I spent quite a few hours in airports this past week. And I love doing that, by the way. Especially when it's big, nice airports full of great restaurants. I highly recommend Terminal D at DFW.
My father always said that sitting in an airport can be the best show in town. You see all kinds of, um, characters walking by. Business men chatting away at each other, other business men chatting away at thin air through their Bluetooth, mothers yelling at children, children yelling with no discipline, people running to catch that flight, people almost wearing skimpy outfits, people pulling old suitcases covered in duct tape, and so forth.
One of the more fascinating elements of this best show in town is in the languages you hear. The foreign tongues are interesting enough, but the use and abuse of ENGLISH can get pretty interesting:
"Yeah, it was...like...awesome...and...like..."
"Yes, we can do a custom bi-foot Davidson valve with the retrofit Hooker gauge on a 30-degree parallel trunk. Yes, I'll have Nancy run a twist prognostic flow on that, and we'll get it right out to you, probably by Wednesday at the first algoscrew..."
"Naw, man, she jus messin wid you. You shudin put up wid dat..."
"Is this the plane to Scranton?..."
Or the dude behind me on an otherwise quiet 6 am flight, chatting away at a Catholic priest, connecting all kinds of imaginary dots between Christianity, Creationism, and the military. And coughing as if he had stopped smoking just the day before. I longed for a screaming baby instead.
The point of all this? Imagine how a conversation among organists would sound to an innocent bystander:
"We're going to get our flutes re-felted..."
"That 16-foot Open was just too big for the room..."
"The tongues are loose. We need to get Robert to re-do the wedges..."
"Yeah, those chests need re-leathering..."
"Should you draw the pitches up through the Tierce or just use the Cornet in the Dialogue?"
And so forth. Well, that's all for me today. I need to go "find more occurences of Haec dies in the Romane..."