turbo. boost. failure.

these are three little words that you probably don't want to hear as the tiny plane you are sitting on is about to take off into the skies. and this is how my day began. just as our front wheels left the tarmac, take off was aborted and we piled out of the plane and hung out at nashville's not-so-exciting-airport for an hour waiting for the problem to be fixed. is it just me, or does the idea of a mechanical failure being 'fixed' really put a dampener on getting on board that SAME aircraft?

luckily for me and my boss the friendly staff at AA found another flight to St. Louis and got us on that so we wouldn't miss the connection to St. Paul, Minnesota...which is where I am right now. sitting in Holiday Inn's swanky "business center" killing time before the show we came to see (Spamalot) begins. the user of the computer next to me is seemingly unaware that their computer is making repeated and incredibly annoying error chimes. i'm ignoring the urge to throw my stapler at the person's head. i'm not usually so volatile. let's blame it on the fact that i got to bed at 2am. got up at 3.30am in order to be at the airport by 4.30am. and then had to sit in that airport till 9am because my plane was broken. oh, and bad airport coffee.

so St. Paul Minnesota is interesting. first of all it is hot. swealtering hot. which isn't really fair since nashville is currently nothing but sticky hot and i was ready for cool and breezy. being in the north and all ;). the town has some great architecture and nice green spaces blah blah. but i think my favorite thing is the 'skyway' a series of enclosed walkways that bridge between all the buildings down town. this was created to help people get around the city in the winter. as opposed to walking outside. and freezing to death.

wikipedia tells me that "the largest network of skyways is in Minneapolis, 8 miles of skyways connecting 69 blocks. Nearly every building in the city's downtown core is skyway accessible." when we got here we had no idea what the skyway was but it was suggested to us as a way of getting from the theater to our hotel. i kept looking up at the sky expecting to see a gondala, or some sort of arial tram...but then the lovely waitress at kincaid's steak chop and fish (go there for their sweet potato fries) put an end to the mystery.

incase you ever visit this fine city you might also want a heads up that on the first wednesday of every month at 1pm they blast a very loud air raid siren for, oh, about an hour. it's just 'what they do' apparantly. we got out of the cab to this eerie sound and had no idea what was going on. i was busy looking for the closest bomb shelter and wondering how i was going to run from the 'invaders' in heels. but as everyone else seemed unperterbed by the wailing sirens we tried to keep our cool and act normal. so now you know and won't be alarmed.

i'm such a fount of information today.

and it's show time!

xg