Tag Archives: Fong’s Pizza

Fifteen Years and I’m Still Serving Time

The Great and Powerful Pearl Bailey’s hilarious song (please listen and enjoy above) is about marriage, of course, but I’ve always had kind of a bad-boyfriend relationship with my airline.  Yesterday, April 4th, marked my fifteenth anniversary of flying, and, except for the part about us having kids together (god forbid), this song is me and my job in a nutshell.

Nobody panic: this is not yet another post about how good things used to be compared to how crappy they are now.  It is a different job than the one I interviewed for, and certainly than the one I envisioned when I started fifteen years ago.  I never thought we’d still be on reserve; I certainly never thought I’d be flying straight domestic; and I actively vowed for the first several years of my career that, come what may, the one certainty in the Universe was that I would never — ever, do you hear me? — be based in Denver.  Like a budget airline, Life takes us to unexpected places. Continue reading →

City Code Snapshot: DSM

So, look who’s psychic:  In the Lima edition of “City Code Snapshots,” I predicted I’d have a lot to say about Iowa here in this space, and where did I go on my very next trip?  That state’s own capital city, Des Moines.  Land of the Big Blond Bumpkin, and home of the Tastiest Hotel Cheeseburger in the U.S.A.  The State Fair was on when we were there, which would ordinarily easily be able to provide me with a day’s entertainment — I love a good corn dog — but I never know where my next downtown Des Moines layover is coming from, and I was on a lunchtime mission.

A couple of months ago, I flew with this Chicago-based girl I’d never met before, and we fell into a conversation about food; specifically, about our favorite places to eat on layovers.  And she blew my mind telling about this place in Des Moines, Iowa, of all far-flung locales, where she had stumbled upon a crab rangoon pizza.  I am a mad fan of all things crab/cheese wonton, and sometimes order whole Chinese dinners just to have an excuse to summon them to my door, and I am also a huge fan of all things pizza, and sometimes order whole pizzas just to have an excuse to, well… eat them.  Knowing that there was a place that these two worlds collide and then they let you eat the results was more than I could resist.  It’s not like we don’t have State Fairs in Colorado.  (And in fact it starts on Friday.) Continue reading →