At Columbia Airport and Being Reflective

What an interesting trip down here to Columbia, SC this evening. The line to check my bag at National Airport, of course, was quite long, but it didn't bother me too much. The flight here wasn't too bad at all, I can't complain, even though we left a few minutes late, but we still got here early, go figure huh? So I arrive here in Columbia to discover that my colleague's flight from Atlanta was going to be delayed due to mechanical problems. So I get the car and my bag, and then I come back into the terminal waiting area, and here I am now, connected to the net wirelessly on the airport's free internet access. It's something else, it runs quite fast here, I'm pleasantly surprised.

There is something that occurred today in Washington that was quite disconcerting to me. After such a wonderful day yesterday temperature wise, it starts to snow! Well, it started out as rain when I got to the Fredericksburg train station this morning, but by the time I reached Crystal City, it had turned to snow! Perhaps I'm one of those traditional sort of people who feel it really shouldn't be snowing in northern Virginia in March. Perhaps I've gotten spoiled over the course of the last 10 years I've been living here, I don't know. The last time I saw snow in March though, I was living in Oklahoma City, and even then, it only happened once in the four winters I spent in Oklahoma. I'm sitting in my office thinking, it's March, spring training is going on, baseball season is right around the corner, and it's snowing. I don't know, I guess it put something of a damper on the day today. It is my hope that it will be much nicer temperature wise in Washington when I return on Friday. I know the weather isn't exactly going to be nice and balmy here in Columbia throughout the duration of my stay here this week.

Speaking of spring training, I actually have some optimism for my favorite team the Baltimore Orioles. And no, I don't have these optimistic feelings due to the off-season trade we made with the Cubbies for Slamming Sammy Sosa. We already had a potent lineup before the addition of Sammy, for crying out loud, the O's led the league in hits last season. I actually think our pitching staff is going to be much improved this year. With Ray Miller, who I might add is a great pitching coach, not a great manager, for those of us in O's land, you know what I am referring to, but the pitching staff in the second half of last year made some great strides to becoming better, not great, but better. And hopefully Kurt Ainsworth will be over his injury, as will Erik Bedard. I would like to think that the O's will make the AL East race a little more interesting and give those ESPN types another team to talk about in the AL East other than the Sox and Yanks. The pitching staff has got a lot to prove this season, and I hope they have matured to the point where they are somewhat improved upon from last year.