Celebrating in Seattle

Celebrating in Seattle
I flew to Seattle on Virgin America Airlines on the first flight out of Los Angeles. I prefer to take the first flight out of town because you have the best opportunity to leave on time and arrive on time, all other things being equal.

On balance, the flight was very good for me. I will discuss one pathetic worthless piece of white trash who sat behind me on the flight later on.

I paid a bit more for what Virgin America calls MainCabin Select seats. You get more legroom, dedicated or reserved overhead bin space and free drinks. I think it is worth the extra price for me anyway.

The flight was on the less full side so one of the flight attendants, Nicole, sat and chatted with me for about ten minutes. Nicole is a fascinating young woman. I learned that she went to California State University Chico and majored in event management. I never knew that you could major in an area like event management.

I took an airport bus from the airport to my hotel which, in this case, was the Sheraton Seattle. It started to snow on the drive in from the airport. Some people on the bus, they must have been from Southern California and didn’t know any better, were saying how wonderful it was to see snow falling.

All I could think about was whether I was going to be able to get out of town on Sunday morning.

The Sheraton is only a half block from Morton’s where we had dinner. As far as I know, it is a good hotel. My room was clean and the bed was firm and I was as far away as I could get from the elevator lobby and ice machine room on my floor.

Perfectomundo.

The Sheraton Seattle is right next to the Seattle Convention Center so it had a large convention crowd of guests. There was a convention going on about university student activity advisors or some such concept like that. I was fascinated to see how the delegates were out hustling each other for some level of advantage and trying to demonstrate how cool and sophisticated they were. In the end, they all seemed to look like lost and relatively powerless low level and middle level managers.

We had the birthday dinner at Morton’s; everyone had a wonderful time. As far as I could tell, every meal was perfect. I am basing this judgment on how clean the plates were. Not the most scientific of measures but an effective one none the less. We also talked and talked and enjoyed ourselves for three hours.


I shared one of my three baked scallops with my niece the Nutritionist. As some long time readers know, I generally do not share my food. But, this meal was family so I felt sharing was proper for me.

The Nutritionist is an ultra runner; she told me that she was planning on participating in a 180 mile run over the 4th of July Weekend. I wanted to ask her why not simply drive around the mountain but felt that would only make me sound silly.

We were missing two of the Seattle branch of the family. The Nutritionist’s husband was out of town on business and the Nephew’s girl friend was with her parents who were in town. I suppose we could have invited the girl friend and her parents to join us but no one mentioned it to me until Saturday afternoon when it was probably too late.

Our big conversation topic for the night was the cinema. It would have been a perfect subject for Doug. The Nutritionist suggested that Doug should come to the birthday dinner next year. I spoke to Doug about making the trip with me next year but he was noncommittal for now.

I woke up early on Sunday and was able to get to the airport earlier and change my flight from a 3:00 PM flight to one that left at 10:45 AM, getting me into Los Angeles much earlier. I had a couple of Bloody Mary’s on the flight; I skipped any food because I was still feeling full from the night before.

I had a perfect weekend in Seattle and enjoyed the birthday celebration immensely.

Pathetic Worthless Piece of White Trash
I had a pathetic worthless piece of White Trash sit behind just before we left Los Angeles on Saturday. I have nothing but utter contempt for this pile of human garbage.

Sounds really bitter doesn’t it.

Well, that is exactly how I feel.

This worthless pathetic scum was crying and complaining about how he couldn’t sit in the seat and how he practically had to pull my seat back off so he could pull himself up. Hey, White Trash, the airlines have not reduced the size of their seats in the last few days. White Trash knew or should have known that the seat were narrow; they have been for at least ten years now.

White Trash whined to the flight attendants about how he couldn’t sit there and that he had to be moved. Naturally, White Trash didn’t want to pay more for a better seat like in First Class. Thankfully, the airline held its ground and White Trash had to pay for the better.

The flight crew said White Trash would have to go out to the gate to pay for the upgraded ticket. White Trash whined again and said he couldn’t walk that far so a gate agent had to walk into the plane to accommodate White Trash.

I suppose that many of think I am being totally insensitive and thoughtless. I’m not.

I was amazed that White Trash sat his fat ass down in the front row of the First Class section. There was no chair in front of him to use as a lever to pull himself up. He didn’t need a chair back to lean on; he could get up from a First Class seat with no assistance at all.

So much for not being to sit in a seat, liar.

Then, White Trash got his sorry pathetic ass up and out of his seat and walked quickly down the jet way and into the terminal when the plane landed.

So much for not being able to walk, liar.

This is a person who deserves to be treated with total contempt and disregard. He has managed to make me totally indifferent to any handicapped person. Let them take their chances with someone else. I see no reason to afford these fakers special treatment.

The real question is how many others, just like White Trash, are out there abusing the system?

Have you ever seen a perfectly able bodied person park in a handicapped only parking space, hang a special parking tag on the car mirror and then run into a building?

Disgusting isn’t it?

Lunch at L A Food Show
I had lunch with an old coworker and his new girl friend on Friday at the L A Food Show. I suggested the Show because I have never had a bad meal in almost six years of going there. Not one of my guests or other friends, like Vivian and Lisa, has ever had a bad meal either.


I want to say his new girl friend because I only became aware of her at the end of 2008. They are a very happy couple and seem to enjoy each other’s company immensely. They were particularly happy with my lunch venue suggestion; everything about their food selections was perfect.

It seems lately that I have been eating out more; Friday at L A Food Show and Morton’s on Saturday and back to the Show a week from Sunday.

My Friend Vivian
My friend Vivian and I used to work for the same bank in Century City until I got laid off.

Lay-offs happen and I am so over it by now.

After I left the bank, Vivian and I and Lisa who worked with me as well would get together for lunch periodically. We have always had lunch on the weekend so we can spend more than an hour over lunch and we have always had lunch at the L A. Food Show because it is convenient for Vivian and me and we love the food there.

Perfectly logical reasons for meeting there in addition to free parking; something you don’t usually find in Century City or Beverly Hills.

Vivian volleyed off an email about getting together for lunch in March. Normally, I would have responded with two or three possible day choice because I have much less going on in my life than Vivian does. I had to demur with my response until I knew if I was teaching a Saturday class.

Now that I know my teaching schedule, we are tentatively going to meet on March 22nd. It should work since Vivian picked the day. One of the big discussion topics will be Vivian’s departure from the bank and relocation to a work site in Century City.

Dumbing Down
We seem to be on our way to ruin with this constant dumbing down of almost everything. This process has even affected food. I had seafood bisque on Friday at the Show as part of my lunch. The bisque was a disappointment for me. It was watery and sort of bland without much flavor to it.

I was particularly bothered by the fact that the bisque was served warm and not hot.

Then, I had a bowl of Manhattan Clam Chowder at the Daily Grill in Seattle for lunch on Saturday. It was served warm as well. I should have avoided the chowder all together; it was poor and this is in a city that prides itself on its sea food cuisine. I have tasted better Manhattan Clam Chowder from a can of Campbell’s Soup.

Are we that stupid that we cannot recognize steam coming from a bowl of soup and conclude that the contents might me hot?

I had a cup of coffee at breakfast on Sunday. It was barely warm.

I cannot accept that we must protect people from themselves. I know that when I was in the United States Navy, some of my men were not very bright. But, none of them ever burned themselves from hot coffee, even in the dark of the Mid-Watch, from midnight to 4:00 AM on a tossing ship.

If my hard working and tired sailors figured out the coffee was hot, then anyone else ought to be able to accomplish the same task.

Whatever happened to personal accountability and responsibility?

I guess they died in an era of cowardice and gross lack of moral fiber perhaps.

Visitors
Last week was another good week for visitors. We had 615 visitors and are now close to averaging 85 visitors a day.

Most of the visitors when I checked today came from overseas. The shift to foreign visitors, including those from the Great State of Texas, are now running around 70% of the traffic.

On one day last week, we had twelve visitors from Indonesia. I think that is a record for Indonesia but nowhere near close to the all time record of over 750 visitors from Germany in three days.

I do appreciate all of you who take out to stop by and visit the blog.

Carbon 14 Dating Myself
I can remember when we used to only put USD$10.00 bills in ATMs. Now, you can find ATMs with USD$100.00 bills, in Las Vegas of course. I guess a dollar just doesn’t go as far as it used to go.

Technology Triumphs and Disappointments
I am still using the Release Candidate 1 version of Internet Explorer because IE 7was so unstable in comparison. The RC1 version still has the problem of switching or disabling web site icons when you place the site in your favorites list.

Right now, for example, the BBC World Service and Continental Airlines are showing the Microsoft Windows flag. This is probably not what either company had in mind when they created their web site icons. At least, they are better off than Yahoo.com which is no longer showing the red “Y” symbol. Of course, this is a transitory problem that only affects some web sites and not others and it changes from day to day.

I currently have an Epson WorkForce 500 combination printer, scanner, copier, and fax machine. I say currently because I am about to consign it to the local municipal electronic waste site. I was printing out some lesson plans Sunday afternoon when it stopped printing for no apparent reason.

My frustration level with modern printers has become so great that I actually long for the return of the near letter quality dot matrix printer. Yes, the dot matrix was noisy and slow and wasn’t very good quality compared to an ink-jet printer but it was almost indestructible and reliable and you could re-ink the ribbons instead of buying costly new cartridges. That was worth something to me.

I am going to stop by the local Staples store on Tuesday after class and purchase a simple printer that only copies, scans, and prints. It doesn’t have to be very fast; most of the time I am in no hurry. There has to be at least one, reliable, dependable printer out there that will meet my simple needs.

The Moustache Poll Results So Far
So far, the Moustache Poll is strongly running in favor of keeping the moustache.


Molly the Stylist is the only one, so far, who favors, very emphatically I might add, shaving it off.

Besides Nurse Vruna, everyone at dinner on Saturday favored me keeping it. The Nutritionist said that I looked very good with it. The Princess said it looked good on me and it made me look more like a professor. She said I only needed to add leather elbow patches to my tweed sports coats and the look would be complete. The Princess said that since it was grey it didn’t look all that creepy. She said I looked creepy when I grew a dark brown moustache. The Golfer and the Nephew were in favor of keeping it, maybe so they can feel safe in growing one as well.


That was my weekend gentle readers. I hope your weekend went well.


Be well and stay happy.