That's some kind of weather.

You can say what you will about social media's culpability in making a dreadful decade, and of course inclement weather has a way of asserting the primacy of the corporeal over the virtual, but at times like these ...

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Something resembling this may or may not have been witnessed by a buddy of mine, and it may or may not have been recently: A full-up plane offers its last couple seats to standby passengers minutes before pushing back. A couple of other standby passengers see the desk agent who sees their itineraries, but can't get them on this flight. With the gates closed and the plane already heading for the runway, a (non-standby) ticketed passenger saunters casually up to the gate with the coffee s/he has just purchased, expecting to board. S/he becomes indignant and starts heaping abuse on the desk agent when told that s/he has missed the plane and they're not bringing it back. /cut to the ticket counter

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High among the many compelling reasons to work for DIA, one must rank the management's willingness to let one take four weeks' vacation on the trot. Nevertheless, one does this sort of thing at one's peril, and the witticisms that have enlivened this space in my absence seem proof enough that the blog goes on. But faint heart never won fair Hefeweizen, and I have to admit that somewhere between Maidan (in a lull of the crisis du jour and under the docile occupation of a half-dozen parties' professional protester-campers) and the Hofbrauhaus, work, DIA, nonprofit tech, all disappeared gloriously into the memory hole. Feeds and newsletters and all that stuff in total stillness, with just the cool cascade of strange sights, new people, and miles of cobblestones to walk. It's not that I don't love everyone, it's just ... I don't know how to finish that sentence. Besides, travel is a form of metaphysical -- and ever-so-physical -- blogging (bear with me here, I'm trying to get a writeoff for attending Carnival).

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