I think I officially hate that guy (assuming it's the same one I had the pleasure of dealing with).

I hate the whole engagement ring fiasco.
My girlfriend will throw out her preferences once in a while , as to which cut she likes and dislikes or point them out in a magazine.

But I already told her how much i think rings are a waste of money and I will decide what she gets , since I am the person who has to pay for it.
The other question I asked her was, " If you do not like the ring are you going to say no ? "

Is she a Disney fan? Mine is a huge Disney nut, and of all the things I am, I am not the guy who likes to be the center of attention. I took her to Disneyland and surprised her by getting down on one knee in front of the castle at sunset with approximately eleven billion people standing around, each of whom went, "Awwwww!"

Yeah, it was just super for me but she loved it and still calls it her best trip to Disneyland ever. So yeah, dunno if your lady is into Disney but if she is, MCO isn't that far away. :)

That's half the reason they check id's at the entrance to the P Clubs.

MR BL went to my best friend and asked what I wanted in a ring and she told him exactly what I wanted. It worked out well - we didn't have to go through anything and I was still surprised. The ring thing has become overblown. I'm not sure when this happened but the magazines report on what the celebrities get and I think that has made it such a huge thing so girls think they have to get x.

That reminds me, I was asked how old I was while ordering a drink in F this past weekend. Cannot remember the last time that happened.

The reason why I love my SBH is that, if I were to ever pull something like that she'd probably kick me right in the nads. Right there, in front of the 11 billion people.

Not trying to take anything away from your proposal, which sounds like it was perfect for the two of you. Different strokes for different folks is all I'm trying to say.

I'm very disappointed they recently demolished the world's largest smelting stack in Kellogg, Idaho. That was my first choice for proposal destinations. I have no idea what plan B will be. Maybe in a hot air balloon over ABQ.*








*she's afraid of heights. ;)



By the way. I have yet to find the source of this beeping. Maybe I swallowed an egg timer last night and didn't realize it. Makes sense, as I had a pizza for dinner.

I did something similar, though in reverse order. I had gone ring shopping at one point with my wife to get some ideas for what she liked (and her sister and bro-in-law were in from out of town so it was fun to take them to Tiffany & Co.). But I bought the ring so I picked out the final details. Of course, that made it harder since I had no idea what size she wore. That was a rather stressful couple hours with the jeweler trying to figure that out. In the end we guessed close enough that it fit at proposal and some minor adjustments helped once we got home.

We had a trip to Ireland planned for a few months and that was when I had the proposal planned. The trip was in February. January of that year was when the AA $130 r/t NYC-HNL fare came up, so I snapped up a pair of seats for Memorial Day. Her friends managed to convince her (without any prodding on my part) that Hawaii was certainly the place I'd propose since it was more "typical." Suffice it to say that she was rather surprised when it happened in Ireland.

I also saw 3 of my friends get engaged in the last few years , and of course the 3 girls would get together at any sort of social event we attended and would just sit and compare rings .
I think that makes it worse for they guys because the girl feels she has to have a better ring than her friend.

"Kettle" is an awful and derisive term for an infrequent flier. Most of its uses are in sentence constructions in which the user comes off as being in a better class of humanity than the target due to their wallet candy or the mere fact that they are flying in F. (For the record, I have not yet come across the aforementioned tone of usage in The Box.) It chaps my ... on a particular level because while I see the point of using it and I do once in a while have a laugh or a groan while peoplewatching in the airport, there are those of us out there who happen to be pretty savvy around an airport and do indeed know what they're doing, but are not in a job or position of any sort to rack up the miles (or the ever-so-precious statuses, or is it statii?) that the more frequent travelers do.

I could go on a long, long rant about this, because I've had interactions with people in this community who make me believe that their air and hotel statuses aren't just an important thing in life, but rather the ONLY thing in their lives. Big distinction. Caveat: if you're a road warrior, I get that status matters. I can't stand the entitlement crowd that takes the notion of being a frequent flier WAAAY too far. They know who they are and none of them hang out here. (Ref: most of the 1K's/GS's in UA-land.) I don't deny that a disproportionate spend should earn preferential treatment, but some of these people have taken preferential and converted it to reverential in their own heads. I read a thread in MR Deals a few weeks ago that had a post in which somebody pooh-poohed the existence of MR's in general, and then had the audacity to say that people like him who pay for J and F should be thanked by those in Y because it's his high fares that keep the airline going for the Y cabin's pleasure. I'm sorry, but that's a level of delusion that requires professional attention. Even if the math bears out his contention, the last thing I would do is attach my name to such a self-important and repugnant thought.

I have tons more of this in me, and my opinions on it are in my post history...just the other night I excoriated a guy who thought that a lack of an FF# on a BP meant that the person was an "amateur". There is a sense of "I'm better than you" on here that just makes me want to puke sometimes. But completely 180 from that is a place like The Box, where I come to relax and laugh and have a good time. :)

Wait, we're not? :confused:;)

While I agree with your post, and find many other folks on FT obnoxious with their holier than thou attitudes - and I certainly try to not be self-important (because I'm not important) the term Kettle has a place in my opinion.

It's a generic, and harmless term, for those that use Hefty bags as luggage. Or the ones that try and get the bottles of water through security. Or, my favorite, gate hover.

While infrequent travelers have a place in the system, and I respect them, when they inconvenience me (or airline employees) because they have their head in the sand, or think the rules don't apply to them - they deserve the moniker of kettle.

Wow...am I playing golf with Vince McMahon? Sounds like Smackdown. ;)

There is a certain oneupsmanship out there, but I chalk that up to such being life. We men have our issues with this too...the car, where in the world you played golf, the home stereo setup, etc. Women happen to do it about jewelry. There's not a lot we can do about it, unfortunately.

That would get me a lot more than kicked in the nads. She hates being the center of attention. So much so that when we first started going out, she got uncomfrtable when we went to certain restaurants in this area because the management or ownership knew me thanks to my job. They would stop at the table and say hi, maybe buy us a drink, chitchat. After the first few times it happened, she asked me "Is it like this everywhere with you?" She's now used to it and knows all the names and faces, but it took a while.

You sir are a beacon of laughter...that would be hilarious. You need to find a way to sneak a video camera into that balloon basket.

My experience is that Kettles are not the ones hovering around the gates; those are the elites.

The term is used with varying degrees of implied elite-ness. More often than not I see it used to imply someone who doesn't know the rules and doesn't care about them and doesn't travel often, making their presence in the security lines an impediment to the rest of the world. It is hard to believe that people haven't heard about changes in security at airports in the past few years, but there are plenty of them out there.

I do not know the etymology of the term.

It is a generic and harmless term if generic and harmless is the user's intent. 98% of the time here, said intent is not what is implied by its use. I've seen it border on hatred, like the people who don't know their way around are an affront to those who do. Agreed on your final sentence - it's in the use, and overwhelmingly the usage here is rather snooty and disgusting.

Funny you should mention that...there was a thread in UA-land a few months ago about that, and the title was priceless. It was something like "Are 1K's the Worst Gate Lice?" "Gate lice" - right there, ugh. The user is referring to another human being as lice. Come on now. There are certainly people on this planet that I dislike, and for good reason IMO. But any of the more common swear-esque words usually do it for me, and I've never felt the need to denigrate another person by going that low.