The two have nothing to do with each other except my weekend involved both.
I flew back up to Boston to see my sister graduate. I took US Air from Baltimore because it was supposed to get me United frequent flier miles and it was relatively cheap. But it's so hit or miss with them. I got to the airport plenty early but with summer thunderstorms on the East Coast the schedule was a shambles already. So they put me on American direct. Worked for me, I got there sooner. And I didn't have to enable their bizarre policy of paying for the privilege of standby to do it.
Senator Lugar spoke at the ceremonies in comments that were picked up by the national news. As a Republican, his criticism of the Bush foreign policy takes on additional gravitas because it can't be labeled as partisan. Still, I feel a bit cynical about him. Although I agree with his meta message about the necessity of putting more resources into diplomacy than exercise of military might, I thought some of his comments were politically manipulative. In making the argument for increased funding for the State Department (whom I am now a fan of...) he seemed to suggest that Congress had cut funding for such programs. It's possible that it has, I'm not sure, but my problem was that based on the facts and figures he cited in his speech, it was only possible to conclude that Congress had simply not INCREASED the funding as much as they could have. I resented him for using provocative rhetoric that implied a different conclusion than his facts supported. Of course, such is what politicians often do, I guess.
My sister all graduated, I rushed from a family celebratory dinner to get to the airport. When I checked in US Air said everything was on-time. I don't know why they said that – the plane was already late from its previous destination. Time got wasted while I went to the gate and shoertly thereafter saw it delayed by 45 minutes, then an hour and 45 minutes. Even the gate agents were confused. I was supposed to change in New York but it was unclear if I would make the connection. I didn't want to get stuck there (it was too late to call up my grandma) so an agent put me on the flight to National in DC. Great! Yippee! Except my car was at Baltimore. So he gave me a taxi voucher for the trip up to get it.
Of course, the expediency of the plan began to crumble when we sat on the DC-bound plane and the pilot detected a mechanical problem. After maintenance poked at it they declared it unflyable. They did find another plane to fly, but by the time they towed it over and we boarded it was over an hour later. We didn't get to DC until after 10:30pm, and then I still had to take my taxi ride to DC. All told I didn't get home until after 1am. Nice way to start the week...