This morning we received a call at 4:10am. The call did not wake me because I was in the shower getting ready for my drive to Canton for a 5:00am pick up for my 7:00am flight to Palm Springs.

I was in the shower so poor Allison had to take the call. But by the time she got to the phone no one was there, and a message had not been left. So when I got out of the shower I called back the caller ID number. After shouting at the voice recognizing menu of options (which made me repeat everything TWICE!) I got through to a person. The call was to let me know that my 11:33am flight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Palm Springs was delayed till 1:45pm.

Don’t get me wrong I like to know when a flight may be a potential problem, but it was 4:10a-freakin-m. How about this for a solution DELTA, since you have about SEVEN HOURS to correct this delay. How about you correct the problem. How about you let me leave for my flight from Boston (which was not delayed). And how about as I take the 5 hour flight in seat 44A (next to some jerk who thinks he is a fricken rock star (sunglasses at 6:30am in the pitch dark, honestly)) and you get another plane for that leg of the flight that is not going to be delayed two hours. Fix the problem! Don’t give me information I can do nothing about! And let my wife sleep! Oh yeah and leave a message! And get rid of your voice recognition phone menu, it is useless and frustrating!

After all that Delta called back at 5:00am to let me know the flight was not delayed. I of course had left the house at 4:24am and this call woke Allison again. We shall see what happens in Salt Lake City.

Well, now I am in Salt Lake City and it looks like I will be here for another 2 ½ hours because, and I know you won’t believe it, my flight actually was delayed to 1:45pm like the 4:00am phone call said. Oh you have to love the state of our airports and air travel these days. It is terrible and unreliable and just plain worthless. So now I’m going to land sometime around 2:24pm PST. I am now at Mountain Time. If I am still awake when I land I have about an hour drive ahead of me because the hotels in and around Palm Springs were too expensive and I have to stay all the way out in San Bernardino. I’m living the life of a first class passenger. Yep life is wonderful.

I finally arrived at my hotel at 3:30pm PST. Delta ended up getting another plane to take the passengers to Palm Springs for a 1:00pm MST departure. It left around 1:20pm MST but hey they finally did something. And just getting under the wire… what a great company… I’m all sunshine and lollipops now.

And sometimes it is a convenient thing (like in movies and other works of fiction.) Today on my flight to Palm Springs coincidence caught up with me.

Yesterday, Allison and I went to 8:00am Mass (a little late because we still thought it was 8:15am Mass). At Mass, Deacon Joe’s homily mentioned an ossuary inscribed with ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’ Now I am not totally sure exactly what an ossuary is physically (as I write this, but I’ll be looking it up) and yesterday was the first time I had heard the word.

On page four of Cross Bones, my latest Kathy Reichs novel, I was presented with those same words. In fact this novel is very much a fictional shot at telling this story. Just a weird little coincidence for my plane rides.

An ossuary is a stone coffin that the bones are placed in after the body has decomposed in a tomb after a year. The book is getting really good. Different than her other works and I like it a lot.