Joelle and I have been taking an Introduction to Islam class that the local Hillel (Jewish Student Center) has been offering.
As part of the class, we visited a local mosque last weekend with our instructor (a Master’s student in Islamic Studies at U-W, who also happens to be a Shiite Muslim and a US Marine). He was supposed to meet us at 7:30, but still wasn’t there at 7:50 or so.
At 7:53 he comes walking in, and apologizes, and tells the following story (paraphrased):
I’m so sorry! We drove to Kirkland, and were getting off 405, and all of a sudden I turned to my wife and realized: “We forgot the Jews!”
Which reminds me; I need to write up more about this class and visit later, but wanted to share that fun comment first…
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(this post was written while I was flying and will be posted once I get online later- actual written time, 7:06 PM, Dec 11)
Sitting in the middle seat on my flight back (we got to the airport early so we took middle seats through standby in exchange for getting home an hour early), I realized quite a few things bother me about flying these days, so might as well enumerate them:
- Coach seats (at least on Alaska Airlines) has absolutely zero room for laptops. Seriously, it is so crowded to be typing on these things - the keyboard area is pushing into my stomach, the screen is folded over to be even able to fit, and the tray is at a very unergonomic height, so my arms don’t feel so comfortable. If I were a common business traveler, perhaps a smaller laptop would help - I’ll have to try bringing the work mac-book with me next time, as it’s much smaller.
- Whatever happened to dinner on planes? Especially when they fly from that key 6-9 pm hours. When exactly are you supposed to eat dinner if you need to board at 5:15 or so?
- No two TSA people say the same thing - one says to put your boarding pass away, the other says “reminder: we need to see your boarding pass”, the video playing says both at the same time! Plus, people take way, way too long taking their shoes on and off.
- Middle seats suck!
- Why don’t all planes have that movable headrest so you can make your own personal sleeping area? It can’t cost the airline more than 50 cents extra per seat once at airplane purchase time to put those in. Makes me want to fly Continental, the only airline I know of that has those.
- The food in airports is just not good. Granted they have a captive audience, but couldn’t someone come up with a decent, ubiquitous eating venue? Especially for vegetarians. McDonald’s and/or an awful caesar’s salad just don’t cut it.
- Finally, airlines - stop seating me next to talkers. Really. I am all about striking up random conversations with people in most situations. But there are two I want people to just shut up - airplanes and barbers (cut my hair, in and out, no need to find out my or your lifestory).
On a random note, I did run into the condo upstair’s neighbor randomly at the airport. It has been a good week for my goal of running into people I know at places - 3 or 4 different people at the Seahawks game on Sunday (including Pure’s CEO), and now this. Also found out 2 or 3 more people from high school have moved to Seattle, and I didn’t even know about it - weird; I usually know these things.