UA 177 BOS SFO 1033 1409 319 2D Ch9^

A quite attentive and sassy FA who seemed never to stop -
this was the apparently famous bookmark lady, whose thing
is that she prints strips with aphorisms, laminates them,
and then gives them away, perhaps to encourage reading or
something like that. She gave frequent, prolix, and mostly
accurate PA announcements as well. Seemed to be very into
her job.

Lunch: minestrone - a thin tomato soup with ziti, some red
kidney beans, and a handful of corn, followed by a turkey
sandwich on asiago roll or shrimp Cobb salad. The latter,
though marred by a vast quantity of fairly nasty Swissish
cheese, provided enough sustenance. The shrimp had been
multiply cooked and so were unbelievably firm, dense little
blobs, though not bad-tasting for that.

DeBortoli Shiraz was its usual unattractive self, so after
one glass, I switched to Courvoisier with my chocolate-chip
cookie (there were extra cookies and milk, which kept
disappearing to the wayback). And so to bed.

Mea culpa - waiting for the restroom I scanned the manifest:
in coach, 33 UA elites (including 3 1KMMs and 3 regular MMs)
plus one SK *S. Our FA had carefully highlighted the higher
level ones, and now I understood where the extra cookies and
stuff had wandered to.

We landed a few minutes early in warm sunny SF.

After a refreshing stop at the RCC and a random walk through
San Fran courtesy of SamTrans and Muni I found myself at Koh
Samui & the Monkey in the heart of SOMA. I was a little
early so ordered a $6 happy hour special of Lucid absinthe;
of course, when the bill came it was billed full price, and
this took about 15 minutes to fix, and as my bank statement
shows not only the corrected ticket but also the voided one
(not voided), the fix is still not in.

l'etoile showed up on time, and in honor of that I bought
her a drink to match my second, carefully noting this time
that the price on the bill was correct. Offered her a taste
of my absinthe, which she found foul, and took a sniff of
her elderflower-infused Champagne, which I thought almost as
offputting as she had found mine.

VP and his friend Sophie (?) got a speeding ticket on the
way and as a result were somewhat tardy. KathyWdrf joined us
later. We also had a late cancellation and a no-show, whose
identities shall remain discreetly veiled.

A round of beers and things inaugurated our typical FT
gathering. We had vegetarian samosas (different from
what I've had before, as there appeared to be something
like turnip in the mix), crunchy something rolls, fishy
cakes, corn fritters, and fried squid (no tentacles).
All of these tasted okay, some better than okay. But
despite the dinner menu's offer of happy hour half price
appetizers and drinks, I think we may have been charged
full price for same.

Main courses: two kinds of pad thai (vegetarian and
nonvegetarian) were okay, sort of spartan I thought.

Firecracker, a seafood sizzling platter dish, was
substantially unfirecrackery, though the seafood was fine.

Chicken in pumpkin curry was nicely done but sort of
wimpily spiced.

A very plain beef and coconut curry disappointed, as not
only was it bland, but the beef was not of the highest
quality.

In general the food was a bit on the mild side but mostly
tasted pretty decent. The company of course was excellent,
though VP and his friend seemed eager to disassociate
themselves from the rest of us rather early.

l'etoile took me to the Transbay Terminal, from which the
KX got me back to the airport in about half an hour. Quicker
and cheaper than BART, though perhaps a little declasse. Oh,
you're not supposed to bring luggage onto the KX.

Security was kind of unorganized, and though there were
few people in line, everyone seemed to have an issue, and
the procedure dragged on for a short while.

UA 158 SFO ORD 2315 0512 777 1A Ch9^

My seatmate was a young fellow on an upgrade who had hoped
for a new international configuration plane, as he had
claimed to have flown in one on the outbound earlier in
the week. He alternately snored and coughed through the
flight. I did manage to sleep long enough to miss the
snack. Channel 9, announced both by the captain and by the
purser, was on but very faint. We took off a bit late and
landed a bit early.

UA 524 ORD BOS 0641 0959 319 2D Ch9^

There was a TSA gate check, and for the first time in recent
memory I was not selected for that attention when it was
offered. I guess looking sleepy and just shuffling forward,
not making eye contact, worked.

My seatmate, a quite tall guy, actually used his own space
for his briefcase, a rarity of consideration.

An announcement was made about upgrading into E+ for $39.

Breakfast was "fruit plate or scrambled eggs." The latter
consisted of: curdled hard hideous egg substance; tater
pucks (bitter, soggy, oniony); squishy ham substance;
tasteless sausage substance; and an odd croissant that
managed to be greasy and bready and tasteless all at once.
A fruit appetizer was small but decent - one slice each
pineapple and watermelon, a small bunch of red grapes.

While I was awake: nice views - DTW, over which we passed
nearly directly, Grosse Ile airport (really odd-looking
thing), and a cute NW Airlink RJ putt-putting past.

We landed a hair early.