(written at 33,000 feet, halfway through the flight) So … of
course I’m traveling with a couple world-class experts. Mark Ontiveros
has attached an amplifier (!!) to his video iPod so that he
can hook up special headphones and watch videos with the best possible
sound.

And Mark Miskiewicz just ranked our meal a 6.5. The beef and potato
main course should have had more carrots, he said, although it wasn’t
bad for economy class on an airline. And the dessert was poorly paired
…. 2 gelatinous items on a plate, bad planning on the airline’s part.
We all enjoyed this little tiny orange thing, though, which Mark M
calls a “Clementine,” and I continue to call a “tiny orange thing.” It
was great, actually …. it would be fun to find those at home. Of
course, they serve French wine, which isn’t all that bad. It makes up
for the 7.0-earthquake equivalent turbulence we had for over an
hour.

Air France is good, though. They left us with blankets and pillows,
and then came and dropped by a little “love kit” of those eye covers
and some face wipes, etc. Not bad. Sooooo much better than flying some
retarded domestic airline. I played the onboard computer screen in
front of me for a bit…. reminds me why I don’t gamble in Vegas. I
lost 200 “dollars” (credits, whatever) in about 15 minutes in
blackjack. I handily beat the damn airplane in solitaire, though, and
now I’m thinking of ordering one of the free on-demand movies.

There are 2 logistical issues. (1) If I send an email with an
attachment, will the Blog software post that as a picture. If you see a
picture, it did, and that’s just friggin’ amazingly cool, and (2) when
will I have internet access again to actually send these emails? Who
knows … when you get it, you get it. Next report — barring anything
insane — Paris!