July 2007 Archives

More quinterian fun. A great read, but you have to focus — it gets pretty dense at times.

Less detecting, but more fun from Botswana.

I watched Serenity all the way through during a 118 minute triple draw this morning. More staffing problems forced me to wait 35 minutes before answering the screening questions.

Going in, we knew it was risky. We didn't know that it was insane. The day after we got back from Alaska, we started a week with Kobe and Logan.

I watched Lord of War this morning. When I first picked it up, I thought I hadn't seen it before, but once it started I remembered it. They were overbooked and understaffed, and they took a triple, so even though I arrived at 6:35, I didn't get out of there until 9:40.

Sundials by Richard Kell

Very cool stuff.

Every year, Carole and I go away for our anniversary. Usually we pick somewhere close, but when work, time, and finances allow we head off to somewhere new. My brother-in-law Michael is working for Alaska Airlines, so this year we used his guest passes to fly up to Kodiak, Alaska.

One of the problems with guest passes is that you are stand-by. If there's no available seats, you don't get on. This forces you to make some hard choices - if the flight you'd like is too booked, you have to either gamble that you'll get on anyway, or choose another flight with more open seats. We wanted to leave on Tuesday morning, but that required two stops — one in Seattle, another in Anchorage. We decided to take a direct flight to Anchorage from LAX late on Monday night instead. This necessitated a five hour layover before the connecting flight left for Kodiak at 6:00am on Tuesday. It also meant that we got to Kodiak at 7:00am, and couldn't hope to check-in to our B&B until 3:00pm.

The flight to Anchorage was mostly full, and our row was full-up with us and a family of four. Dad sat next to me in the aisle seat, with Mom and the two daughters across the aisle. This made for a tight fit on our side, but we managed well enough. Early into the flight, however, this family started in. Mom left to find an empty seat a couple of rows up, and Dad and the younger daughter wound up in the right side seats with the older daughter next to me. They were all sniping with each other, and were generally pretty unpleasant. They all kept getting up, then sitting, then up again - over and over.

At one point, the older daughter (about 15 is my guess) was sitting next to me, and stood up to stretch her legs. She asked the Dad something, and he snapped at her to "sit down - now". Just after, I noticed her doodling on her bookmark: first she drew a figure of a girl with pig-tails, followed by a cloud up above, then finished off with rain-drops falling from the cloud unto the girl. Freudian, to say the least.

This family's antics made it pretty impossible to get any sleep. About an hour before landing, they were all back in our row, and really got into it. I didn't catch the details, but the younger daughter (about 12) was bawling loudly, Mom was sniping with older daughter, and then Dad reached across the aisle and slapped the older daughter — who proceeded to slap him back. I'm sure they all enjoyed their trip.

The airport in Anchorage was ideal for a long, overnight layover. We grabbed some water and snacks at the Starbucks, and found a nice open section of chairs. Carole was able to sleep for a couple of hours, but I could only doze a little.

The flight to Kodiak was much less full, so we got a window and an aisle seat to ourselves. The flight was short, thankfully. We wound up with a nice, nearly-new Rav 4 from Avis, and set out to kill 8 hours until B&B check-in time.

• Exploring Kodiak
• B&B check-in
• Nightmares
• The Talk
• Where to stay in Anchorage
• The Paris Club
• Michael visits
• Portage and Whittier
• Back home