William Reardon’s Blog

Khayman seems to be annoyed that if you google for his name, you get an old blog entry of mine, declaring my hatred of him.

Of course, I’m only kidding. I love Khayman. We all love Khayman. Well, maybe certain Chileans don’t, but the rest of us do. After all, if we wasn’t around who would we blame?

Anyway, we’ll let the old entry and this one fight it out top ranking. Google will decide if Khayman is really loved or hated. Ready…. FIGHT!

Breaking up the time in Raleigh between Christmas & the New Year, the family and I headed up to the Wintergreen Restort in central Virgina. The drive wasn’t too bad, just 3.5 hours. The weather was cooperating for the driving portion of the trip, staying in the 50s or 60s. However, that meant it wasn’t cooperating for our prime intention — skiing.

Continuing to however around the 60s, we peeled off most of our extra warm clothes and gave it a go. Turrns out it wasn’t so bad — some of the slopes (in particular, 2 of the greens) were closed. After spending the morning with my brothers & helping them learn to ski, I headed off with my brother-in-law Jason, to tackle some of the blues. Admittly, a bit reluctant at first, they ended up being my favorite. Something about fearing for life for a few seconds and the relief of not having died that follows. (Hopefully.) Best of all, it seems everyone who went has got bitten by the ski bug now, to the extent people already want to plan our next trip. Most excellent.

Merry Christmas everyone! Where ever you are, I hope you have a good one. Regardless, you can be thankful you’re not near me, as those around me don’t seem that grateful of my various renditions of holidy carols.

Deck the Halls with Buddy Holly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
‘Tis the season something’s jolly
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

Cover your head up with your jacket
Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la
Sing like crazy, make a racket!
Fa-la-la-la LA LA LA LA
LA LA
LA LA LA

(Due respect to the dancing Homer.)

From The Onion:

Don’t mix alcohol with stereotypes. If you are Irish, drink rum. If you are a pirate, drink whiskey.

American Airlines just announced my flight was delayed an hour. Well, really not just an hour. She said first the plane would be delayed an hour in landing, and then, only after sufficient groans, felt obliged to throw in that since O’Hare is so backed up from holiday travel that it really would be another hour on top of the original delay before we could take off. So instead of leaving at 2:15, it’s shaping up to be 4:30. That’s the *first* estimate, and these things don’t tend to get better during that day.

So with three hours to kill, I did what many geeks do in airports when delayed, I sought out a power outlet. Having used some miles to upgrade this flight to first class, I even thought I had an advantage this time — American’s Admiral Club, which, come to think of it — has t-mobile wireless! Excellent — I can easily spend that time working on stuff online.

However, it turns out a first class ticket is not sufficient to gain entry to the Admiral Club. No, no. Apparently, you need to spend at least 8% of your year airborne or you simply don’t cut.

Well, fuck you too American Airlines.

Annoyed & dismayed at being screwed over not once but twice by American (actually the third time if you count that now after years of promoting “hey, more leg room in coach!” — one of the reason I change from United to AA — they announced several weeks ago they will be performing a 180 and, you guessed it, showing more seats into coach). Anyway, annoyed & dismayed, I abandoned my hopes of an aristocratic lifestyle and joined my preliterate brethren.

The upshot was that there was a power outlet right by the door of the Admirals Club. The double upshot is that that close, it should be cinch to get on the wireless network still. Take that American Airlines.

The downside is that you kinda feel like a homeless people. You sit idle, dressed a few notches down, while well dressed, fashionable peoplewalk in & out, annoyed they have to walk around my sprawling legs, their roller luggage trailing behind them. Yes, look at me. The refuse of your precious Admiral Club.

Okay, so the analogy doesn’t really work because the homeless don’t general sit idle surfing the web on their new laptop drinking bottled water, but, hey, you get my point.

Last night marked the start of my Christmas shopping. On amazon alone, so far I’ve spent well over $650 dollars. I can’t really say what I bought on my blog, for obvious reasons: people might be readin’. Okay, well my sister’s expectant baby isn’t going to be reading this blog & a fair chunk of it was for him/her, but word could get back to her and that’s sufficent reason to give pause.

I still have some bigger items to get (my two young little cousins and most of all my mom), although they are a little harder to shop for online. Anyway, clearly I’m doing my part to boost consumer spending. If the economy goes in the shitter after the holidays, don’t be pointin’ the finger over here.