Starting to Begin

Today is really sort of a pre-travel day where Russia is concerned.  Today is the day when I am travelling back from Greenville to Detroit in order to give myself plenty of time before our Tuesday night departure for the mother country.  Because I do not trust airlines as far as I can check my bags for free, I decided against flying back the day of the departure.  I felt like, even if I left myself 12 hours between landing in Detroit and leaving for Paris, I was asking for trouble.  So I booked my flight today… for 6:25am.  I don’t remember booking such an early flight, but they let me get on it, so I’m assuming I did.  And I didn’t really put it together that I would be travelling on Memorial Day.  So poor Rick had to get up at 4:30 on his day off to drive me to the airport.  Oops. So here I am in the Charlotte airport, listening to some guy in a baseball cap play the guitar while his be-mulletted pal looks on with great admiration.  The man sitting over by the window snores softly into his neck pillow.  One of the women in the unfortunate yellow polo shirts takes a break from hocking US Airways credit cards to sing some soulful blues tune.  Oh my… now a woman has stopped to chat with them.  She doesn’t seem to have any interest in a credit card; rather she seems to want an excuse to hear her own voice.  Today is her birthday, and was her grandparents’ anniversary as well.  I think she’s talking about her highlights and possibly having her eyebrows done as well.  The yellow-shirted women think that she looks like Liza Minelli.  And she kinda does.  But she swears that Liza is older than she is.  And now we’re lamenting Judy Garland’s hard life.  AH!  And now we’ve found our way into the credit card pitch. Oh wait… now we’re getting Looks-like-Liza’s full travel history.  Her brother lives in California, her daughter goes to school in Michigan, and she can’t believe they have See’s candies here in the airport.  They’re great!  She won’t buy them because she can’t eat candy, but still. I must say, I feel sort of bad for the ladies in the unfortunate yellow.  They really put a lot of time into that one, and all they got for their trouble was a referral to a candy store.  I’ll have to enjoy eavesdropping while I can, since I have a feeling I will find it a more difficult past time in Russia.