Today’s soundtrack: extra time, on the ground
Today at 6:12am: Showering with hotel bar soap.

This is what it looks like down below!

This is what it looks like up above!

I think the pretzels were filled with knockout powder.

45 minutes is an awkward flight time; soon as I started nodding off, the plane began its descent.

The half-loaded Airbus A319 touched down in Pittsburgh carrying dozens of random people and at least one sleepy New Yorker. I got two hours of sleep the night before ‘cause I was trying to get my shit together.

(Tangent: If you’re ever in an airplane, don’t drink the airplane’s tap water! After the Smith gig I was watching CNN in the hotel and they had a report about airplane water. It’s got ridiculously high levels of insect eggs and other malevolent bacteria. The health expert guy said you could wash your hands but not brush your teeth with that water. Cable TV provides a wealth of useful information.)

After deplaning I made my way through the concourse. Bought a coffee (at 11:59am, my first of the day) and juggled it with my two bags, trying not to burn myself.

Up ahead I spied two Asians clearly waiting for someone. After awakening my vision is always blurry, and my glasses were buried in one of my bags, so I couldn’t tell how old they were at this distance. Could have been college students, could have been junior high kids.

After closing the distance I realized they were college age, one of each sex. The girl was quite cute and began waving at me. My first reflex when a cute girl waves at me is to ignore it, certain they are waving at someone behind me.

But she was waving at me! I waved back.

Alex and Jean had come from Carnegie-Mellon University to pick me up. Walking to the parking garage, Alex offered to carry my bag but I declined. At Cornell they told me about some speakers they had invited who turned out to be real primadonnas and I don’t ever want to come off like that. But in the garage I spilled coffee on one of my bags and started to feel like a spaz so I let him carry one.

Poor Alex (who drove me everywhere for the duration of my stay) had a driver’s side window that was locked in the open position, and it rained the whole time. I think his left arm is going to catch a cold.

After a 30-minute drive, Jean and Alex check me into the hotel, a Holiday Inn Select. The room is killer! King-size bed! It’s so wide that it’s spanned by three, rather than two pillows. I guess Kings were into threesomes.

The gig starts at 5:45pm and I wrapped up around 7pm. Nice auditorium, brand-new and I had a wireless mic, meaning I would have the freedom to punctuate my lecture with occasional backflips. I mean I can’t actually do backflips but it’s the thought that counts.

Far as I can tell the gig went well, though I realize I’m going to have to start micro-recording myself and analyzing transcripts if I want to improve.

Afterwards a group of students and me go out for a big Chinese dinner. Initially there are sixteen of us seated around two separate round tables.

As the featured speaker I feel I should try to provide “face time” with everyone present but the micro-geography renders this impossible. I debate hopping up onto the lazy susan of each table so any student that wants to interact can simply rotate me into position.

The students are so sweet! Some voice worry that I’ll find the food sub-par, coming from New York’s Chinatown, but the chow easily passes muster. Coupled with the pesto chicken sandwich I had for lunch (a 4 out of a possible 5) this is turning into a very good food day for me.

To cap the evening off Belinda, Alex and Jean take me to this shockingly hip Mediterranean bar/restaurant in Shadyside (killer name for a neighborhood) for dessert. Coffee, smoke, crème brulée and I’m happy as a clam. It also doesn’t hurt that Belinda and Jean are cute as buttons. Why couldn’t I have met girls like this when I was in college? (Alex and Terence, if you’re reading this, you’re lucky guys.)

I like hanging out with all the students but you can get to know people much better in a foursome or smaller. These three are pretty funny and we get along famously. Afterwards in the car while we were making an off-the-cuff joke, Jean stunned me by spitting out a punchline that was, word-for-word, exactly what I was going to say.

Back at the hotel after midnight, I find myself unable to sleep. My mini-vacation here in Pittsburgh comes to an end when I wake up tomorrow. I have to get up at 6am to make my flight and return to the grey comforts of Manhattan.

Getting peckish. I wander the hallways looking for a vending machine that sells cookies, but my mission ends up with the same results as the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

Dejected and snack-less, I lay supine on the edge of my King-size and flip through the channels. Flip. Flip. Flip. To my right, a backpack in the corner of the room, filled with printouts of my writings. To my left, what feels like a good ten or eleven feet of empty bed-space. This is my lot for now.