a Frito Pie with Dog, extra onions and jalapenos--nature's perfect food.

Well, mankind plans and the Evil Creator smiles. Six inches of snow in Panama City, a first in my lifetime. I-10 a ghost town, an ice rink with the occasional law enforcement vehicle stuck in the snow. I've seen it on the freeway cams. And lows of 19 are forecast for tonight, so whatever melts is going to refreeze all over the roads around the time I'm arriving in Tallahassee. I've done this one before, sliding sideways through intersections in Plano in 1980 when reckless 16-year-old me thought I could hack a little black ice. One does not hack black ice.

So maybe P will shower me with a little grace in my folly, maybe notice the kale salad there on my plate in the photo (it had dried cranberries inexplicably sprinkled in the lake of dressing, two things P would never have eaten). Always trying to impress a girl, one girl.

If I can get tomorrow moved, maybe get the court to continue next week's trial in light of this epic weather event; if so, I may just see if I can find a flight back to KELM today. No point in pushing it. I'll be the first to acknowledge a mistake, if I can find a way out of this mess.

Time for another bloody mary. Maybe someone will notice my pre-lunch imbibing and put me in line for a key cabinet position.

And so it goes.