So after reading all this I decided to play it super-safe and paid for a ticket to come in the night before my 5-day reserve stint here in lovely IAH. I've tried to APU anything and everything, but haven't succeeded in getting a single pickup to work. And to my amazement -- there are literally no 737 FO IAH trips in open time for today, and only one for tomorrow. I even called CS and begged for a trip, any trip...nothing doing.

You would think that on the busiest travel week of the year, in one of our biggest bases, there'd be OT trips. Does nobody call out sick on holidays, to avoid losing the holiday pay?

So now the questions are:

• What's fun to do in Houston? (is this like asking "what's a nice street to explore in Newark"?)

• Why is the sleep room temperature set at minus seventy Fahrenheit?

• Which airport hotel is least likely to involve a run-in with tweakers in the parking lot?

Ahhhh...Houston.