Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 14 years old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

6:48am (MST): I’m at my gate in the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport waiting for my flight to Houston. My brother just boarded his flight back to Cleveland. We got to the airport a little later than planned thanks to overnight construction on I-10 that required us to take a detour. Then when we got into the Hertz car return lot, the attendants decided to check in everyone who came in before us first. But even with the long bus ride from the rental car center to the terminal, we made it through security and to the gates on time. The sun is just starting to come up, so I’ve got my last view of the mountains.

10:57am (CDT): I’ve arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. The flight here was uneventful and I made some more serious headway on “Anathem.”

11:35am (CDT): boarding of my flight to Tampa has been delayed due to a “regurgitation situation” (the gate agent’s words) on the plane from the previous flight (“too much information!” mumbles the guy sitting next to me in the waiting area). Apparently the haz-mat team has to clean the area … I hope I don’t get that seat! Although, on the other hand, that would now be the cleanest seat on the plane. 🙂

4:27pm (EST): back home in Florida. Another smooth flight, and this time the middle seat was open so I had a bit more room to relax and stretch out. Another good chunk of “Anathem” is behind me and I’m really starting to get into the meat of the story now (which I should be, given I’m about 400 pages in!). I’m now waiting for my luggage at the bag claim and then I’ll get my car and drive home.

Quick tech recap: I ended up not using the WordPress app on my iPhone to “live” blog these entries. I was just too “busy” during the day to keep making updates (and on Wednesday I accidentally left my phone in the car when we went to the game). Plus, the app is not well-suited to long-form posts with lots of formatting, links, and images. I do like it for moderating comments, though. I didn’t use the geocaching app on my iPhone either. We did fire it up once while we were at Camelback Mountain, but none of the caches were near our route, so we didn’t bother. The MLB and NCAA apps, however, were very useful, allowing us to keep in touch with other scores while out at the ballpark. I was so involved in reading “Anathem” on the plane that I didn’t even watch any of the videos I had copied into my iPhone or EeePC for entertainment purposes.

Thus our second annual Spring Training mini-vacation comes to a close. I already can’t wait for next year!