Greetings from Amsterdam, where I'm still waiting for my room to be made available (yawn). Luckily there's an internet terminal in the executive lounge (nothing personal, but right now I'd rather be sleeping than surfing FT ).

Quick comments/thoughts:

* I've been through that particular lane before on numerous occasions & don't remember the machine going back/forth every single time for every single item. Also, our lane appeared to a) be the only really slow one; b) the only one where 5 laptops in a row got called for 'secondary'. My guess (and it's only a guess) is that the person looking at the screen was new, based on the above.

* That's the phrase the TSA folk used in our lane, so I thought I was going to get the full secondary screening, but they were just doing the 'swab' thing which was certainly better than the whole rigamarole, but confused others too, not just me, w/ phrasing (not the end of the world, btw). Heck, I automatically headed to the penalty box & she said no not there, over here, & then we headed to the swab machine. Didn't open laptops that I could tell (or at least mine).

* The laptops could have been because of what occurred over the weekend, but while I was there it was our lane that had 5 laptops in a row & other lanes had the regular take your shoes off/hold out your arms thing.

* I think auh2o wants something to happen so he can pull out his RT card; I'll just settle for beating him through the elite security line

Cheers.

Sharon