I’m here at JFK Airport, just waiting to board my flight to Tampa. I’ll be vacationing for the next few days in the ol’ Bay area, with my chief goal being no loftier than achieving copious sunburn.

But, despite being bored out of my mind just sitting here (and blogging via the terminal’s wi-fi, natch), I’m not so sure I need to leave for the Sunshine State. In fact, with the new Department of Transportation compensation rules that mandate double the fare price repayment for bumped flights (up to a maximum of $800), I’m almost hoping to get knocked off this trip.

Almost.

I suppose some downtime trumps the eight hundred bones. I’ve had to delay this vacation once already, so I’m way overdue for a recharge. But the cash compensation would be nice.

I will, of course, not be taking a vacation from blogging. I’ve even got my notebook computer with me — a decision I’m somewhat regretting as I lug it around. Too late to do anything about it now.

If you’re thinking about visiting Europe, now’s the time to start planning: The open skies agreement, set to go into effect on March 30, will eliminate archaic locked-in carrier/country route agreements, leading to more direct-destination flights from the States and, eventually, lower fares.

Of course, the way the dollar keeps tanking versus the euro, it’ll wind up being a wash once you deplane and start spending money. But every little bit helps, I suppose.

There’s no getting around it: I hate packing a bag for a trip.

Because I suck at it. If I’m taking a short trip, I tend to overpack. If I’m taking an extended trip, I tend to underpack. I’m heading out of town tomorrow for a little under a week — which I’d characterize as a medium-sized sojourn. So maybe I’ll hit the just-right baggage capacity for this one.

But I doubt it.

And of course, there’s always the fear of forgetting the phone charger or some other can’t-live-without item. Even though I never do. Or when I do, it’s something easily replaceable like toothpaste. It’s a peculiar strain of traveler’s anxiety, I know.

The ideal would be for me to head for the airport with nothing but the clothes on my back (and whatever’s in the pockets of the same). For that to work, it’d have to be pretty much a 1-2 day trip, which negates the purpose of traveling for pleasure in the first place.

Still, I’m tempted to go that route tonight, despite the length of my time away. Anything to avoid this odious task, represented by the still-empty travel bag. Or at least pack super-light, then just buy whatever I need during my stay in Tampa Bay. My itinerary is loose enough that I could conceivably wing big chunks of it. The temptation is there…

A memory that inexplicably bubbled to the surface last night:

I knew a girl in college who owned a Siberian husky named Brezhnev.

That’s as in Leonid Brezhnev, who by that point had been dead for several years. Still a cool name for a dog that, allegedly, could trace its roots to Russia.

Actually, I don’t remember the dog itself, aside from his name (it might have been old enough to have been a puppy around the time his namesake died). I do remember the girl. I also remember being impressed that she was geopolitically aware enough to give her doggie such a unique name, but in hindsight, that might have been exaggerated.

The metal bowl where I’d been tossing my loose change (silver only, pennies go elsewhere) was only half-full, but I’d been getting a good bit of low-level nagging to convert it into “real money” already.

So I caved. I poured the however-many-pounds of nickels, dimes and quarters into a bag, and made my way to the nearest grocery store with a Coinstar machine. Five minutes later, I had my tally: $85.20, plus about 60 cents of rejected coinage and four dollars worth of quarters I left at home to seed the next batch.

I could have converted that into cash-in-hand, but I would have lost a sliver as payment for the machine’s coin-counting services. So I opted for an Amazon gift certificate for the full value. (I assume that Coinstar gets a commission upon redemption with all its gift-certificate partners, so in this case Amazon gets to feed the kitty instead of me.)

I briefly considered the iTunes option, except that my rate of music consumption is so low that I wouldn’t exhaust that amount for at least a year. As it happens, I was later gifted with a $20 iTunes gift card, so in addition to the balance I was already carrying there, I’m set on that front for the immediate future.

So, in the spirit of “found money”, I’ve got a few bucks of credit at Amazon for fun purposes. I did already made a frivolous purchase of a “Bear in Mind” tshirt, with a picture of a bear on it. I’ll make up for that with a few book buys in the near future.

On the Metro North train ride up this evening, I had the misfortune of being well within smelling distance of a heavily-cologned passenger.

Given the holiday, I figured someone made like a clean-shaven jive turkey and basted himself in the unmistakably pungent scent of Old Spice. Welcome to Thanksgiving 1977…

I wasn’t bothered for long. Either he moved on at some point, or else my nose got acclimated to it, because I didn’t notice it after a while. The olfactory time-warp ended.

Jeez. Are you supposed to feel worn out after taking a day off?

In a sense, that worn-out feeling should have come yesterday, after I managed to coordinate my client deliverables in order to allow myself a free day. As it was, that took until well into last night. I figured I should take this window now, since, aside from the major holidays, I won’t have any meaningful downtime for myself from now until early January. Such is the consulting life.

Then again, I’m not sure I know how to have a “day off” anymore. True, I didn’t have any pressing responsibilities. But I still wound up running around town until early evening. It was all me-time stuff, including a couple of gratuitously frivolous purchases. But still, that accounts for my current weariness.

Thank God for caffeine…

So just how old do you have to be before you finally stop accidentally biting your tongue while eating?

To answer my own rhetorical question, I suppose you have to reach an age where your teeth have fallen out. At which point the danger becomes gumming your tastebuds to death.

Seriously, I administered a wicked bite on the back of my tongue at lunch today, and it hurt like a bitch for the rest of the afternoon and evening. The pain has only now subsided. I suppose that sensation is good protection against another misfire — for a few months, anyway.

As I woke up and went through my usual morning ritual today, I couldn’t shake the nagging urge to crawl back into bed and avoid this whole Monday.

Obviously, my subconscious was speaking to me. And it turns out it doesn’t like taking “no” for an answer. To wit:

This afternoon, while pouring myself a cup of hot tea, I managed to douse my fingers with the boiling water. Worse, I kept doing it for a couple of seconds before snapping back to reality.

That, on top of the various other self-destructions I’ve self-inflicted today, pretty much did the job. I’m waving the white flag and regrouping for tomorrow. After I stop by the drugstore for some burn ointment.

Rather than repeat last year’s “Aqua Teen Hunger Force”-inspired cheekiness, I thought I’d mark my birthday with something in the way of demographic information. Particularly, I had it in my head that my life-expectancy was 72 years of age; and since this is b-day number 36… Well, you do the math.

But wherever I got that 72 from, it looks like it’s not accurate. The current magic number for Americans is 77.9, and I presume that’s only if you’re being born right this minute. Worse, the life expectancy for the average white male born in 1970 was/is 68; I’m guessing the needle didn’t move too much for 1971 white-boy newborns like me.

So as best as I can figure, I’d already hit the downward slope of life a couple of years back. Or not. With my luck, I’ll probably hit triple digits — of which prospect I have mixed feelings. On the other hand, it means middle age won’t start for me for another decade or so.

Whatever. It’s not like there’s an expiration date on immaturity anymore.

In lieu of any more aborted examination of this accumulation of years, I’ll close with a listing of celebrity birthdays that I share. I know there are others throughout history — I recall finding out years ago that some high-ranking Nazi was also born on this day — but this rundown is diverse enough:

- Tennis star Venus Williams born 1980

- Speed skater Dan Jansen born 1965

- Actor Joe Piscopo born 1951

- Musician Barry Manilow born 1946

- Artist M.C. Escher born 1898

From the name Chipunga Ngandu — who is a sales rep with Verizon Wireless — you get the nickname “Chip”.

Which puts me in mind of “My Three Sons”, actually.

Except that this Chip happens to be African American. Oh, and female.

Somehow, I find the whole thing mildly amusing.

Overheard on the street:

Don’t worry about him. True professionals don’t have hangovers.

Unfortunately for me, these days I maintain an amateur status. And that’s a regression: In my younger days, I took pride in never experiencing hangovers, in spite of best efforts on nights before to wind up with them. It was a physiological trait that my college friend Tom and I shared, and which we’ve both somehow lost with age.

Here’s how I kicked off this Saturday evening:

- Pulled out the martini glass

- Poured in a couple of drops of vermouth, let stand

- Pulled out the cocktail jigger, filled with ice

- Filled with gin

- Shook the jigger with moderate vigor

- Attempted to place the jigger on the table

- Slipped, dropped jigger to floor, spilling ice and gin all over the floor

- ……

- Re-filled ice and gin, shook again, then carefully placed jigger on table

- Looked for cocktail olives

- Could only find black olives — pitted

- Impaled a couple of said olives with toothpick, and dropped them in martini glass

- Poured iced gin into glass

- Proceeded to drink a strange-tasting martini

Not promising. After watching tonight’s hockey game, I think I should either go straight to bed or out for a drink not made by me.

Maybe — just maybe — it’s not in the best taste to characterize someone’s abortion history as consisting of “two confirmed kills”. No matter how quippy it might seem at first.

I suppose there’s no finer illustration of how geared my mind is toward the marketing discipline right now than this:

While perusing a pamphlet from the Greek Orthodox Church on the suggested Bible-reading schedule for 2007 (hey, I was bored), I noticed that the month of April was dominated by days of reading The Book of Acts. So, naturally, I idly ran with that and mentally conceived of an “April is Book of Acts Month — Act Now!” tagline, for promotional use by Bible-reading clubs across Orthodoxy.

I figure that’s a great lead-in to June, which is scheduled for daily Romans readings. “Romans Holiday”, anyone?

For years, I’ve retained this pithy response:

Not I, says this guy.

Where “this guy” is, of course, me. Don’t worry — this is the only regular instance of me referring to myself in the third person.

I’ve found it to be very appropriate as an email response, when confirming a denial. I just used it tonight, in fact.

What’s unusual is that I’ve kept this little phrase in my personal lexicon for 15 years. I swiped it from a colleague with whom I worked for the briefest of periods: Jason Heffron, at the St. Petersburg Times. Despite his subsequent move to Surfing Magazine for what would eventually become a managing editor gig, I doubt I would have remembered working with Jason at all, had he not imparted that little ditty one night on the Sports desk shift.

So I guess I owe him one.

I don’t know where I’ve been for the past 35 Easters. But apparently, I hadn’t been paying attention to the sales patterns regarding the iconic big-box chocolate Easter bunny, and how store-shelf quantities of said holiday treat drastically drop the closer we get to Easter Sunday.

To wit: Yesterday afternoon, I ventured out into my hometown on what turned out to be a foolhardy quest to pick up a couple of chocolate rabbits. I wanted to gift them to my two 4-year-old twin nephews; what kid doesn’t like chocolate? (Well, my other nephew doesn’t, which is why I got him some jellybeans.)

Somehow, I figured finding the ubiquitous chocolate critter wouldn’t be an issue, even though it was the day before Easter. I mean, we’re talking about candy here — it’s not a rare commodity, right?

But the rabbit-sculpted form of it is, apparently. I wound up driving to five stores — five! — and couldn’t find a single chocolate bunny in a box. There were plenty of other candies, like Peeps, and miscellaneous Easter decorations. But no long-eared chocolate figures. I was stunned.

I finally headed to the local mall, and managed to find a modest selection of bunnies in a CVS. They aren’t the kind I would have preferred, but they did the job, and by that point, I wasn’t going to push my luck in extending my search. So I got a pair, and satisfied myself that the little tykes would be getting sugared up nicely on these milk-chocolatey masterpieces.

So, what gives? Is it somehow common knowledge that Easter bunnies are in short supply the day before the holiday? I honestly didn’t think it was possible to just run out of something like this. I guess that, it being a purely seasonal item, a store wouldn’t want to overstock on them. But an actual shortage? Hard to believe.

One additional scrap of irony: I could have gotten a couple of freebie bunnies on the subway. A couple of days ago, some Lindt peddlers were giving away a palm-sized version of their holiday gold bunnies. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t bother swinging by close enough to be handed a couple. Not that they would have lasted until today.

This morning, on the way to work, I suddenly got a craving for a cigarette.

The problem: I don’t smoke. Not unless you count the annual two or three cigars I indulge in. And no, I’m not qualifying by excluding the puffing of any other substances; when I say I don’t smoke, I mean I don’t smoke anything.

So how did I get hit with a need to light up? Beats me. I could blame the usual media-imagery scapegoat, as there’s a fair number of outdoor cigarette ad displays along my walking route. But I really doubt that would trigger a false-positive biochemical reaction.

Anyway. I’m kinda looking forward to having my first-ever phantom nic fit!

GrandCentral offers relief from the phone fatigue experienced by those of us with too many phone numbers. The service assigns you an overarching phone number that you keep for life, and that will ring all your separate phone lines at once so you can never miss a call.

My question: Why?

Frankly, if you’re still carrying a wireless phone, a primary landline, secondary landlines at vacation homes, a business line… You need to cancel most of those accounts. For all the money you’re spending on those separate lines, you can slim down to just a go-everywhere wireless phone with unlimited minutes, and be done with all the hassle. If you must keep a landline as insurance, fine — but you can do that for pretty cheap. Two numbers or less obviates the need for something like GrandCentral.

The “phone number for life” idea isn’t new. AT&T rolled out the (700) area code back in 1983, and it was intended for much the same market: On-the-go go-getters who moved around a lot. This was well before the explosion of multiple personal telecom options, of course; and somewhere along the way, the (700) code was repurposed.

For the guys, here’s a fun(?) way to gauge where you’re at with your relationship:

On any random day — preferably not a special occasion or holiday — buy a bouquet of flowers and present it to your special gal.

The reaction it prompts should speak volumes about your relationship. If she takes it in the spirit of gift-giving and appreciates the gesture, you’ve probably got a good thing going. If she eyes the move with suspicion, outright hostility, or even bland disinterest, then you’re likely in a bad place (actually, you both are).

Obviously, if you’re one of those guys who makes flower-giving part of your daily/weekly routine, then this barometer won’t work for you. And it’s not particularly applicable for the ladies. In those cases, you’ll have to find your own relationship-o-meter.

Is it common to go down in shoe size as you plow through your 30s?

For years, I’ve taken a US size 9 or 9.5 for my footwear. But a few weeks ago, while getting fitted for a new pair of dress shoes, I got measured with a size 8.

I figured that was an aberration attributable to that particular shoemaker. But in the last couple of days, I bought another two pairs of shoes — another for dress, and a pair of long-overdue snow/outdoor boots — and sure enough, I wound up with size 8 both times.

What gives? My feet don’t feel any different. I’d think my upright stride would be affected if there was some sort of pedal shrinkage goin’ on. But I’m not falling down or careening around lately (any more than normal, natch).

A mystery I’ll have to live with. It’s a pain, because size 8 doesn’t appear to be a “normal” size, so it’s harder to find most of the time. I could do without that complication.