Right now, I'm eating breakfast at The Rumor Mill. Good coffee, good music, free WiFi. The crowd is a mixture of obvious computer geeks, hipsters, and hotties (all groups of which I am a wannabe member). What's not to like?
Went to a wedding rehearsal dinner yesterday. Tough trip at the start. Seventy minutes to go six miles. The PCH through Santa Monica on a Friday at 5 pm? Who was I kidding? At one point, I was moving at exactly the same pace, for five minutes at least, as a homeless guy walking along the side of the road.
On the first leg of my flight out yesterday, I sat next to a woman who was a self-professed nervous flier, so she was eager to chat. She was mostly pleasant to talk to, except for two deviations.
First was her love for crystals, which tied into how we're the descendants from Atlantis ("the Atlanteans," don'tcha know), and how, since computers are made from silicon, they're going to save our bacon, because silicon is . . .
Me: "Crystals?"
Her (with beatific smile): "Exactly."
I got out of that one by calling her attention to the view out the window, which resurrected her phobia, giving me chance to steer us back to Planet Earth.
The second bad part was her description of her dog. I have a cousin who once did not endear herself to me by describing her own pick of the litter -- "the shivering one in the corner." Evidently, the woman on the plane has acquired V2.0. The woman herself has been bitten three times by the dog, the dog must be locked in a back room when anyone comes to the house, a vet has repeatedly told her that the dog should be destroyed, etc. Apparently, the dog was returned as a puppy, after having been abused. The dog is now nine, and "has calmed down a little bit."
As they down South, bless her heart.
On the second, longer flight, I did what I usually do on long flights -- hang out in the galley. (I may look like the proverbial creep who loiters outside the Ladies' Room in nightclubs, but at least my knees feel better.) I got to talking to one of the flight attendants who was as bored as I was -- passengers are evidently cowed into asking for nothing anymore -- and she was talking about life as a flight attendant, what with the loss of the pension plan and all. While discussing 401(k) plans, she asked me in one of those verbal tics that people do, "... you know what I mean, right? I mean, how old are you?"
"45," I replied.
"Yeah, I'm 43. So we're in the same boat ..."
I had until two seconds previously been thinking that she looked like a well-preserved sixty. Managed to keep a stone face.
Uncle Keith heard this story last night, and had the best comeback, "Yeah, but she probably has a lot more miles on her than you do."
United, like most airlines, no longer gives away any food. They had some pretty good boxed lunch-type of things for $5. The one I chose gave me two fairly handy edged weapons: the top from a tuna can and a glass jar (hummus). Thank goodness I had no water to wash it down with, though, so we were safe.
The airlines are apparently making up for the space saved from not carrying much food by not carrying nearly enough bottled water. I guzzled a liter in O'Hare before getting on the flight, and I was glad I did. The good news is, you don't need to have bottled water, because the airlines carry plenty of potable water. And by "potable," I mean that it sometimes even meets the federal standards for drinking water. No exaggeration. I have read a couple of stories to this effect already. Maybe the plan is to incapacitate the turrurists by giving them Montezuma's Revenge.
Last night, I was out front of the restaurant, having a smoke and admiring the moonset over the Pacific. I got to talking to the head of the valet parking crew, whom I first took to be Mexican. So much for racial profiling -- he's from Afghanistan.
He told me that when he was still back in "my old country," he would get mad at his relatives who had already moved to the US and were sending back money: "They would send $120. I mad. You in America, can't you send like $200? $150?"
"I came here thought I would sweep $100 bills off the streets. Now I work 16, 17 hours a day. And I know better."
That made me feel a little guilty, so I gave him an extra dollar when I reclaimed my car. Call it my bit for spreading democracy.
Time for a refill.
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