At the airport I shared the shuttle from long-term parking to the Sacramento International terminal (it was an exciting day in the city when the Sacramento airport went international, with one flight to Mexico every other week — take that Los Angeles!) with a lady whose dog loves to run and kill things. I know this because she talked about her dog to the other lady next to her non-stop for the entire duration of the shuttle ride. Her dog also likes to travel, eat, poop, and bark loudly at night for no apparent reason, thus setting him sharply apart from, I don’t know, the genre of dogs who don’t like to eat, poop, and bark.

After I made it to the terminal I printed my e-ticket from the e-ticket booth provided, for my convenience, at the end of a long complicated maze of elastic rope which was keeping an disorderly line of approximately one passenger in line, counting myself. The concept of an e-ticket is that, if your life is structured such that the one thing computers have the inability to screw up is your travel schedule, you can amend that by purchasing a plane ticket on a computer, from another computer, and then print it out from separate computer just in case neither of the previous two messed anything up. Not that it really matters whether or not you ever manage to print your ticket because your flight will be delayed and eventually canceled. The last time I flew I departed from San Fransisco on the only flight to successfully leave the airport during that week, and even that was delayed. Sitting in the San Fransisco lounge before my flight I spoke with a man who had been in the terminal since the Carter administration, surviving on complimentary peanut donations made to him by arriving travelers. His latest travel goal was to catch a flight home in time for his daughter’s wedding, whom he had last seen as a three-year-old.

But the people who run the airlines do not care. They’re out of touch with the real world, remember, these are the same people who have seen to it that the airport overhead speakers continually broadcast useful information to you, the traveler, such as that you are not accept packages or luggage donations from strangers, or to let them carry your luggage for you unattended. I’m not sure what these people are thinking because it’s obvious, if you just look around the San Fransisco airport, any stranger who attempted to assist a random passenger with their luggage would probably get shot before they could even touch a suitcase.

As I sat in the lounge for my current flight, the pattern of loud speaking women broadcasting interesting details of their lives to the world at large continued with a southern woman talking on her cell phone. She was talking to someone at our destination (Salt Lake, Utah) where I was to lay over, and at one point was desperately trying to figure out the time difference between here and there. After listening to her make numerous comments such as “so wuz the tam difference in Sat Lake?” and “Aye don’t mean to be dumb… but… ha’d aye check dat?”, I piped up and confirmed for her that, yes, it was a one hour difference, naively hoping that this was the last question the lady needed to before she could hang up, or at least lower her voice. But I was wrong and she proceeded to discuss, at length, the intimate details of her business job, which apparently has to do with both dead turkeys and the stock market.

But thankfully everything went well on my flight and I made it to Texas in time to share dinner with my girlfriend. Because I love to eat. And bark.

For those just arriving, you can read more about The Daily Booger and who runs it. Hopefully not because you’re considering filing a lawsuit.

The first official article should be posted soon. Assuming that the administrative staff doesn’t forget about that too.

At least, that’s what my original intention was. Once in the actual kitchen, my updated mission assignment was to exit the kitchen carrying said supplies without looking directly at the kitchen wall, which was inhabited by a small black blob that looked suspiciously like an arachnid. It was doing it’s best to look like a small coffee stain on the wall — whose house doesn’t have at least one or two of those? — but I wasn’t to be fooled. All of our wall coffee stains are on the other side of the kitchen.

I managed to escape the kitchen with my supplies by closing my eyes and striding briskly past the wall, breaking out into a full on sprint to my bedroom only after it occurred to me that I was walking past a wall with a spot on it that could be a spider.

Needless to say, I’ll be dining in my bedroom for the remainder of the week, not that this is anything new.

I resolve never to shower in there again, which may actually not be an option now that the cement truck is laying down the 15th foot of concrete over said bathroom and said offending arachnid.

While in Texas, I took it upon myself to purchase a shirt for the formal occasion of breathing on Easter. We weren’t doing anything fancy or out of the ordinary on Easter, but apparently the blonde population of the Thomas household (namely, my girlfriend) came to unanimous consent that I should a) get a shirt they liked, b) wear it on Easter, or c) they would pout at me.

While on the shopping escapade, I visited all of one store and actually bought two shirts, since I don’t have many and, practically, I could use another.

So I came home with two new shirts. One (the blonde-approved one) I hung up in my closet, the other I kind of laid out over the night stand in the middle of my room and forgot to hang up. For two weeks. Don’t ask, I just forgot.

This evening my mom noticed it and, apparently, hadn’t viewed it yet. So she picked it up, examined it briefly, and left it on my bed. I figured that, since it was now in the way of my going to bed, I should hang it up or something already. So I picked it up and clipped off the tag and looked over it for stickers, removing one or two. Then I lay it down flat spread out on my bed and examined it to ensure it was ready to be worn. I have to carefully examine all my clothing before I wear it because, once I deem it wearable and hang it up/put it in a drawer, I will never notice any tags on it. I have worn shirts with a sticker on the sleeve for a full week before someone pointed out to me that I looked like I had just shoplifted from the clothing department at Mervins and was attempting to flee on foot.

Anyway… After I quickly inspected the front of my shirt, I flipped half of it over to inspect the other side. After checking out my computer quickly to make sure something was doing what it was supposed to do (or possibly to make sure something wasn’t doing what it wasn’t supposed to do), I turned my attention back to my shirt.

And there sat a spider.

On my shirt.

And it had clearly been there the entire time. It was giving me that “Haha, sucker, you were holding your shirt while I was on it and I could’ve walked onto your hand — and what’re you gonna do about it, huh?” look.

I sat, staring at the one-centimeter long eight-legged freak of nature for half a minute before reaching for three tissues (you have to have as much protection as possible) and killing it. I don’t really care so much that the spider was on my shirt, walking around and touching it, I’m just thankful it’s gone now, and I’ll cheerfully be wearing the shirt to church tomorrow despite the fact that I’ll be touching a shirt that a spider also touched.

I am, of course, kidding. I destroyed the shirt with a blowtorch.

And I suppose it goes without saying that spider events come in pairs. I saw a spider in the shower today, that had been hiding against the tile grout line against the floor on the opposite side of the shower. It came out half way through my shower and ran in a full circle before going back to it’s hiding place.

I blowtorched the shower too.