Come on, Continental

I'm sitting in the Albuqurque airport, hoping Continental can better itself - when we flew here last week, our flight was delayed FIVE HOURS.

I wish I could say this was the first time something like this has happened, but, well, I'd be lying. Last summer when we flew to Portland, Oregon, we ended up sleeping on the filthy floor in freezing cold Newark Airport, only to get bumped from 5 flights the next day. We had to fly to Seattle, then try to get standby on a commuter flight to Portland. It took 4 tries.

Anyway, last week, there was a storm in Chicago, so our flight was delayed in Newark waiting for the airplane. There were plenty of other planes sitting on the tarmac at midnight on a Monday. And seriously, there wasn't one other damned pilot who knew how to get to ABQ and wanted to make some extra money?

Between the screw-ups and the ridiculous charges for checking baggage, we don't check bags anymore. Just in case. And yet again, here's my refrain of the last few weeks:

This would never happen in Egypt.

Something is seriously wrong in the world when EgyptAir is my world paragon of transport excellence.

We're on our way back from the Q-bio 2008 conference in Santa Fe. It's still a mystery, but for some reason my abstract was accepted for a talk here. My talk went pretty well - I don't think I said anything unacceptably stupid - and last night I had the hilarous experience of hearing someone else talk about my work.

It was the banquet, and I was about 6 glasses of wine in (they were serving Charles Shaw!). Suddenly the speaker flashed a slide up that said "Motifs as discoverable objects - Bonneau, Gardner, Vora."

My immediate reaction was, there's someone else named Vora in this field?

My tablemates made inquiring gestures towards me, like, "Why didn't you tell us you'd published with these famous people?"

I shrugged and blearily copied down the reference in my moleskin, determined, once I'd sobered up, to figure out who the hell this other Vora was that was publishing in my field.

Right, so it turned out he was talking about me. Having someone else tell you what you think - and you not recognizing it - is one of those funny things in life.

There are a lot of funny things in my life.

A lot.