interlude devalis (part the first) She hated airports. There was just something about them, the stale stench of Cinnabon (which she'd only ever seen in airports, anyway) mixed with the raw blandness of too many gray business suits wearing gray business men, like shells wear tortoises and weary women comforting their screaming children who were afraid of flying. Of course there was good reason for that, especially now after the big terrorist scare, but she figured the kids were more afraid of their ears popping than of being threatened by an exacto-knife wielding Middle Eastern man. Up until a couple weeks ago she'd only ever been on an airplane once and that had been when she'd been too young to remember it. She had been too young to remember it, but old enough to be afraid of strange people dressed up like plastic cartoon characters on that one trip to Disney World, also forgotten. Also, with good reason. Now, in the past twenty-four hours she'd been on three airplanes, sat in three of the same airport for far too long, it seemed, all with the lackluster similarities that made her hate traveling and seeing and being anywhere but home. She twirled her ring on her slender ring finger, left hand. It was a silver wrought music bar with a treble clef at the center, something she'd bought in Mexico. She'd spent the last two weeks in Mexico. Her nose wrinkled at the treble clef. It wasn't her clef. Of course, nobody even knew what an alto clef looked like, there were actually only two instruments who played in alto clef regularly and she couldn't even name what the other one was. Violists were always sheisted that way, though, and she had learned to expect that, especially now that she was in Milwaukee once again for the Chamber Music Festival. 040701 what's it to you? who go blather from