People-Watching - Airport Edition

I love to people-watch - everyone is fascinating in some way or another.  And airports are great people-watching locations.  So in between sucking down chapters of the last Harry Potter novel on Monday, I looked around and saw some interesting character vignettes:

• While waiting at my gate, I watched a woman sign up for a US Airways credit card because "she was cold" and wanted the blanket that came in the free gift set you received when you signed up.  And people wonder why so many Americans are in debt...

• After parking my car in the parking garage at the airport, I trundled my big-ass suitcase over to the elevator/stairs down to the shuttle bus.  I looked over at the elevator in time to see a woman walk into the elevator, turn, look at me, reach down and push the button, and then look furtively at me, apparently hoping to get the doors to close before I could make it to the elevator.  I wheeled my suitcase up to the doors just as they finished closing.  Moving quickly, I grabbed my suitcase and jogged down the single flight of steps, making it to the ground floor while the elevator was still settling down from its slow descent.  As the doors opened, I walked past and gave her an evil look (she seemed surprised to see me but didn't otherwise react to my mad stair-descending speed).  I made it to the shuttle first and took the last available luggage-rack space.  We both had seats on the shuttle, but she had to steady her suitcase as the bus jounced its way to the airport terminal.  Maybe I would have been nicer if I had already had some coffee that morning, but part of me thinks she deserved it.

• In a brief bout of irony, an airline employee driving one of those people-transport carts nearly ran over two elderly people on her way to pick up some other elderly people waiting just down the corridor.  The two near-victims finally shuffled out of the way but oddly enough were not offered a ride to their own gate.

• The man across the aisle from me put his headphones on his ears as soon as he possibly could, ignoring all warnings from the flight attendants that doing so could cause a fatal electromagnetic pulse that would take out the pilot's electric razor (or some other jabberwocky along those lines).  He then proceeded to fall asleep and snored the entire 2.5 hour flight.  Either he was really tired or he was listening to "Hypnotize Yourself - The Audiobook".

• On my way to the vendor's office, I drove through a corporate park that had a 4-lane road (2 lanes each direction) running behind some of the buildings.  I passed a UPS truck who had stopped in the left lane.  Next to the driver, facing the other direction in the other left lane was a station wagon.  Apparently, the guy's wife/girlfriend was passing him his lunch and thermos while they were stopped in the middle of traffic.  At least he stooped into her window to give her a quick kiss before he hopped back into his truck and got moving again...