The Mile High Pierogie

So my flight back to STL from the graduation commencement was another miserable rescheduling. My flight out of PIT was schedule a little before 8 pm, when I got the airport, I found out they delayed it by almost two hours. They said some air traffic control issues in the Northeast, probably another FTA controller fell asleep in his tower. (Remember, my flight into town was delayed 2 hours) That meant I would miss my connection in Detroit, which is also the last flight to St Louis for the day, so I was offered the choice, between spending the night in Pittsburgh and getting on a 6 am flight, or fly to Detroit and spend the night there. I told Delta to f%@# off and took the 28X to town.

Initially I was upset over the schedule mess, but I got over it, I got to see a friend for the extra eve, and I thought about hitting up Point Brugge for a round of the curry mussels, but I had to abandon that idea because in the aftermath of Saturday night activities, my body could not handle more than a chicken salad for dinner on Sunday. So I went and got that at the Murray Avenue Grill, nothing to write home about, yet, here I am writing.

Anyway, that was the evening. I woke up at 3:45 am after slightly over two hours of sleep to catch the 28X again for a 5:50 am flight, connecting through freakin’ Atlanta. I slept on the first leg of the flight, at the Atlanta airport I used the lay over to shave, brush my teeth, and change into something work-appropriate, and got myself a cup of Seattle’s Best (Does anybody else think that’s a lousy name for a chain? Not catchy. They should have done what Panera did when they dropped the name St Louis Bread when they went national, but I’ll pick their coffee over Starbucks any day).

Anyway, as soon as I sat down I began conversing with beautiful lady sitting next to me; a consultant from Atlanta on a project in St Louis doing the dreaded Monday-Thursday commute. The conversation for some reason revolved around food, and more food. Ironically, I later found out the woman’s name was Margarita, not like the drink, rather the pizza, or may be the drink. Since it was so early in the morning, I bit my tongue and held back juvenile comments about what I would do to a margarita. Remember, I take it shaken with salt on the rim. More irony for you, her last name turned out to be the same as a favorite Spanish restaurant in the Burgh.

The two interjections that interrupted the food conversation where Kingsport, Tennessee; she had lived there briefly, and I visited once, so I knew enough to tease her about the misery that is life in said town, and blogging. The latter came up when she flipped through the airline magazine and came to the page you see in the picture. She was intrigued when I asked her to hold still while I took a picture of the delicious treat being hand crafted.

Touchdown!!! 9:40 am; in the office half an hour later. Despite copious amounts of coffee, I had to sneak a short post-lunch nap on a couch in my boss’ office. He was not there that day. I also slept for over 10 hours that night.

On a separate note, this is a picture of toasted ravioli, St. Louis’ closest thing to pierogies, in that it’s a local signature dish, and of the pierogie family. It’s not as good as it’s rumored to be.