violist

I was happy to leave my weather-induced hermitage.

UA 171 BOS SFO 0625 1000 752 2A

The gate agent at C19 announced boarding for "flight 161 to
Los Angeles," but we all got on the plane anyway.

F was chockablock; I understand from the chatter up front
that Y was not.

They offered the fruit plate or a "wild mushroom and Gouda
frittata" - I chose the latter. The fruit appetizer had the
best strawberry I think I've ever had off a farm and slices
of the most forlorn kiwi in the world; pineapple and grapes
were pretty decent, with the exception of one notably sour
grape. I took this as an apt metaphor for the various levels
of service that I have received on this rather inconsistent
airline. I expected a few slices of shiitake to satisfy the
wild mushroom requirement: what I got was one large dried
reconstituted cepe and various fragments of other ones - a
pleasant surprise; and the egg substance was salty but not
unpalatable. The now-common sweet and regular potato hash
came on the side, and they were as uneven as the fruit -
some of the bits raw and crunchy, others fluffy and melt-in-
the-mouth. Two pork breakfast links, surprisingly not
hideously fatty. A croissant was breadier than normal but
not unpleasant.

There was no Courvoisier on this flight, so I satisfied my
booze tooth with red wine, which was acrid and horrible, and
I had only two glasses. No ... correct that ... while I was
asleep they filled my glass, and when I awoke shortly before
landing, I drained it.

I sent a citation on behalf of the two FAs who worked the
front cabin, as for all the time I was awake, they were
attentive and cheerful.

The pigette in 1B kept her sneakered feet up on the bulkhead
for much of the flight. Not only was this unsightly, it was
unsmellly as well.

We did an approach that I don't recall - over Napa, then out
to sea and down, west of the Golden Gate at about 12000, to
San Jose and then northward up the Bay in the normal way. We
landed about 15 early.

UA 480 OAK DEN 0740 1114 733 2A

An okay flight. Breakfast was offered - the fruit and cheese
plate that you know from the redeye, but with the addition
of bread and yogurt. I didn't take it, preferring to stare
out the window at the wonderful topography until I fell
asleep. We landed a hair early, and I had an hour and half
to eat Sun Chips at the club and do a little work.

UA1158 DEN IAD 1245 1754 777 9J

I was hoping for 2A on this one, too, but didn't get it for
obvious reasons. Sat around on the phone at the club for too
long, and I showed up after the red carpet line had been
closed. I opened up the rope, and the agent actually paused
boarding and made an announcement to round up stray first
and business and 1K passengers.

Found someone in my seat - turns out he had 8J and was most
gracious about going back where he belonged. My seatmate
scowled.

Predeparture drinks, warm nuts, hot towels. I was asked
first in the little cabin, my glum seatmate next. I said I
didn't care whether I had the hot roast beef sandwich or the
Thai chicken salad.

When the meal came, it was reason for my seatmate to become
even more glum - the sandwich was a puny pathetic thing, the
roast beef being two thin tough-looking slices of mystery
meat. My salad was better than acceptable - a generous half
brined breast, coated with currylike spices, firm but juicy.
Reasonably fresh greens; copious fresh cashews and less than
fresh chow mein noodles; tomato slices, cucumber cubes; the
famous Conway Asian sesame dressing. On the side: an odd
multilayer chocolate construction: flourless chocolate cake
goo on the bottom, chocolate cream in the middle, chocolate
streusel on top: neither bad nor good.

The flight came in a bit early, and I SuperShuttled to my
father's house, arriving in time for supper.

A couple amusing if not amazing meals with my father.

Normandie Farms with him and my brother.

I know that this place has gotten a pretty bad rap of late,
along with other haunts like the Old Angler Inn, but it is
one of the few remaining places where I used to go with the
old man when I was a kid forty to fifty years ago (someday
I'll take him to the Olney Inn and the place at Comus as
well). The food is actually much better than the recent
reputation, though not so good as the antique reputation.
It's now run by Indian people, which is not an altogether
bad thing.

We're treated deferentially here (age has its rewards, and
the old man is 89, and I'm 55), and they keep the fireplace
cranked up well past the season (my father is always cold),
and, as I said, the food is okay. Oh, it's an OpenTable
restaurant, so I get essentially a buck off each time we go.

My father ordered oysters Rockefeller followed by soft-
shelled crabs. The starter was pretty good (I had a taste),
and the main course was odd but very generous - the crabs
were smothered in a peculiar topping of pine nuts, minced
tomato, bacon, and parsley: not bad tasting, but not doing
the crabs much good, either. As he's ancient and weighs
just 100 lb, he got kind of full and gave me half a crab,
which I ate senza bacon and pine nuts and junk like that. It
was fresh but cooked at too low a temperature, so the shell
part was a little chewy.

I'd warned J. that we were going out to lunch the next day,
so he forwent the appetizer and just had rainbow trout
topped with some crab concoction. I can't report on how this
was, as although he will accept tastes offered by others, he
generally will not without prompting offer tastes of his own
food.

I had oysters on the half shell (though no sweetie to
practice on) followed by shad roe. The oysters were wretched
- I'm not sure why, but they had been rinsed and tasted like
slimy blobs of nothing. The shad roe made up for that - I
got an enormous pair that must have come from a 10-lb fish.
The roe was topped with bacon, which was fine, and anchovy
butter, which was one of the stupidest combinations I've
encountered in recent years. I scraped off most of it. I'd
asked for the shad roe medium rare, and it came as ordered.
The (Indian) waiter checked to make sure, good for him.

J. had some kind of dessert that I can't report on; my
father and I split a dish of pistachio gelato that was
pretty nice.

As my father seldom drinks and my brother is the permanent
designated driver, I just had two glasses of Mark West
Chardonnay, which is well but not over oaked, good berry
flavors, good long lemon-blackberry finish. I like Mark
West wines for the price.

Surprisingly, my father, mellowed with age, pulled out
his AmEx card and paid for dinner.

Next day, Trapeze with him and my brother and my sweetie.

The deal is that J., who loves to drive, takes me to a
suitable meeting point, where we meet Carol, have a meal
together, and I go home. The Olney/Burtonsville/Fulton
area is sort of halfway, and there are two fairly nice
restaurants that we go to to do the handoff. One is the
oZ Chophouse, the other is Trapeze across the road, which
looks pretty similar and which I guess is related somehow.
The former is a meat place, the latter a fish place. We
didn't go to oZ this day, as it serves brunch on Sunday,
and we didn't feel like brunch.

Here too the staff are deferential (I care not for myself,
but it is good that they are not impatient to the ancient).

My father had cream of crab soup (he said it was decent)
followed by the fried oyster plate, listed under appetizers.
This was four very big oysters, fried nicely, served over a
bed of dry fried leek slivers. Excellent. J. had fish and
chips, nice tilapia, a big serving, in a puffy batter;
somewhat seasoned chips; coleslaw, which he substituted the
veg of the day, steamed asparagus. Carol, who likes fish,
went against the tide and had a French dip - a biggish
roast beef sandwich topped with American Swiss and sided by
a cup of "jus" that wasn't oversalty or from a package: also
good. I ordered the crabcake sandwich senza bread - this
was a tiny cake of decent meat bound with a discreet amount
of filler and seasoned with an insane mishmash of celery
seed, nutmeg, and lots of white pepper; for me the side was
housemade potato chips. An okay meal and one that left room
for dessert. Father got the chocolate mousse in a tube -
decent dark mousse and okay white mousse, served in a tube
the size of a cannolo shell made of decent chocolate. Carol
and I split the creme brulee - decent but sided with a nice
melange of fresh berries. Carol told the waiter that I liked
blue food, so he brought a side of blue sauce (supposedly
lychee, but it tasted like raspberry Jell-O). J., being the
contrarian always (maybe he learned this from me), had a
second serving of fish and chips for dessert; he reported
that this incarnation had a doughier crust.

Amazingly, my father, mellowed with age, pulled out his AmEx
card and paid for dinner yet again.

=

Carol and I were scouting out for places to eat for our
annual picnic for one of the food groups we're part of. The
moderators took Kaufmann's, and we were going to Bottom of
the Bay down in Laurel, but serendipity took us to Scooter's
up in Elkridge, another place on the to-check-out list. It's
kind of divey, next to a cheap motel just north of 175 on
US 1. A little smoky when we went in, but there were some
appetizing smells coming out of the kitchen.

We started off with a good though extremely thick cream of
crab soup and nice sweet bread (sort of halfway between
challah and Chinese bread).

They didn't have steamed crabs on the menu (promised that
they'd be out "tomorrow"), but it was steamed shrimp night,
so I tried those out. The advertised pound of large shrimp
turned out to be over thirty 20-counters, so about 1 1/3
lb. Most were fresh and firm, nicely cooked, but covered with
an amazing amount of flake salt, red pepper, and celery seed.
Without the salt, these would have been perfect.

We then split a fried seafood platter, which was enormous
and nicely dry-fried. The advertised 5 oz flounder fillet
was twice that size and quite good. Three scallops were
acceptable - tasted like Mrs. Paul's back in the good old
days when Mrs. Paul's actually tasted like something - and
two oysters impeccable and gigantic. Two butterflied 2/3-oz
shrimp. The downside was one pathetic little crabcake that
was supposed to be 3 oz but was really closer to a 1 oz
crab ball - even so, it was made with good sweet backfin
and special meat and a relatively small amount of filler.

This is an Anheuser-Busch house, and we had a pitcher of
Spring Heat, which is a knockoff of Blue Moon: it was nicely
citrused and has the added advantage of not tasting as
though it had urine in it. I found it low in alcohol, but a
quick web search divulged that it claims 5.2%.

An entertaining sidelight: when we went out to the car
afterwards, Carol did this "oh my God, they're so cute"
thing, pointing at something in the dusk. I squinted and
eventually made out three miniature goats, two near the car
and one playing king of the hill, perched on top of the
restaurant's air conditioner. Carol is a sucker for cute.

==

UA 107 BWI ORD 1253 1359 735 2A
became 1350 1438
We took off and landed nearly an hour late. This of course
would have put my connection in doubt, but there wasn't
much to be done, so I had multiple glasses of the Tamas
Chardonnay (Central Coast) followed by some Courvoisier.
The meal choices were a chicken fajita wrap or a garlic
shrimp salad. I had the former - fairly palatable, quite
spicy, a generous amount of chicken, cheese, slivers of
Jalapenos and bell peppers, corn, tomato salsa. For afters
a thinner version of the multi-chocolate thing. Oh, yes,
hot nuts (really hot, I burned my hand) beforehand. The
lone FA in the cabin, Janiel, was excellent, and she got
a GTEM (after which I received a napkin note of thanks).
I had pegged her wrong as one of those young squealy types
who don't get much done (she had engaged a passenger in
conversation, complimenting her on her glasses ["are they
Designer?"] during boarding, clogging the aisle for a
minute; plus she had jumped and shouted "oh my God" twice
before we took off - once when somebody dropped a suitcase
or something and the other time when she found one of the
cockpit crew in the galley area: I think he was waiting
for the restroom). Anyway, once we got going, she was
constantly attentive, efficient, and good.

Contretemps. The butt in 1B suddenly and rapidly reclined
his seat into the tray of 2B, so vodka screwdriver cascaded
all over my seatmate and beyond. Naughty. Seatmate was
fairly cool about this, as was the FA.

Several of us (1C, 2A, and 2C, and who knows how many
behind) were trying for the same connecting flight. We
hustled to the gate only to find that the flight was
delayed half an hour.

UA 149 ORD SFO 1456 1720 777 2A
became 1900 2055

When it came time to board, the crush was pretty amazing,
and I decided to put my trust in a woman who, like an
irresistible force, parted the seas in front of her. Turns
out she had 44B, in zone 3 or 4 or something, but at least
she was my blocker for thirty feet or so.

The agent boarded GS, first class, and 1K, followed by
business class and Star Gold. As I had 2A, I was pleased
by this, but the plane turned out to be configured in the
usual two-class domestic way.

The fellow in 2C on the previous flight was next to me on
this one: we exchanged ironic and knowing commentary through
the peculiar events of the afternoon.

I think the first excuse was flow control owing to low
ceilings and a drizzle that had lasted all morning. No big
deal; we settled in for a short delay, but that wasn't all.

The second announcement: a catering issue. Okay, that takes,
what, ten minutes? It took half an hour. Next, a problem
in the hold - apparently one of the cargo modules had been
loaded incorrectly and had jammed, and the rampers took a
while to fix it, and still there was stuff to be loaded that
had been in queue after that. So that took us to about two
hours behind schedule, whereupon they told us they had to
change a tire, but we were free to stay on and partake of
free wine. I called the 1K desk to be protected on another
flight; after a bit of misunderstanding as to where I was
and was trying to go (the overseas call center, despite my
having called the 1K line), and the offer of a nonstop into
Oakland that would arrive a bit after 10, I decided to stick
with what I had. Shortly thereafter, the purser, a pleasant
enough fellow who had tried to keep us apprised of what was
going on, told us all to deplane. He looked as if he were
about to cry.

Eventually I left with the end of the crowd, but only after
extorting a Courvoisier to go.

They did in fact change a tire (why they couldn't figure out
that we had a flat when they were figuring out the cargo
thing, people will be asking until the end of time), and it
did take only an hour or so, but reboarding was a zoo and
ate up a whole lot more. The gate agent tried to make things
better by improvising a new boarding method, alternating
passengers from the red and regular lines until the former
was exhausted. I don't think it worked, and instead of
making regular line people happier, he just made red line
people more upset. When we got packed in again, we found
that all but two of the crew had gone illegal, and they
basically had to go and find a whole new crew. Luckily there
are apparently lots of FAs hanging around in the ORD area
just waiting for work.

I'd passed on a second lunch (choices being the same as
on the previous flight), but after we replaned, realizing
that I'd miss supper, I reconsidered and asked for whatever
was left. The word came back that there was still one of
each, so I tried the salad - okay slightly wilted greens,
six warm okay shrimp (little or no discernible garlic), tubs
of Caesar dressing. Carrot cake, not bad, for dessert.

The flight itself was also a bit slow, and we landed 3:30
behind schedule and well too late for the planned dinner at
Classic Sichuan in Millbrae.

I'd been voicemailing work2fly, goalie, and KathyWdrf as
things developed, my last notice being a cancellation. Sad,
I've wanted to try the place, which has taken over Kwong's.
Another time.

Realized that I had just time to hurry to gate 73A, where
VPescado was coming in; we stopped by for a bite at Yankee
Pier (his connection was at gate 73 in an hour, so no chance
to go to the mid-terminal food court, where the stuff looks
more promising). My crabcake appetizer appeared shortly -
and sat under a nonfunctional heat lamp awaiting VPescado's
dish, which was some shellfish and pasta thing that should
have been dead easy to make but ended up taking 15 or 20
precious minutes. Maybe the pasta was made to order - it
looked pretty decent. The crabcake did the job, being sort
of light but still giving me something semi-palatable to
entertain myself with. It was made with mostly real but
mechanically separated strands of crab and didn't thrill.
I had an Anchor Steam (warmish and flattish) as well. I
liked the place better when it was called the Crab Pot
(metonymized in common speech among my San Fran based
friends to the Crack Pot then the Crack House).

KathyWdrf came by while we were eating - she had the
express meal of chowder, a sandwich, and fries. I tasted
the sandwich and fries: both were better than my crabcake.

It was shortly time to get on yet another flight; said
goodbye to Kathy and went back to my gate for another
completely full flight -

UA 180 SFO BOS 2320 0754 752 2A
became 2324 0815

I conked out during the safety message and slept until after
7, which would have been fine, but we were 20 min late, and
I could have used that much more snooze.

The fruit and cheese thing was presumably offered after I
fell asleep.

My purpose in doing this zigzagger was (in addition to the
miles) to judge the finals of another competition, this one
of high-school-age music students from all around the state.
Owing to the tender age of the contestants, I will not be
as forthright in my descriptions as I was of the young
professionals whom I heard last month. Let it suffice to say
that our winners, Terence Hsu, Tavi Ungerleider, and Wendy
Wang, showed both technique and poise that would be the envy
of fully formed artists. The other candidates (none of whom
was shut out from receiving votes) also showed a high level
of musicianship. As it was, we had one each pianist, string
player, and singer, with the pianist, Terence, taking the
top place on all ballots. We predicted a good future for the
others, as well, the cellist being mature far beyond his
years and the mezzo quite remarkable in her own right. I
didn't vote for her, as I didn't like her diction, but how
many high-school students have training in German and
Italian; I acknowledged that her presence and the quality of
her voice were remarkable for her age. My third choice was
voted down by the others as not being as interesting as the
others, although nobody denied her musicianship.

We had dessert and Moscato with the contestants and their
teachers and parents (I guess the kids got raspberry
ginger ale punch); I wangled a bottle of neutral but fairly
acceptable Prosecco for myself.

And then I had to get up at 6 for an 8:00 flight.

violist

UA7271 BOS IAD 0800 0941 CRJ 4F

Lynne at the club noted that it seemed as though we'd seen
each other only yesterday, which was true.

Some fellow who had been on the same redeye yesterday: "me
too!" He was going back to SFO; luckily I just had to head
to Washington. Unluckily it was on a completely full Mesa
CRJ. As is typical at this station and this hour, the
display for gate 21 reads "Washington-Dulles," and one might
look out and see a 757 and have his heart leap, only to be
ushered down the stairs into the bowels of the airport and
have to traipse through the rain to this puny unpleasant
aircraft. My seatmate was jovial enough but was definitely
757-size; we exchanged pleasantries, staked out whatever
puny territorial claims we could, and went to sleep, which
is the only sensible way of dealing with these flights.
We took off and landed ten early.

Looked in on my father, whose EPO shot hadn't kicked in yet
and who was very weak; did a few things around the house,
and then off to the Post-Freddies event at Zen Bistro in
Pentagon Row. The bus-to-Metro thing worked flawlessly, and
the Red Line came immediately, but there was a zoo at Metro
Center owing to a Nationals game east of downtown and a
signal failure west of downtown, meaning that even though
it was past rush hour, the rush hour crowds persisted.
Further, the monitors were malfunctioning, with trains
promised every one minute when in fact they were coming only
every ten or so. Listened to an amusing but out-of-tune a
capella group doing songs from my youth ("Why Do Fools Fall
in Love," a perennial question - during this time I thought
I had a glimpse of the woman I'd adored 30 years ago -
whether disordered imagination or odd coincidence I didn't
investigate), and eventually after about 20 minutes the
train came; we lurched about for half an hour, rather
nerve-wracking, before arriving at Pentagon City.

The restaurant isn't easy to find, and I was wandering
dazedly when I heard my name being called: a jolly table
outside with sithlord, gfowler, KathyWdrf, l'etoile, and
VPescado. Chatted with them a while and then went in to see
what the food situation was.

Appetizers were sort of picked over by this time, but the
sushi were replenished regularly, and I ate a lot of avocado
rolls over the course of the evening.

crispy spring rolls
no longer crispy by the time I got there; lots of cabbage,
just like my mother's: but not so good as my mother's
grilled chicken satay
pretty good, moist, underseasoned, presauced
crispy Peking dumpling
no longer crispy by the time I got there; very large, very
meaty; the wrappers were very thick
assorted sushi sample
this included yellow pickle, avo, cucumber, fried
crabstick, salmon bits, salmon bits with avo, salmon bits
with cream cheese, and salmon bits with cream cheese and
something else, and a couple others.

The mains were your buffet main dishes, suitable for such
a gathering (though maybe more beer food than wine food).

chicken and shrimp lo mein
okay, nothing special, but the shrimp had shells
spicy Thai green curry chicken
spicy Malaysian Penang curry pork
I found only a fairly spicy green curry pork; it was fine
although not what I expected. Didn't find anything Penang
on the table.

Rice was Asian-style, low grade but okay.

Dessert.

petite French pastries
I tried a pineapple tart, which was okay, a chocolate-
raspberry thing, which was okay, and a chocolate-hazelnut
thing recommended by KathyWdrf, which was better than okay.

There were also platters of strawberries, which were good.

I had Lurton Pinot Gris (Argentina) and a couple gins and
tonics very kindly provided by intoxicated friends. Remy
was decent as well; I'm glad they offered it.

VPescado offered me a ride back, which was good, as I really
had overstayed; my father was waiting up for me when I got
to the house.

Next day he refused to get up. This was actually remedied
when I realized that nobody had given him his insulin shot
(this is not my responsibility - I don't live there) ...
for three weeks (bordering I believe on actionable neglect,
and I'm trying to figure out what to do about this). I also
volunteered to fix lunch, so there was something better than
meals-on-wheels to look forward to.

==
Persimmon, Bethesda, with Uncle SY, Carol, and the family

The room is pleasant, and though our table was right near
the entrance to the work area, it was reasonably quiet.

Service was good.

You start off with pretty good baguette with quite good pate
instead of butter (I think they should give both). Free
water (not a given these days).

The menu is well thought out, with a fair amount of variety
despite being relatively short.

SY ordered the arugula salad with shaved dry ricotta, which
he enjoyed very much, followed by Atlantic bouillabaisse,
a riff on the classic stew but with salmon, rockfish, and
cod for the finfish; it looked a bit suspect to me, but he
managed to polish off the sizable serving.

Carol had a Caesar (pretty classic with a pleasant surprise
garnish of a Parmesan wafer) and the crab cakes, which were
just average.

Both my father and brother started with an atypical choice -
chickpea and roasted garlic soup with tasso ratatouille;
this received approbation despite that my brother eats
chickpeas only because he thinks they're healthful and that
he's never before willingly eaten anything with eggplant.
The "tasso ratatouille" turned out to be a teaspoon or so of
reddish blob in a plate of khaki soup.

J. continued with the filet medium-rare, which was a good
portion of excellent meat: I got a slice, which J. pointed
out was a large slice, so I gave up two slices of my modest
serving of duck in return.

My father had the steamed mussels appetizer as his main
course; this turned out to be more than he could eat, so I
helped with a half dozen or so; they were fresh and pretty
good, the sauce creamy but not very concentrated, and some
of the mussels still possessed of their beards.

The short rib appetizer with parsnip puree is justly
acclaimed, the meat braised then crisped, so the surface
offers a delightful resistance before the unctuousness of
the interior; the parsnip puree was enriched suitably with
butter and cream. A promised truffle demi was good enough
for me to want to mop up with my finger, although it didn't
taste very truffly.

The Robertson Merlot 02 (South Africa) was a little dusky
tasting but had good spice and cherries and went well with
the beef; I carried it over to my next course as well.

This was duck magret ordered rare and served with a duck-
confit-sweet-potato hash: the magret was somewhat tough
despite its rareness; robust enough, though, to fool my
brother into thinking it tasted like beef (it didn't).
The hash, quite a pleasant sweet-winy-salty contrast, was
just part of an assemblage that included a latke-like
juicecatcher (reviews claim this to be a celery-root cake,
but any celery root in it escaped me) and a small mound of
perfectly sauteed spinach. The Merlot was good with the
duck but wretched with the rest, so I altered my eating
order to compensate.

Pierre Sparr Gewurztraminer 05 was nice and fruity but
balanced way toward the sweet end of the sweet-acid
continuum. It went fine with the crab cakes and the sweet
potato hash, and I didn't ask how it went with the
bouillabaisse (but SY is not a fussy drinker).

An assortment of sorbets and ice creams completed the meal,
but instead I had a tasting of Eisweins, which came in the
wrong order, but that was easily sorted out:

1. Serringer Riesling 04 - fruit cocktail - pears and
peaches in syrup, not very complex

2. Joseph Phelps Eisrebe 05 - pretty decent: citrus and
stone fruits, apparent botrytis, which of course isn't
standard, in fact quite surprising for a cryoextracted
wine; quite syrupy sweet of course

3. Cave Springs Riesling 04 - pineapple estery; rather
acidic; off flavor I thought (WS gives it 90, I'd say 85).

The very best part of the evening was getting taken home by
Carol in the Miata with the top down.

violist

Sunday morning was bright and sunny although a tad cool. It
was the day for the Flyertalk brunch at Whitlow's on Wilson
near the Clarendon subway stop. As it was unclear whether
this would be a Champagne brunch, Carol decided we'd just
use the Metro, which was slowish but quite okay. We got to
the place pretty much on time to find a small knot of
Flyertalkers with no place to go. The restaurant apparently
had not been apprised of the imminent arrival of a party of
16. This was, with the aid of cova and his cellphone, traced
to the fact that Steph had turned over the management of
this event to a third party, who, it is rumored, had failed
to wake up that morning. All was sorted out eventually, and
they opened up a back room for us near the buffet.

Present:
aSiAnRiCk
cova
DCBob
FlyinHawaiian
KathyWdrf
KLC
MrAOK
Robert
Viajero Joven
xyzzy
the guy from Houston, sorry, I forgot your name
one other, sorry ...
and Carol and me.

The buffet sounded from its menu description pretty
appetizing, and there were some pretty nice things on it.

The advertised steamed clams turned out to be thawed green-
lip mussels, which is not an altogether bad thing.

Fried chicken was pretty nicely cooked, but it was white
meat only, and I have a marked preference for dark. I tried
one piece, whose skin was crisp and whose meat was moist
and tender; so not all was lost.

Chopped steak was your usual Salisbury abomination, only
more rubberized than normal.

They offered steamed crab legs, which, surprisingly, did not
fly off the table; I tried some, and they were as it turns
out the best dish on offer.

I was full before I found the roast chicken, which is where
the dark meat apparently went.

For breakfast meats, hash, not the hardest thing in the
world to prepare, was uniquely watery and greasy at the same
time; sausages were tasty and not too fatty; and I didn't
have the bacon, but Carol reports that it was very good.

There were other breakfast things, cereals, bagels and
muffins, an omelet station, and so on, but I have never been
a farm hand and have never seen the sense of carbohydrate
loading in the morning and like eggs only in the appropriate
company.

Also not tried: mac and cheese (looked good), mashed taters,
corn on the cob, various salads, various cheesecakes,
waffles, biscuits, and sausage gravy (Carol said this was
not very good, but she had two servings of it anyhow).

I had a slice of moist and above average Black Foresty
chocolaty cake to round things out.

Not only did it turn out not to be a Champagne brunch,
beverages in general were not included. So coffee and soft
drinks were charged out at two bucks each, which made my
Yuengling (the only alcohol consumed at the table, perhaps
making this a unique event in FT annals) a relative bargain
at $4.50 the pint. Ah, well.

During brunch, Steph showed up with a pawful of twenties,
the fruits of her sign-up Website, and just handed them out
to people to deal with as they wished. The task of paying
devolved to a couple of people, who thus gained the pleasant
feeling of having gotten miles for the original reservation
plus more miles for settling the bill.

US4008 BWI LGA 1015 1115 CRJ 2A

Despite my having chosen a window on the first flight and
having expressed a preference for windows in general, the
foolish US Airways computer overrode my wishes and gave
me seats 3C and 1C (both shown as unavailable on the seat
maps on the Website). I high-tailed it to the club, where
the angels worked a while and fixed my seats.

Then on to the gate right at boarding time, but at 9:50
it was announced that our crew had just left the hotel
and were expected to arrive at the airport at 10:10, so
we could expect a 15-minute delay. We took a little more
than that on both ends, despite the actual flight taking
only 27 minutes.

The hotel issue had arisen because the crew hadn't arrived
until way past midnight the night before, supposedly not
being legal to fly again until after 10:30.

US2126 LGA BOS 1200 1310 319 2A

Quite a pleasant flight, and I continued my one-man campaign
to get Cognac back on the flights, graciously accepting a
bottle of Heineken when the FA couldn't find any Courvoisier
for me. We landed a good half hour early, and after checking
my mail and staring at bills for a while, it was pack up the
fiddle and go to work.

FlyinHawaiian

Great report and recap of your meals and travel. It was good to see you again and meet the lovely Carol. ^