Category error.

We got in to the airport in plenty of times, because like the rest of America, we were afraid of long ass TSA lines. Which fears, of course, proved to be unfounded. I don't want to brag, but you're looking at a TSA Pre holder here, who knows how that happened, but I am totally putting it down to unspecified character strengths. So we sailed through, leaving us plenty of time to do airport things, such as:

• Buying a Times (the Thursday edition is the best edition);
• Logging on to the wireless;
• Etc.

...and then realizing that it was elevenses, and therefore time for a snack.

"I don't want to eat a lot, but I need a snack," I declared. "Because I'm a little bit hungry."

"Well, it sounds like you'd better find something," said the historian.

I perused my options, which, as per usual, were thin. Dubious looking cookie at the coffee shop? Bagel? Bag of potato chips (a perennially trusted option)? Yogurt cups? With granola on top?

Well, I wandered past the airport Wendy's, the very same Wendy's that was once the site of a previous bad airport elevenses episode. Be that as may be: I saw a fancy picture of fries (where admittedly I have a weakness) with cheese on them, and also chopped peppers. Yes, America: I fell prey to a marketing strategy, in the form of fries. Ghost pepper fries.

I'm sure you can imagine that I thought I would be getting actual cheese, in its grated form, on my fries. But I watched as the behind-the-counter guy ladled the cheese sauce over the fries he'd harvested from the fry warmer, I thought, oh, right. Cheese SAUCE.

A SMALL DIGRESSION ON CHEESE SAUCE: There are people in my life who love what we call 'nacho cheese,' e.g. the Kraft product that is sold in jars to be heated and consumed with tortilla chips. See also: queso. I find this product repugnant. To me, this product bears the same relation to cheese that Pringles bear to actual potato chips, or that butter-flavored spray bears to actual butter, or any gross simulacrum to its legitimate forebear. However: there hath not been queso/nacho cheese/cheese product in my house for a long time. Maybe this is why, though I should have known better, I did not, and was led astray by the attractive picture of the grated cheese, aka the ghost pepper fries.

Did I eat the fries? Yes I did. Some of them. Some of them were not bad, or not fatally bad, anyway. In my defense, I was hungry. Okay, I know: that's not a real defense. 

Did the historian eat some? Yes, yes he did--in fact, he finished them up, when there was too much of the cheese sauce drowning the remaining few potatoes. Would I order them again? Jeez, I hope not. But the airport elevenses might be a felicity condition for bad snack choices, and that's the (possible) truth.

Airports: an essay.

1. We arrived in perfect time, like geniuses. Wrote down our parking row and shuttle stop. Waited 90 seconds for the bus. Got on with our heavy and not so heavy bags (I'll let you guess whose is heaviest) (hint: someone is bring twelve shirts to Scotland). Arrived at the terminal. Navigated the kiosk like champs. Gave our heavy and not so heavy bags to the Delta folks, who were the soul of helpfulness and politeness.

2. TSA Precheck. America!

3. Having slid through security like the upright citizens we are, we sauntered on down to our gate. Fancy airport salad (me), yogurt and bagel (the historian). All is well.

4. WHOOOPS. Key medication in a checked bag!

5. The historian asks the attendants at the gate: can we retrieve my bag so I can get my meds? Can we? Will we?

6. Hemming, hawing, a little bit of we really can't that gives way to I'll see if we can to Yes, and now you must go back to the baggage claim, get your bags, then recheck, then go through security again.

7. Airport salad! I hardly knew ye! (really, there was only lettuce and big black useless olives and a lemon wedge left.)

8. And we ran, we ran so far away....to the baggage claim, where our bags were waiting as promised.

9. Medication: retrieved. Bags: rechecked.

10. TSA Precheck. America, America!

11. And we are again at the gate.

Terry at the Delta Terminal, Gate D2, for the flight to Paris at 16:59 on August 3: you helped us a lot today! Thank you!

Airports.

I hate to say it, but on our way down to Arizona, I kind of had a small tantrum at the airport.

Let me diagram it for you. Because I had my reasons.

1. What is the point of checking in online and printing one's boarding passes from home if you just have to check in again at the kiosk at the airport? I ask you.

2. Why are the passable restaurants and food purveyors always not sited at the concourse from which one's flight departs?

3. Other minor issues that are, in fact, too petty to mention.

Of course, in the end, we arrived, the airport traumas are behind us (BUT NOT FORGOTTEN!), and that was that.

However, today, on our way out of Arizona, at Sky Harbor International Airport, I was happily surprised to find all sorts of nice things:

• An artsy gift shop that had, among other things, robots made out of recycled materials. "So it's environmentally sustainable," said the clerk.

• Art installations, like this one, of cyanotype prints sewn into clothing:

• even a little gallery, which had some pretty great stuff:

Also, the security line was quick and untraumatic. And I found a salad called "Big Fancy Salad" at a restaurant on my concourse that was pretty darn good, including the fact that it had delicious, delicious cannelini beans. 

Still an airport, but as airports go, the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport made me hate airports just a little less today. In the end, I kept my airport tantrum tucked away for the next time an airport fills me with rage. 

Airport action.

(I feel a series coming on, possibly.)

It was admittedly lame, but I just couldn't come up with a plan for the last afternoon I had, several hours unspoken for, in Tampa. I walked along Channelside Drive to what was ostensibly a shopping area, despite a web review that had warned of its decline. Oh yes: I could feel its declension from the moment I spotted its anchor chain restaurant, a Hooters, from a block away.

Still, I walked around its offerings, and then walked back. There was nothing there for me. What would I do? I felt tired, and I didn't feel like navigating an unfamiliar city on my own. I went back to my hotel--although it was not exactly my hotel, not since I had checked out a few hours before. So I scammed off their free lobby wifi, graded a little, and read a little, and stewed a little, stewed myself into feeling (a) a little hungry and (b) like maybe I should go to the airport, even though it was early.

Here are the things I've done since I was at the Tampa International Airport:

1. waltzed through security because I have TSA Pre status, which never fails to make me feel special.

2. considered all of my airport dining options by cruising them several times each. I ultimately opted for an airport iteration of what is apparently a Tampa establishment, if its own PR is to be believed. I had some tapas--champiñones rellenos and coca de langosta--and both were pretty darn good. You know, for airport food.

3. graded two discussions.

4. shot this tiny Hyperlapse:

I think I feel more settled at the airport because I know what's what at an airport. I don't have to decide whether to learn how to deal with a trolley system and where it will take me and if I will be too far to make it back to grab my stuff to get to the airport on time. I don't--and this is key--have to talk to a person who will give me human-sized, and therefore unverifiable except through trial and error, advice about these matters.

I am not impressed with my own thinking here. On the other hand, I'm also recognizing that I've been at max effort for so much of the time this semester that I kind of needed a less than herculean effort this weekend. Hence the opt out, eat in philosophy which I have embraced so wholeheartedly. Hence the current acknowledgment  of my inner hermit, and letting that hermit take the wheel, as it were. If I had a car. If I had had a car, maybe I would have mapped out an itinerary instead of making the airport, at the end of my conferencing adventure, my home away from home.