Weekend in Milwaukee

Wow! I was actually home for the last three nights, and unless I'm mistaken, I've got 9 more to go. I don't think I've been home 12 nights in a row for months. This means several things:

Work:

• All of my meetings are on the phone. I'm not actually sure if that's good or bad.
• I definitely get more done. There are far fewer interruptions than when I worked in the main office.

Food:

• I can buy produce and know that it will be eaten. Of course that's assuming it doesn't get frozen in our strange and mysterious refrigerator.
• I can eat chili or black bean and onion omelettes for breakfast.
• I don't have to eat out. I don't usually mind it when I travel because at home, we don't eat out much at all. But after a while....

Travel:

• I am not subject to discombobulation or, more importantly, recombobulation.
• I can use toiletries that are normal-sized and I don't have to put them back in a quart ziptop bag.

General:

• I can read the paper every day, on actual paper. And do the crossword puzzle and sudoku in pen and not online.
• I can wear different clothes. Meaning that when I travel, I tend to bring the same three or four things with me because they travel well. At home, I can dress a bit more casually (no, not in pajamas!) and generally not worry about going out with brown pants, a blue shirt and green (or pink) crocs.
• I have a choice of shoes. When I travel, maybe I have two pair with me, sometimes only one. It's gets boring.

Still Combobulated

I landed at the Milwaukee airport a few hours ago and wondered if there was any chance I'd misread the sign on Sunday. I mean, I've been telling people about this sign and virtually no one believed me. They eventually did because I'm convincing (and in this case, telling the truth), but really, why would they. Who has ever heard of a Recombobulation Area. Heck, I'm surprised the people who make the signs could even spell it. Try typing it three times. Fast or slow. It's nto so easy. But I digress.

The "Recombobulation Area" sign was still there. Evidently the sign was not a figment of my imagination. If was an April Fools joke, no one has figured that out yet. Or maybe they have and figure that after making you walk on the floor in bare feet after hundreds of people before you, you need to laugh to forget how disgusting the floor probably is.

At National Airport in DC they have little booties you can put on. Of course you can't get to them until after you've already put all of your things, including shoes, into the metal detector. But if you want booties for later (I hear they are all the rage among teens today), or for walking through the metal detector, or from the metal detector to the area that in Milwaukee is evidently known as the Recombobulation Area, you can have booties.

And once again, there are people who seem surprised that they have to take off their shoes. Have they not read the news for the past five years. Shoes can be dangerous. They can be thrown. A really spiky stilleto or a heavy work boot can be pretty dangerous (not to mention painful if you're on the receiving end). I'm not sure how the metal detectors prevent someone from hurling their shoe but I'm sure the good folks at TSA know more than I do about this.

These same people seem surprised to learn that they can't take a water bottle through, and that they need to keep their boarding pass with them. There are announcements all the time. And signs. I would think that if they are as unfamiliar with the process as they seem to be, that they would be paying attention to these things. Evidently, I would be wrong.

There was a woman in front of me in line who had two small bags, two jackets and a Virginia Road Atlas. Seeing as she was going through security and about to get on a plane, I'm not sure why she didn't pack the atlas in the bag she must have checked, but maybe she's really attached to her atlas. Anyway, when she got to the first TSA person who checks your ID and boarding pass, she had to put everything down and find her ID. And then find her boarding pass. I'm pretty sure this is the same woman who doesn't think about deciding how she's going to pay for her groceries until the cashier totals her purchases.

But I digress. So she puts everything on the floor and roots through her bags for her boarding pass and ID. The security person looks at them closely, and when she hands them back, the woman bends down four separate times to pick up the bags, the jackets and road atlas. None of them were particularly large and I'm not sure what purpose standing up straight between bobs for her next item served. But again, this is a woman carrying a road atlas onto a flight.

The same thing happens when she puts all of her things down to take off her shoes. And yes, she did seem surprised that this was happening. I was not amused. And it happened again when everything came off the line. I was even less amused. THIS is why we need special lanes for security. She was risking serious harm to herself by those of us immediately behind her. Certainly someone had heavy shoes that could have easily been dropped onto her head while she was bobbing for jackets.

In the end, I think the Recombobulation Areas should have couches, lavender incense and maybe some New Age music to calm us down after being behind these people in line. That would give true meaning to recombobulation.... don't you think?!

New Words

I usually expect my main source of new words to be the Word Spy (http://www.wordspy.com/) and I was very (!) surprised yesterday afternoon to find a new word at the General Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee.

I left my laptop in DC last week figuring I could do without it for the weekend. (I was right.) Going through security without a laptop is a breeze. I'm used to pulling my laptop out and putting it in the little gray bin, but not having to do that is just so much easier. So once my bags and shoes went through the x-ray machine and I walked through the metal detector, all I really had to do was put my shoes on. There was no reassembly of anything required.

Right past the formal security area is a place with a few chairs for people to sit down and put their shoes back on. I put my bags down, put my shoes on, and looked up. Why I looked up, I can't be sure. But I'm glad I did. I was evidently using the "Recombobulation Area". I looked at the sign three times to make sure I was seeing what I thought I was reading. Yes, it said "Recombobulation Area".

Now I was not particularly discombobulated at the time, although there were certainly people around me who were. And anyone traveling with kids and strollers seems perpetually discombobulated when tney go through airport security. But who knew there was an area where they could recombobulate?!

Let's be clear here - "recombobulate" is NOT a word found in the dictionary. In fact, neither is "combobulate". The word, evidently, can only be used in the negative, or whatever adding a "dis-" to the front of the word would make it.

Yes, I have been to a recombulation area and lived to tell the tale.