When it rains, it pours: stuff that's coming up

I took this shot of the Capitol dome on the night of the lightning storm.

Please forgive me as posts to The Offlede will be light in the next few days. On top of an illness, I have another task to deal with first.

The air travel debacle Wednesday and Thursday at Baltimore-Washington International threw me for quite a loop.

In a way, it was a good experience. I learned that you can never get to an airport too early: I allowed two and a half hours to get to BWI on Wednesday, but it should have been three and a half. I also experienced my first lengthy delay cooped up in an airport terminal. Because all the other flights to Orlando had been either canceled or sold out through Thursday afternoon, I had no choice but to wait out the rain-tornado delay.

And when I finally made it to Orlando, my phone wouldn't pick up the towers. Apparently, returning to its home towers in Washington confused it so it didn't reacquire the towers in my new home in Florida. That made it difficult to arrange transportation to Melbourne; I used a pay phone with a phone card. The folks at my local Verizon store fixed my phone, then suckered me into ordering a Blackberry.

But I made it back - eventually. I even went to work Thursday night. That was propelled by three cans of Red Bull.

The ordeal took a toll, though. I lost five pounds, and I'm ill, probably because of the nasty chairs I planted my face into while trying to sleep at the airport. It also was quite cold in the terminal, so that may have played a role.

It was an educational headache, but like all good education, it came with a steep financial price: I spent more to get home than I did on all of my other expenses: my round-trip ticket to D.C. and my food, public transportation and entertainment while there.

I have several posts in store, including two about visits to the Newseum and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the one monument I hadn't seen while living in D.C. There will be a few videos, too.

But first, I have three chapters of a book manuscript to edit. It's a journalism history written by a former professor, and I won't divulge much more than that.

I also need to do some public relations work for The Offlede. I have been contacted by several people looking for more information or presenting proposals about certain things on this blog.

This could get interesting.