Dinner party!

Briefly alluded to in the last post: a dinner party for seven people, with six courses, and 2.5 hours to cook = eek! I can only blame myself. What J and I started discussing as having soup and bread for three out of town friends, I turned in to a monster while reading cookbooks and shopping.

The menu:

• vegetarian chili: black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, tomatoes, sauteed onions, garlic, sauteed zucchini, red wine (all organic except the wine!)
  
• pumpkin soup pureed
  
• spicy Thai peanut noodles: whole wheat spaghetti noodles, peanut butter, carrots, scallions, pan-seared tofu (all organic)
  
• sourdough bread, with dipping options: apple balsamic vinegar, fig balsamic, cherry balsamic, extra virgin olive oil, chili pepper oil
  
• stuffed baby bella mushrooms, with garlic, sauteed in a balsamic reduction and then baked
  
• spinach salad roasted red and yellow peppers, grapefruit, tomatoes, avocado (all organic)
  
• wine: three reds, a white, and a rose
  
• beer: Sweetwater IPA
  

All in all, despite my frantic cooking, it was a success. I didn't have time or mental energy to take pictures of everything, but here are a few images:

Onions. (Duh.)



Onions and carrots. (Duh.)




Zucchini, post-slicing, for the chili.




Onions, carrots, and zucchini being sauteed for the chili.




Vegetarian chili, early in the process.




Mushrooms after being wiped clean.




Mushrooms being prepped. (Stems in the bowl form a lot of the stuffing material.)




The mushroom stem and garlic mix for the stuffed mushrooms.




Post glazing, pre-stuffing, pre-baking baby bellas.




Sauteed tofu, before being pitched into the spicy Thai peanut noodles.




The balsamic assortment and some freshly polished wine glasses.




The stove isn't tilted toward the back, no matter how it looks.

Food!

Since I really don't don't have the time to do a substantive blog post, here's some recent food porn instead:

From spinach and basil:POOF! to pesto:

(Yes, it is more or less that easy. I basically chop up a few cloves of garlic and some pine nuts in the food processor, add a couple cups of spinach leaves and fresh basil, then blend with olive oil to a consistency I like.)



Sauteed tofu with fresh oregano and cilantro, and carmelizing onions, that POOF! turn into a sandwich:


Sauteed tofu, fresh tomatoes from my balcony gardening, fresh pesto (basil from the balcony garden), caramelized onions, sourdough bread.

Speaking of caramelized onions, here's a really really disgusting looking recipe from wikihow. Newsflash: caramelizing the onions bring out PLENTY of sweetness, you don't need to add sugar. A tablespoon of sugar per onion"?!?! YUCK. (Okay, okay: as many of you know, I don't like most sweet foods. But seriously? That's gross.) Every onion I've ever caramelized has been plenty sweet when I'm done.


This is a teaser from the dinner party we threw last night, with a longer post to follow. I started cooking at 4pm for a 6:30pm dinner party, with six courses, for seven people. (Handy Tip: this is inadvisable.) Fortunately, the only thing I really messed up was burning the shit out of some garlic in a skillet, minutes before the first guests started arriving.

Rain and rotten fruit

After a week of beautiful, sunny, clear skies and low humidity, it's raining again in Atlanta. Sadly, I had so much to get caught up on after all the time traveling that I didn't get out for much biking. Actually, almost zero, beyond generating daily errands. But I'm feeling more on top of my to-do list, which is down to only nine items.

I just made a smoothie, using some very overripe bananas (almost of the banana bread vintage) and was struck walking back to the computer how the taste and even the smell border on that Central America, fruit so ripe that most estadounidenses would consider it rotten. I regularly surprise people when I'm picking through the bananas to find something I won't need to put in a bag for two weeks to consider it edible. Fortunately, J hates raw bananas (bizarre, I know) so I get to buy and eat the bananas however I want.

Upcoming trips: to NYC to help with a bathroom renovation, to Arizona and southwest Georgia for protest support, and to the southern Nevada desert, for vacation with J (We're both excited, since we haven't done a vacation trip together in about a year and a half.)

Okay, blogging actually isn't one of the nine items on my to-do list, so... here are a few random photos from the last months of traveling:

This is my first of three flat tires in one day, patching it on a street corner in Brooklyn around 8am. The crossing guard across the street (the picture didn't come out) was visibly snickering at me.


On a sidewalk in San Francisco, in the North Beach neighborhood. Now, San Franciscans are exceptionally nice people, but going to the trouble and expense of treating something for bedbugs, and then donating it? Just call me D for Dubious.


About to ride over the GW bridge from NYC into New Jersey. Looks really inviting, huh?

No lime, no time

Really truly no time for blog post. Stop. So will speak in telegram speak. Stop. Seattle nice, beer good, espresso lovely. Stop. Recovering from significant sleep deficit. Stop.

Still life in tomato:



Tomatoes still producing despite overnight temps low 40s. Stop.

More soon. Maybe.

The great suitcase hunt

I decided I needed a new suitcase. My otherwise very nice 22" roll-aboard style suitcase simply isn't fit for Delta's overhead bins, which seem to be the smallest in the industry. This is a suitcase which has fit on Alaska and United with relative ease, both long-ways (the nice way, wheels-first or wheels-out, that leaves more room for Ma and Pa Kettle's six carryons) and wide-ways (the more obnoxious way, but hey: I actually observed the carryon limit, so if you didn't, I don't want to hear about it.) It has fit even when fairly stuffed, and on various models of planes: basically everything except the loathsome regional jets.

But in the last month, it has barely fit, or not fit at all, on Delta's 737-800, Md-88, or 757-200. With some class irony, carryon bags are significantly more difficult to fit in the first class bins on Delta planes, due to the curvature of the airplane making the bins smaller as you go forward. Ha!

So anyway, yesterday mom, J, and I do a super fun vacation activity (mom's vacation, not ours): we go suitcase shopping. My priorities, in order: a shorter rollaboard (20" or even 19"), fairly thin, four wheels would be nice, hard-side would be frosting on the suitcake.

REI is a big fail, with a ton of overpriced rollaboards, but all 22" or larger. Costco sucks even worse than the last time I looked, selling one large 22" rollaboard, and a three-suitcase set. (Buying sets is usually about as bad of an idea as buying a block full of knives when you really only want two or three of them. When was the last time you needed eight cheap matching steak knives? Similarly, when was the last time you used that 28" monster suitcase that would get you hit with overweight fees if you filled it with anything besides bubble wrap?)

So we go to Macy's. Mom loves Macy's, and it's right across the miserable parking lot from Costco. We proceeded to consider and debate no fewer than twenty different models and approaches, and filled various of them with towels to compare capacity, which Macy's very kindly puts right next to the suitcase department. I'm sure that's what they had in mind. (Or maybe they want people to buy them? Huh. I dunno.)

After about 45 minutes of comparing suitcases in a desolate department relegated to the back 40, a salesclerk shows up and asks if we need help. I politely decline, saying we're just considering all the options. She continues to stand there and shoot us doubtful looks. Mom is sitting on one of the display playforms reading a paperback book. J and I have, at this moment, three or four suitcases laying around on the floor, and mom quips about how we're using their towels to see how much they hold. Salesclerk is nonplussed. She continues to stand there, make unhelpful comments, and generally make us feel somewhat uncomfortable. (Which, in retrospect, was probably intentional.) The only question I have is about the return policy. She initially mumbles something, and then I clarify:

Me: What if I use it for one trip and really hate it?

Salesclerk issues unclear, vague answer, but in sum says nope, that wouldn't be good enough.

Me: What if it won't fit in the overhead bin?

Mom: You know, I've never had a problem with Macy's in with returns: they're always really good about it.

Salesclerk: another mumbled, unclear answer. When pressed for a clarification;

Salesclerk: well, you can't just use it and then return it.

Mom: [good-naturedly] I don't think he's talking about using it like a prom dress and then returning it.

Me: What if the zipper breaks on the first trip?

Salesclerk: well, yes, if the handle totally broke, you could return it.

Uhhhh, okay. Now that the grunting salesclerk has unilaterally re-written Macy's return policy, and essentially accused me of being a prospective thief (over a suitcase that is on sale for $60: yeah, that's worth risking my bar licenses for) I walk away to find other suitcases to compare. Grunting and accusatory salesclerk hovers for a while longer, then then fortunately another customer (only the second customer besides us to venture into the luggage department in about an hour) asks where she can find a five-suitcase set selling for $79. (Gee, those are gonna be really high quality sweatshop suitcases.)

After much consideration, we settle on a suitcase, and go in search of bathrooms. We then wander the third floor to find a cashier. salesclerk #2 really tries to do the right thing, as Macy's apparently works on commission, or at least has some other kind of bonus system for salespeople. she asks the suitcase salesclerk "hey Soandso, where you working with these people?" she starts to walk away with another customer, saying "no, you do it." Salesclerk #2: "well, do you want to type your number in?" Suitcase salesclerk is evidently so unwilling to deal with us again that she just grunts and walks away, so Salesclerk #2 shrugs and types her nnumber in, to get whatever pissass bonus or commission will flow from a $60 suitcase, minus the 10% coupon I printed out from the web.

I get that sometimes retail staff have bad days (I've certainly walked in those shoes) but, Confidential to Macy's: having your sales staff misconstrue/lie about the return policy, and accuse you of wanting to defraud you over a $60 suitcase, is really not A+ sales methodology.

JFK

JFK: mediocre president, horrible airport.

JFK presidency: we canonize and lionize any president who is assassinated, and even those who just die. (Newsflash: all humans die. Being a dead president, or a dead pop singer, or any other flavor of public figure, doesn't make your death more tragic. There are, of course, degrees of difference. Johnny Cash and Kurt Vonnegut dying is considerably more of a loss than Michael Jackson.) Anyway, he was a philanderer who led the world to the brink of nuclear destruction and escalated the conflict in Vietnam.

His little brother dying a couple months ago was another excellent example of being way, way too star-obsessed with public figures. Yes, Ted Kennedy was a reasonably respectable senator. he did some good things. He also collaborated on No Child Left Behind, supported the invasion of Afghanistan, and generally compromised with the right wing any time it seemed politically expedient. Funny that in all the news coverage on Ted Kennedy's death, I literally heard the dreaded word "Chappaquiddick" mentioned once; I heard "Mary Jo Kopechne" zero. Those of you who know me, or at least know my politics from this blog, know that this is no right wing talk radio sort of rant. I just want us to stop this bizarre hero worship of deeply flawed people simply because they've died. I'm very proud to have gone to a college where, when they made the mistake of lowering the flag to half-mast when Nixon died, it was burned within hours.

On to the airport: my flight was first on time, then early, then delayed for mechanical for one hour, then delayed for 2.25 hours, and now one hour delayed. I'm going to check now.

The balm: one of the bartenders in the Delta Sky Club mixes a screamer of a mojito: mostly rum, with a splash of mojito mix and just a kiss of soda water. Yum.

(some of) america's best bicycling cities

This story about America's best bicycling cities is one of those semi-lame, superficial stories that pop up when you log out of yahoo mail, and often seem tempting to click on. But then when you do, they are essentially junk food: the information equivalent of empty calories.

Anyway, it's worth a very quick perusal for cyclists, and here's a list of the cities they mention:

• Austin
  
• Eugene
  
• Boulder
  
• San Diego
  
• Seattle
  
• New York
  
• Minneapolis
  

I've lived in one, biked in four, and have been to all of them, most many times (Eugene only once, Austin three times, the rest multiple times.) My primary comment would be that I'm a little dubious of the claim that "San Diego tops most lists of best cycling cities of over 1 million people, and it may one day surpass Portland..." San Diego is hilly, car-clogged, has fast, bad drivers, and doesn't have great bike lanes for getting between lots of important places. The Bayshore Bikeway that they trumpet is a nice recreational ride, but doesn't really get you anywhere useful if you live there.

Here are another couple bicycling lists:

America's Worst Cycling Cities from Bicycling Magazine. This one definitely falls into the empty information calorie category: it only lists three, doesn't indicate the methodology, and doesn't list Atlanta. Boo.

Kryptonite's 10 Worst Cities for Bike Theft This one is somewhat better, since it ostensibly is grounded in quantitative metrics. Yay. Though it's a generally accepted notion that bike theft is significantly underreported. Boo. Note how many of the cities listed here are also in the top 10 cities in the yahoo article above. Boo.

Way too many of these lists and city analyses largely ignore the cyclists who bike daily to live and work and run errands, and focus instead on rides and facilities for spandex clad weekend warriors on multi-thousand dollar carbon fiber, Dura-Ace equipped road bikes. Boo.

FUN POLL: Should I rename this blog to something like "booyay.blogspot.com"?

Bagels

Walked by J's childhood home this morning while on the phone with her, and she asked me if if would get me (her) an excellent bagel. So I went to Hot Bagels, on Newkirk Plaza overlooking the Newkirk stop on the B/Q trains, just north of Foster Ave.

Referencing the coffee and landfills post, the guy did try hard to give me a bag, and a pile of napkins, but was fine (if slightly confused) when I declined both.

Truly, honestly, about the best bagel I've ever had. Doughy and chewy and big and substantive and tasty with just enough crust to make it right. Amazing. And I even skipped the salt bagel, because J really wanted me to get either an onion or a garlic bagel. Those salt bagels must be fucking amazing, if the onion are that good. Maybe I'll go back tomorrow, even if the gas station grade coffee did suck.

Poop: another great Dinosaur Comic

At the end of a very productive day, a lovely end to the evening with some Dinosaur Comics.

Honey, can I have a bike mounted kegerator?

http://bikehacks.com/ultimate-party-bike/
http://bikehacks.com/keg-bike/
http://bikehacks.com/pedalpub/

Coffee & landfills

I didn't have time this morning to make coffee at the place I'm staying in NYC. So after I got off the subway (the bike had a blowout flat about one block in to my ride -- boo) I stop in to a local deli. Places like it are all over the five boroughs, and this one is pretty typical of lower Manhattan: slightly upscale, slightly pricey, with relatively friendly but somewhat harried and world-weary staff.

I order a large black coffee. The woman goes over and puts together two cups and then puts on one of the cup-sleeve thingies. I tell her I really don't need it double cupped, and she looks at me like I'm deranged, and says:

Coffee Woman: But it's really hot.
Me: I know, I promise to be really careful. I really hate to take more stuff I have to throw away.
Coffee Woman: [nods sympathetically to pretend that she understands and agrees] Okay, but you have to take this [sleeve thingie]
Me: Really? I'd rather not. [I'm being nice and smiling.]
Coffee Woman: No, you have to.
Me: Okay, that's fine. [I wasn't going to win this particular debate.]

Coffee woman puts the coffee down on the counter.

Coffee Woman: Do you need a bag? (She already pulling one out. I'm not ordering anything else, just a single cup of coffee.)
Me: No, thanks. I really don't like to take the extra stuff.
Coffee Woman: [nods sympathetically again] Okay.

Coffee Woman puts a stack of napkins about an inch high on the top of the cup. I reach over and gently take then off the cup and put them back on her stack.

Me: I really don't like to take the extra stuff, you know?
Coffee Woman: [nods sympathetically again] Okay.
Coffee Woman: A dollar sixty-five, please.

I pay, thank her, and drop a dollar in the tip jar.

I swear, I was being really, really nice, and really, really polite. But shit: really? A single cup of black coffee was nearly responsible for a clearcut forest.

Honestly truly overheard on Delta 844

Passenger in 1D (first class) is lucky enough to be the only person to get a pre-flight drink, as the pilots were apparently trying to hustle us out of PIT to avoid ground delays in ATL. Woman in her 50s or 60s, somewhere between obese and morbidly obese, orders “a vodka with just a tiny splash of orange juice.” It's almost 6 in the evening, so nothing too surprising so far.

Woman gets her drink, and begins slurping it down like she just walked out of the Sonoran desert and missed the drive-through liquor stores in the Arizona stretch.

Somehow the conversation with the (amazingly friendly) flight attendant turns to this (paraphrased, but pretty darn close):

Flight attendant: You should watch it, because alcohol affects you double in the air than it does on the ground.

Editor's note:(A marginally dubious claim, which I'm unable to find primary evidence to support or disprove. The best indications are that the added intensity of alcohol consumption in flight is really rooted in dehydration, so you mostly need to be sure to consume a lot of water. A more profound impact than on the ground? Maybe. Double? There is zero evidence i can find for this. But I digress.)

Woman: Really? I have never, ever heard that, and I fly all the time.

Flight attendant: Oh yeah, absolutely, no question about it.

Woman Who Flies All The Time:Wow -- I have never heard that. I'll be fine, though: I can sit here and drink a fifth of vodka straight and not even feel it.

Flight attendant: Oh wow, well, you won't be getting that tonight. (It's an hour and a half flight, incidentally.)

Fifth of Vodka Woman: Oh yeah, I can drink anyone, and I mean anyone, under the table in about three minutes! Any man, any woman!

(inaudible conversation, brief pause as the flight attendant goes and does some other stuff)

Woman Who Can Drink Any Man, Any Woman, Under The Table In About Three Minutes: Say, do you sell these little bottles on board?

Flight attendant: No, sorry, we don't.

Woman Who Wants To Give The Idea Of Buy On Board A Whole New Meaning:That's too bad, 'cause I've been taking care of my mother who is 91 all week, and she has a whole line of them on her shelf, and I thought I'd take her a couple. (That she is apparently heading the wrong direction for such a gift is part of the nature of the Folk Process, with apologies to Dry Branch Fire Squad.)

Flight attendant: Well, you know you can buy them at any liquor store?

Woman Who Wants To Give Her 91 Year Old Mother A Couple Shooter Bottles of Cheap Vodka As A Gift To Add To Mother's Collection: Really? I never heard of that! Never saw them!

Flight attendant: Sure, every liquor store sells them.

Woman Who Can Drink A Fifth of Vodka In About Three Minutes And Not Even Feel It And Can Drink Any Man Or Woman Under The Table In About Three Minutes But Doesn't Know Liquor Stores Sell Small Shooter Bottles Of Cheap Vodka: Well, I'll just have to look for that!

A few minutes go by, we continue the pre-flight process, and next thing I hear is the flight attendant leaning in close and telling the woman kindly, but firmly and repeatedly, that she needs to behave herself. Gosh, can't imagine why.

Balcony garden: late September 2009

Here is what happens when you fly around to five states, through seven airports, in two weeks. Your plants miss you:


This is an overall of the plants. I could probably blame some of their sad appearance on the intense thunderstorms they've had to endurse in the last two weeks, which some are saying resulted in epic, 500-year flooding, but that's probably a cop-out. Really, I've just been a bad plant parent.


Here's a closeup of the Bonnie tomatoes, which are still producing. I ate one just before leaving for Pittsburgh, and it was pretty darn tasty. The leaves look like shit, but the tomatoes themselves look pretty decent.


Here's the Bush Goliath, looking much the same: the tomatoes are looking pretty decent, while the leaves and plant is looking pretty dire.


The herg garden is looking so-so; I'll probably start to harvest quite a bit of it soon.


Here's a closeup of the sage in the herb garden, which is a pretty mixed bag: some of it is clearly curling and dying off, while other parts are doing fine.


And the stand-alone basil planting, which is struggling, but putting up a game fight.

Of plants and protests.

Since I have plenty of entertaining stories about providing legal support for the protestors at the over the last few days, I'll instead post pictures about my balcony garden. Okay, okay: a few summary thoughts, with more to come.

The police response was properly described by one activist as a "bumbling and violent police action."

The cops did a whole lot of arbitrary shutting down of streets with rows of riot-clad cops, when zero protestors were anywhere nearby. In this picture, at Liberty Ave & S. Millvale Ave near Western Pennsylvania Hospital, the cops had watched the protest march continue down the street. They were about a third of a mile away when i took this picture (I had to hotfoot it to catch up.)

And as usual when the police engage in the overwhelming show of force, shock-and-awe style repression of dissent that has been popularized since Seattle, the cops did some pretty stupid stuff, and beat down some people who had nothing to do with the protests. This included University of Pittsburgh students who happened to have the nerve to try to walk through their campus, and deploying of tear gas and peper spray on narrow residential streets.

Police outnumbered protestors approximately five to one, or six to one.

I'm going to break up these posts and do the gardening pics separately...

Snippets from the G-20 protests in Pittsburgh

Context: this is several miles away from any protest activity at a road closure near Shendley Park. Literally three activists are standing near, doing nothing after being told they can't enter the park for their permitted event. There are approximately ten police, including at least Pennsylvania State Police, Pittsburgh PD, and Cleveland PD.

Pittsburgh PD to activist: "Quit being such a fucking smartass. Get the fuck out of here. I will fucking shoot you."

Cleveland Police Department officer to attorney: "Get out of here. Move. Go away." (I ignored him and turned my attention to the homicidal Pittsburgh PD, as Cleveland cop wasn't even remotely in charge of the area. He was an out of town, deputized rentacop who was essentially relegated to traffic management. He had his uniform shirt unbuttoned low enough to show the hair just above his bellybutton. He had a lot of it.)

More after-reports to come. (Confidential to anyone who might worry: I'm perfectly safe and being careful.)

People I don't understand

1) People who launch themselves out of their seats on the airplane, so they can occupy the aisle for the several minutes it takes the ground crew and flight crew to get the door open. Then it turns out the (specific jerk in question) needs to wait at planeside for his gate-checked bag to come out, just like the people he was jockeying to get in front of.

2) People who rush to the televisions in the airport to see the football game. (Confidential to football fans: the game won't change because you're watching it, and the ten minutes you see of grown men smashing into one another will be much more interesting without all the pap and filler when you watch it tomorrow on Sportscenter.)

3) People who don't tip, or even worse, tip badly. Examples: too numerous to mention. You know who you are.

4) Self-important TSA officers, who seem to think their scowl and facially insincere grunt of "how are you" somehow imparts some sort of gravitas or authority. Confidential to TSA: you're largely incompetent rentacops that 98% of the regular-traveling public despises. Oh, and suspiciously sneering at me when you look at the x-ray of my carryon isn't intimidating: it's just silly.

Boarding soon for segment five of nine in two weeks, so I should get my stuff together.

Dateline: Montana

At the tail end of a week+ of excellent mountain biking in Montana. I hope to upload some of the 120+ pictures I took sometime this week, but for now, you'll have to settle for numbers:

~275: total miles ridden
38.6: average miles per day (including off-route grocery/beer stops)
32.4 mph: max speed
51.18: max daily miles

Wildlife: a bunch of white tail deer, one pesky red fox near Fatty Creek (on two different nights), a ton of cicada, crickets, and beetles, and assorted smaller animals.

The people, on the whole, were fantastic. Truly nice, accommodating, pleasant, and fun to talk to.

The roads, well, I could take or leave them. Much of the Great Divide Route is on Forest Service roads, which range from flat and brutally maintained to singletrack, technical, and moderately unpleasant.

Some shoutouts to some particularly wonderful local businesses:

The Grateful Bread, Bigfork, MT. Great bread and sandwiches, solid espresso drinks, amazing people, and great vegetarian and vegan (ask!) options. Went twice in two days.

Glacier Cyclery , Whitefish, MT. Fantastic people, decent bikes, great location.

Markus Foods , Whitefish, MT. Solid grocery store with a nice little deli and excellent beer selection.

The store at Swan Lake Trading Post, Swan Lake, MT. They have a nice little grocery, and a great take one, leave one paperback book section.

More to come. Now back to flying! Tonight FCA-SLC-SMF.

Insert: deep, loud, irritated sigh

The asshattery here in the LAX Delta Skyclub gets more intense by the minute. Not only does it sound like a junior high school cafeteria, both in volume and content, but this fucking nitwit is standing next to me, immediately in front of the "QUIET AREA" sign with a cell phone crossed out in a circle, with his cell phone plugged in right behind it, talking on it. There are literally dozens of electrical outlets spread throughout the room. Idiot.

Now the moron has left his cell phone plugged in while he wanders around. I'm tempted to pour my margarita on it, but the margarita tastes too good.

More calories, please

I decided that it's not really worth the walk to browse more overpriced food in other terminals, so I needed to get some more calories here. Fortunately, the bar makes a surprisingly good margarita. (Hey! It's almost noon, okay?)

Airports and etc.

After a frenzy to get packed and ready for the bike trip, I'm finally en route.

The morning flight from ATL to LAX was pleasant due to an upgrade, but unpleasant due to none of the reading lights working. The flight attendants were apologetic about this, but still didn't seem to think it worth leaving the overhead lights on, and the always helpful fellow passengers all closed their windows so they could watch The Fast and the Furious, and bad romcom. I got a little reading done until it started to really strain my eyes, and then I did some more eye-straining reading on my netbook.

Now in the Delta Skyclub in the crappy, run-down Terminal 5 at LAX. The lounge is nice enough, if quite crowded and loud. I'm actually listening to music (Gomez: Get Miles, appropriate in so many ways) which I almost never do in the airport or lounges. This is to drown out the woman who has been prattling nonstop with her companion since she came in. Well, not truly non-stop: she takes breaks to prattle loudly on her cell phone, too. All while she keeps her feet up on the chair. She's a teacher, but apparently hasn't learned Inside Voice.

The food at Delta Skyclubs pretty much always stinks, with a few exceptions (JFK terminal 2 has some really good snacks and appetizers at certain hours.) I'm hungry, and the food options in Terminal 5 mostly suck, so I was pleased to see them roll out a cart of food when they took away the breakfast foods. What was it? Some sort of caramel-fudge-flourless-chocolate cake thing. At 10:30 in the morning. Yes, really. My favorite response to this (well, the only response other than mine so far) came from a friend via e-mail: "turtle fudge cake? gross. i wouldn't eat that at any time of day."

It does appear that GrossCake(tm) is going to be the only option, so I'll be sticking with pretzels and beer. (Hey, it's now after 11!) I mean, c'mon: you can't even bring out some soft, wilted celery and carrots with grayish/white caking?

In other travel (news), my travels in the next month and a week will have me in the following airports: ATL, LAX, SLC, FCA, SMF, SFO, PIT, JFK, SEA. Woo.

Maybe I'll go hunt down better food, since I still have an hour and a half. A little web searching did indicate that it's possible to walk from Terminal 5 to Terminals 6, 7, and 8. Yay informationsuperinfobahn!