Word to Susan…

Since I now spend most of my waking hours doing work that only seems to serve the purpose of keeping me from doing that which I enjoy–and yes; I do wear a name tag while doing it–this is my first opportunity to wax eloquent about two-week old backlogged material. Fear not; the information has been kept from spoiling and is indeed ready to be loosed onto the world.

So, two weeks ago, I found myself in the Lenexa Triangle, a region of the middle western United States in which life as we know it is relegated to second chair in the symphony of the bizarre. One must fight to keep the mind’s autonomy for only then can they truly appreciate the strangeness of this business. Did my two buddies really just get married? This indeed was so. Can I now say I have stood in an orchard in Missouri to witness the nuptials of people I know? Yup. Did someone really show up falling down drunk to the wedding? If I said no, you sir must hold me in contempt of this court, for I have perjured myself. Had I seen Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa in the buffet line of this buddy nuptial in an apple orchard in Missouri, I’d have thought little of it, other than to calculate how much free booze their stomachs would be denying mine.

For cert, there is more to know about this -than-abominable-but-still-rather-bizarre Triangle, but I must forge on to inform thee farther of the most treacherous demonstration of its temporal stranglehold: The airport.

While over the course of two and a half days I’d grown accustomed to the delicate temperance of the Triangle–Yes; I guess you can have a Pflumm Road and expect people to be able to pronounce it–it was from the airport that this deadly shrew displayed her most unmitigable rage. Only a Triangle such as this would allow an airport to be run by the criminally insane and the old timers that couldn’t get that Wal-Mart greeters job. Only a wench nonpareil would replace my one-stop flight with a non-stop flight…on an airline with run decidedly less precision than the evacuation from Saigon. Oh, I got my direct flight. Thirteen hours later.

Finally on a coast that makes sense and having been thoroughly flagellated by this Triangle, this demidevil, I found myself on the train home drafting some notes on how best to save my time and wallet from the clutches of the world’s other Triangles, known and unknown, that sit with maws wide open, waiting to strike.

Thusly, friends, I give you the Quahog Corollary, a formula and set of guidelines to help determine the worth of a leisure adventure involving the support of a friend or family members happening or event. Obviously, the final arbiter in the situation is the individual applying the Corollary, so the outcomes in every different circumstance are different. Even more obviously, this Corollary is based upon those of us with tight financial circumstances and/or time.

To help you better understand it, I will apply it to my own life and circumstances.