Blog Entry No. 1
Coming to you from Alaska Airlines flight 2523, roughly above Crater Lake, Oregon, on my way from Portland to San Francisco for an "off site," also known as a business meeting. Up the aisle to my right in 1D sits an adult–size Pippi Longstocking, a striking brunette with the biggest pigtails I've ever seen. Pippi nurses a Bloody Mary and a magazine, but I can't tell which pub from its design—this from a man who can spot the three–columned typography of The New Yorker five rows away. A bespectacled man behind Pippi in 2E is staring at his Game Boy Micro but has his emergency paperback—Ice Hunt by James Rollins—in the empty seat to his left. On my immediate right, a man with a window seat—in the middle of a blue afternoon with a view of the snowcapped Cascades below—has been staring at the same page of Learn Italian the Fast and Fun Way since we took off. Stuck to the tops of the pages are dozens of Post–it Notes. Let's hope these aren't problem areas. His bunkmate has a remastered iPod two inches from his aquiline nose and a complimentary microbrew set precisely in the little round crater on his tray table. His seatbelt is also fastened, and he actually made eye contact with the stewardess—rewind, I mean in–flight service attendant—during her in–the–event–of–an–emergency landing speech. I, meanwhile, am sandwiched next to the left–side window, with my MacBook perched on the tray table and its 15–inch screen in the full upright position. My buddy from work—I mean, my colleague who is also attending the off site—wakes up as we begin our descent and returns to reading USA Today, the colorful daily newspaper which someday might win a Pulitzer Prize for best investigative paragraph.
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© 2007 Gabriel H. Boehmer, Design by Cameron C. Boehmer