Conference travel, fire drills, and begoggled harley dogs.

I'm sitting in the airport in Philadelphia, waiting for my flight to take me home to Kansas. I've been here for a few days for the Fatigue and Fracture Conference that Lehigh U holds in Philly every two years. The conference was productive I guess, and I like Philadelphia. The conference is held in a hotel that is in the very center of downtown, so it makes it easy to walk around and sight-see a little bit. Not that I took full advantage or anything, but it was nice to know that I could. Regardless, it's nice to be out of my dress clothes and back in jeans for the rest of the week.

I can't wait to get home and see Ceci and Aaron. I kept looking at my photos of her on my phone. That part of traveling just sucks, no two ways around it.

We just had a fire drill in the terminal here at the airport. I was eating lunch, and was a little surprised when all the sirens went off and no one made a move at all. I guess this must be a regular occurence? So, I finished my lunch and then walked around. No one seemed to care about the constant warnings to seek a fire exit, except one lady who kept claiming that she smelled smoke (there was no smoke smell, to be sure). After 20 minutes, the alarms shut up, and no one seemed to notice.

This is one thing I've never gotten used to - for some reason, people pretend like they don't notice the weirdest stuff. Why is that? Don't they care? Seems to me like there's plenty of stuff to notice. A half-hour fire alarm, and I think no one else (except for the smoke-smelling lady) even noticed the thing was sounding off. Drives me crazy. It's not that I can't stand people who are oblivious - that's not what I'm talking about (I am far too oblivious to throw that stone) - it's people who notice that something out of the ordinary is happening, and then don't think about it further. Strange. Like the other thing I saw today...

So, I saw the craziest thing on the cab ride over here from the hotel. I was on the highway, and looked out the window at a motorcyclist riding next to us. He had a small white dog on his lap, wearing goggles. Yep. I kid you not. It was surreal. So, I was asking myself if I had really seen that, when 5 minutes later he passed us... and the begoggled dog was on the luggage rack. I seriously hope that was a stuffed dog. It really, really looked real... but seriously? It had to be stuffed. Right? In any case, the cab driver had to have seen it. Not a peep. Really? I mean, real or stuffed, that's just eccentric! It had to at least be worthy of a comment! I'm not asking for a drawn-out conversation about the dog wearing goggles on the motorcycle, but at least a "Huh, that's weird." Gosh. It seemed like something to me that should have been properly appreciated.