On the road again: Austin, day 1

Well.  That was a day.

Thanks to the kind of intestinal distress that demands a lot of sitting time, I never slept a full hour during the six hours I was theoretically to be in bed.  Not the way one wants to begin a trip.

I ran a bit late but got to the plane in plenty of time, and I even received an upgrade.

The lunch choice was chili or a "chicken salad."  Given the condition of my gut, I went with the salad.  The salad itself was bland and wilted but tolerable enough, but the meat was in a separate little container on the plate, and it was The Chicken of Sadness.

Thin, drier than it looked (which is saying a lot, and, yes, I ate one tiny nibble), this creepy burnt bit of ex animal flesh radiated melancholy for three rows in all directions.

I was involved in a work discussion during the flight, so I managed to leave on the plane both a pair of glasses and my treasured black leather book cover.  The book inside that cover is replaceable, but no one makes this sort of cover any longer, and in a zipper pocket of it were notes my kids had written when they were very young.  Gina is trying to retrieve my lost possessions from the airline's lost-and-found department, but the odds are never good in such a battle.

I did not discover any of this until I was in my hotel room, at which point I also found to my dismay that the lock on my suitcase was jammed shut, with the zippers inside their places, so I could not open my suitcase.

Half an hour or so later, I was back at the airport, where a TSA woman was kind enough to open the bag for me--after I reassured her that my business cards were inside and that I could name every item in the suitcase, claims she did test.

The later part of the evening went better than the rest of the day, with my usual barbecue dinner (well, my usual order; I ate less than normal) at the County Line by the Lake and dessert at the Amy's Ice Creams at the Arboretum.  Gut issues or not, one must observe the traditions.

My stomach hasn't yet decided how the night will go, so I can but hope for the best.