Looked up the website and awards last night.

He's only 31? He's not aging well.

"Screw this - I'm going to go live in the Sprinter."

I made the breakfast of champions today - after walking to get my Sunday morning paper I came home, popped a beer, made four pork chops and some fried eggs.

It's really good stuff. ^

Her constant hammering can't have anything to do with it...

The rumor is that he is only in the house with the kids to shoot the show, and during shooting he lives in an apartment built above the garage. They are pretty much waiting until the deal with TLC is up and filing papers as soon as the show is done, at least if what's out there is to be believed. Of course, the official denial is out there, but we all know that the official denial means nothing.

When one's initial thought is "He's younger than me? Really?", that can't be a good sign.

OH... will you please stop taunting me ....:D I can't seem to find the right time to do a MR to the UK. Darned work keeps getting in the way. I am starting to experience severe anxiety and withdrawal symptoms ...:(

Alleviate all symptoms by going to and bringing Mr. Brit to xyzzy's next Box dinner at Big Ed's. :D

Big Ed's is not for us to fly up for but The Palm is a horse of an entirely different color. ^

Actually, I think that you might as well do a trip over to get some chocolate. Double EQMs and all, you know and around here, it is heresy for work to get in the way of traveling and socializing.

I shall taunt you again with my naughty BRS landing video.

Certainly an interesting piece of work, but naughty???.

I had an electronic devices on :eek::rolleyes:

Looked like just a normal landing.

Whooo - now to start my day.

Ohhh. I see. Against the rules. Are there no exceptions for event chroniclers?

no, hence the naughty :D

Therefore we now need to visualize Olton Hall being met at the end of the jetway by two Bobbys. :D

Hmmmmm. Seriously considering Devils season tickets given how low some of the prices are for some pretty decent seats.

Hello Box. It's a sunny afternoon at EWR, and I've calmed down enough now to bring you the entire saga/drama from Thursday night. Tomorrow, when I'm back home, I'll sit down and draft a letter to CO, but for now, here's what happened:

We got to CLE on Thursday afternoon to find a short delay on 1567 to EWR - which is very typical. No problem. We boarded, taxied out to the penalty box to await takeoff. After about 10-15 minutes, the engines started back up, and the captain said there was a ground stop so we were going back to the gate - which seemed odd in that we hadn't been out there very long. Get back to the gate, and the plane is greeted by police, etc, and they escort a drunk woman off the plane. Now the FAs and some px have to fill out police reports - so that adds about another 30 minutes at the gate. Taxi back out, hold for a short time and then we take off to EWR, but already missed our original slot.

From the plane, I called the Elite line twice - first time to check on the cx, and the second time when we got back to the gate (the agent could hear the captain on the PA explaining why we came back to the gate). He told me not to worry, the connections were being monitored by the service recovery team at both CLE and EWR, but they wouldn't start working the record until the plane was airborn and the cx was in doubt. He said it would all be handled by the time we landed at EWR, and that "there are always options to get you there".

Land a EWR and I check the PDA site to see our flight to MXP has already left. (Same story for about 10 of us that I know of trying to make cx to Europe). Got off the plane, no one at the gate to assist us, they just sent everyone to Customer Service. Walked past that place, and there were already about 200 people in line so we went the the PC.

PC service agents said they couldn't help us, but confirmed that no one worked our record and we'd have to call reservations. So again on the phone with the Elite desk. This agent said we can book you tomorrow. That won't work - we're only going for two days as it is.

Hung up, called back. This time agent told us it could be possible to reroute, but options were not good - because flights to CDG were all oversold, no seats on those, flights to Rome were already gone, blah, blah, blah. Best she could do was to get us into Milan late afternoon. That wouldn't work.

We hung up, discussed it, and then decided to see if we could just scrap the intl portion of the trip and just stay in NYC. The S/O was online looking for hotels, and I was talking to another agent on the Elite line. We got disconnected mid-discussion, so in calling back, I finally got to speak with Pam in SLC at the Web Support Desk. She was awesome. She was able to extract the international portion of the ticket and refund that part, then book us back to CLE on our originally scheduled flight for Sunday w/o penalties, fees or anything. In total: 8 calls to the Elite line to get this resolved.

Then on to baggage claim. We requested our bags, and were told that there is a 2-3 hour retrieval time for all bags, but they leave at 9:30 pm, so if your bags aren't out, come back tomorrow for them. It was 8:30. I was pretty sure my head was going to explode at this point. I found a red-coat, confirmed the whole 3 hr thing, and they verified that CO wouldn't send the bags to the hotel. So we sat down and waited, and in 10 minutes we had our bags! In fact, the woman who retrieved them (sadly, I didn't get her name), actually came out to make sure we got the bags - as she used to live in CLE).

Anyway, we found a great rate at the Westin Times Square, and had a blast in NYC. It wasn't Milan, but we did OK.

Tomorrow I will write to customer service and request they give us the elite miles to Milan. It can't hurt to ask. At worst, we get our money back for that portion, but I burned the 25% discount on this trip, so I'm kind of peeved about not being able to get to Europe with that. deal. We'll see what they say.

I'm calmer now. :)