…anything you still can’t deal with is now your own problem. -- Trillian

My life recently has been a series of very extreme context switches.

First, there was Tech Ed, which was a blast in its own way. Immediately after TechEd was three days at Bonnaroo, which was a blast in a way almost completely antithetical to that of TechEd. I flew back to Seattle on Monday evening in time to get up Tuesday morning for an 8am dentist appoint to have a bunch of fillings redone (which, while not horrible, could hardly be considered a blast in any way at all). Follow that up on Wednesday by giving a review of some of the work I’ve been doing to the senior-most technologist in our division. Today was back-to-back-to-back meetings pretty much all day. Now it’s about 6pm and I finally feel my head stop spinning. Whew…healing breath in, healing breath out…

My life improved substantially this afternoon around lunch time when United Airlines decided to return my bag to me.

See, for some reason my backpack decided to take a different flight home from Nashville than I did. “No problem!” the kind folks at the airport said. “We’ll deliver it to your Place Of Choice as soon as it lands!”.  Foolishly, I believed them and left the airport.  

Tuesday morning came around and I prepped the receptionist at my building that a rather confused United Airlines delivery person would be showing up sometime soon, bearing a black and yellow REI backpack for me, Mr. Maine. And then I left to go to the dentist and get my teeth all fixed up, but that’s a different story.  

After my long sojourn at the dentist, I returned to my office all numbed up and swollen to find that United Airlines had in fact followed through on their promise to deliver my bag to me. Well, check that – they had kept most of their promise in the sense that they had delivered a bag to my Place of Choice. One that (unfortunately) bore little to no resemblance to the one that I had entrusted to their care so many days ago.  

You see, rather than delivering a yellow/black backpack for Mr. Maine, they delivered a red/red duffel bag for Mr. Moine. So close and yet so far on so many levels. I’m all for adhering to the spirit of the law if not the letter but that crossed the line of acceptability even for me. 

Net/net, I have had this duffel bag that does not did not belong to me sitting in my office. Poor Mr. Moine (who is apparently here on vacation from Germany, judging by the looks of things) probably wants it back, and I have nothing but the strongest desires to return his bag to him. He apparently has my bag, but has also dropped off the face of the planet. Now I’m I was stuck in the game of 3-way phone tag between myself, the airline, and the stupid delivery people who screwed all of this up in the first place.

Fortunately, after much confusion, the very same confused-looking United Airlines delivery person returned to the reception desk of 42 with my bag in hand. His comments upon seeing Mr. Moine’s duffel bag were:

“Wow. That doesn’t look like your bag at all.”

I know, dude. Tell me about it.

Fortunately, tomorrow is shaping up to be not too bad at all, and the weekend is almost here. Should be completely back to normal by Monday but damn, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks.