I got back up to New York on Monday. It was an all day affair and definitely something that only a crazy would enjoy. Three flights, a cab ride, and a train ride consumed 15 hours of my life. I used to watch a show on a&e called "airline." It's a weekly documentary of the actions of people who work for Southwest airlines and usually shows some of the crazier passengers and the strange situations. Every once in a while, you'd get to watch as a terminal manager had to explain very gently to a large person that the policy was that they needed to buy two seats.

I always thought it was a little unfair, and always felt a little sadness for the large person. That was until I sat next to a large woman on the way from Austin to Baltimore. Three hours of her arm in my seat and her leg dangerously close to mine was all it took to wholeheartedly agree with Southwest's policy. I only wish they'd have made her buy another seat. I'm not trying to be rude, but it's incredibly uncomfortable to have to lean out of your own seat to avoid spending three hours touching a stranger.

When I finally got to albany 11 hours after I left lubbock, I was treated to a spectacle known as Amtrak. All the trains were late, the station employees could have cared less, and there was no intelligble instruction as to what to do and how to get on the train. I now know why Amtrak is constantly buoyed by tax dollars as they don't have a clue.

But the piece de resistance was arriving to New York during one of the worst heatwaves in the past 70 years. It's seriously hotter than I've ever felt in my life. 96-98 degrees with tons of humidity and stale, stagnant air. Yuck. Only to be outdone with arriving to a dorm room with a broken air conditioner. My room was, and I'm not kidding 88 degrees last night. After much bitching and complaining, I finally ran into a really great lady who set me up in an empty room. How I didn't run into anyone with that kind of common sense in the last three days, is beyond me.

So I hate sitting on an airplane all day, I hate sitting with someone spilling into my seat, i hate the $40 cab ride to the train station, I hate this atrocious hot weather, and I hate people who have no common sense.

But I LOVE my class I'm taking right now. I'm taking Meat Identification and Fabrication and it's taught by a wonderful German Chef, Johanns Sebald. This guy makes butchering look like the easiest thing in the world. He's been at it for 49 years, teaching for 19 of those. He knows meat inside and out and it's very evident once you watch him work. He's encouraging and funny and has a class about him that I hadn't yet seen here.

For many years, he was ranked #2 in the world, never able to take out his father at #1. Imagine if you were a basketball coach and you got to take a class taught by Coach K, or you're a guitarist taking a class from Jimi Hendrix. You now know how it feels to be in Chef Sebald's class.