Saturday December 20th, 2003
Going Home
My family lives on the east coast and every year I use all my vacation and sick days from work to fly back and be with them over the holidays. I can only afford to see them once a year so I try to stay as long as I can. Last year I was screwed over by priceline.com (don't use them) and ended up having only a few days to stay, so this year I decided I'd make up for it by going for nearly two weeks. I found that too long can be just as bad as too short. During the time of my visit my mom's computer was in the shop so I wasn't able to update my site, and what's worse, I had no porn to keep me company for two whole weeks. (Reflect on that a moment) I scribbled down a few notes every day to remind me of the experiences of going home and only now is my lazy punk ass actually updating them. (Cue crappy flash back music)
As I packed my bags I thought about how nice it was going to be to get out of Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong there's a lot of things I love about LA or I wouldn't still be here. Still there was a major appeal to spending two weeks in a place where I don't have to walk over homeless people to get to my apartment, I mean hell in my parents neighborhood they don't even lock their doors. In LA I wouldn't leave my doors unlocked over night on a bet.
We arrived at LAX two hours early. Locally it's common knowledge that LAX is a terrorist target and the security is about ten times normal, especially for the holiday season. I know we're in a time of crisis but if you're going to pay an illegal immigrant three dollars an hour to look in my stinky shoes for plastic explosives then the terrorists have already won.
Cheap guy that I am I get my tickets for as little money as possible which means lay overs and traveling at all hours of the night. Lucky for me I only had one lay over on the way there, Las Vegas. I haven't been to Vegas in almost two years, and after what my friends refer to as the "Beer ball incident" I swore I'd never go back. Now I figured I was only here for forty five minutes between flights and I doubt anyone who was working at the Tropicanna that day was at the airport so I sat down and played the slots in the airport for about twenty bucks, or more accurately, eight minutes.
Aboard my second plane I was forced to wonder if my bags made it with me. This was the second year in a row I was flying an airline no one's ever heard of and I was hoping it wouldn't be the second year in a row that I had a bag lost. I now found myself in a middle seat between the world's oldest man and Rosie O'Donnal's twin sister. As we took off the woman's bag started barking. Apparently you're allowed to take small dogs on the airplane, good to know. After about twenty minutes of sporadic yapping the mut pissed itself while in a bag on the floor. The woman next to me tried to clean it up but needless to say I spent the next six hours smelling dog piss and listening to it bark. The flight attendant walked around and asked if I wanted headphones for the movie. I figured anything was better than listening to this dog so I paid my three bucks and waited for "Keeping the faith" to start. An hour into it I decided a yapping urine soaked dog was less painful than watching Cuba Gooding Jr. flush what little career he had left after making "Snow Dogs" down the drain.
