Just so you know

Just a little heads up for all of you kids here...it is NEVER a good thing when the pilot of your plane says,

"If you look out of the right side of the plane and see another plane running parallel to us, pay no attention to it. It'll be using another runway...."

It's just NEVER a good thing.

More on this later.

A little dog to dog comparison

Just an interesting doggy note here...took a walk around the city yesterday shortly after arriving and it was raining. Naturally I had to go to the dog park because it had been about eight or nine hours since I had seen any pooches.

Most of the pups running around here had raincoats on. Even the breeds like Huskies and Chows were wearing them.

Most pups in Boston really don't wear them. Winter coats, yes, but not too many raincoats.

Question...are our Boston pups more "macho" than San Francisco pups? Discuss.

The saga continues...like you wanna hear it.

So as to prevent nausea


Day One/SceneTwo

We are, naturally, the last group to board the plane – part of group F, which undoubtedly has some sort of “Fashion Failure” connotation. They still let us board though, and for this I am eternally grateful.

Stepping onto the plane I feel as though I am walking into an 80’s gay bar meets backstage at “The View”. Lavender colored acrylic divides the uber cool from the regular cool and us. Soft purple lights wash up the cabin walls and line the ceiling. The flight crew is swaddled in sleek black uniforms with an occasional splash of red. Ambient, new agey music softly plays we take our black leather seats. Oooo...

Looking at the crew, I see the work of the selection criteria board is immediately apparent. Again, I imagine what the list looks like.

Crew members must include at least one of each of the following:
Cute gay boy with spiky hair
Dark haired Asian beauty
Pretty blond chick from American heartland
Strikingly handsome/lovely dark skinned man or woman
Other random lovelies

I immediately sort through the contents of the little catch bin in front of me. I find a tastefully designed barf bag, a tastefully designed emergency procedures manual, a tastefully designed menu, a tastefully designed welcome brochure, and a box of no roll crayons. Since I imagine that in my future, crayons will be the only implements that I am allowed to write with, I play with them first. This behavior earns an icy glare from the little one. I put them back. I'll get back to them later when she is sleeping.

I start to monkey with the personal viewing screen and discover that there is a remote control imbedded in the arm of my seat. I am oddly charmed and overly impressed. I wonder if Richard Branson would consider adopting me. I can cook and don't often soil myself.

My morning tea was laced with Dramamine so I spend the flight alternately drooling on myself while sleeping and playing with the entertainment system. Needless to say, it takes me most of the flight to figure out what my eleven year old nephew could figure out in ten minutes, tops. By the time I am comfortable with the system we are bouncing onto a rainy San Francisco runway.

We had some great Dim Sum for lunch at a little place in the Richmond and are getting ready to watch the Oscars even though we haven’t seen even one of the movies.

I have not yet had a glass of wine but I hope to remedy that situation shortly.

California, here we are

Day One, Scene One

First of all, big thanks to Uncle Eric for rousing himself out of bed early on a Sunday morning to drop us off at the airport. Anything to get rid of us.

We’re here are at the airport getting ready to board our flight. It’s 7:12 am, we’ve passed through security in an unusually uneventful way. The little one typically gets pegged as some sort of high security risk and we generally nearly get carted off to the airport equivalent of Guantanamo. This time, however, not so much. I think that we will only fly Virgin from now on.

The Virgin waiting area is a sea of coolness. It’s about twenty minutes old. All red and white graphics and blue glass tiled bathrooms. Touch screen computer monitors and multi ethnic passengers are everywhere.

We are hopelessly out of sync with the rest of the way hip flyers waiting to board the plane. It’s as if the crowd has been vetted out by some sort of selection criteria board. I imagine what their checklist might look like.

Qualifications to fly include/but are not limited to:
Possession of:
I Phone/I Touch/I Pod
Laptop
British accent
Pithy sense of humor
Some sort of fashion sense
Ability to pull off above mentioned fashion sense that may include the wearing of Uggs and fedoras

We clearly have been allowed to fly under some sort of “special admissions” program that allows the tragically unhip/uncool to mingle with the rest of humanity. I’m feeling like the best we can do is not draw attention to ourselves. It's not gonna be easy.

For general consumption...

OK Kids, we are going to be taking a little vacation from the bustling world of retail to regain our normally sunny dispositions. We are going to California to mooch off of family and theoretically stand in the sun for five minutes.

I say this as monsoon conditions blanket the entire left coast. I must say, our timing is really impeccable.

Here are the dates that we will be closed for vacation:

We will be closed from Sunday, February 22, 2009
through Sunday, March 2, 2009.



We will reopen on Tuesday, March 3, 2009,
keeping our regular hours 10:00 am - 7:00 pm.

Remain calm, carry on, and we will see you when we get back.

Thanks to you all, the best customers anywhere.