23 Nov 06

Time:

Left apartment on airport shuttle 237, arrived Terminal 6 310.

Money:

$0, airplane Screwdriver, in honor of Thanksgiving (the fact that it was free, I mean, not drinking it in the first place), somewhere over the eastern U.S.
$4, maple macchiato, PBI Starbucks.
$12, more coffee - for all of us, this time, Glades Road Starbucks.

More interesting things:

Decided that while walking is unquestionably the best way to get around this place, there is something to be said for driving as well. It's because of scale. When you're on foot, things - restaurants, stores, bars, etc. - come up quite slowly, and your mental record of any particular spot's physical context is on a micro-scale. It can be hard to remember details that way, even if you are more directly immersed in the environment. In a car, on the other hand, it is much easier to see how large chunks of space relate to each other, and blocks start to seem as small as they actually are; it's the macro-scale. (But that doesn't mean I'm going to start taking cabs.)

Rode under some overpass on the way out of the city and only realized that a Long Island Rail Road train was rumbling by because of the glowing-red destination signs. It was cool to think about rail cars criss-crossing these islands at all hours of the day and night; this city really doesn't sleep, and it doesn't worry about letting the suburbs get too much rest either.

Watched a middle-aged guy examine a fallen palm frond as we all waited to be let up to the security checkpoint at JFK. I'm not sure what was so fascinating about it, other than the way it showed that the pot it sat in also contained a real live tree, but you wouldn't think that would inspire an entire minute of careful inspection; you'd kind of get the real-tree idea after about two seconds of looking at the leaf. Of course, it's not as if I had any absorbing plans for a 4am wait in a quiet airport, so maybe he was just trying to pass the time.

Laughed - quietly, so as not to make my neighbors nervous - at a jetBlue guy who decided that West Palm Beach - 6:00 - Flight 831 was not a gate-sign message festive enough for that particular morning and so tried to add "Happy Thanksgiving!" on the line that normally provides the airline's web address. That was cool enough, really, since I'm always glad to see the human behind something like an electronic sign, but when he realized he couldn't fit the whole thing, stopped and thought about it for a second, and then came back with "Happy Turkey Day!", I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Remembered Professor Alpha's comment left on on the answering machine of one of his colleagues, which sounded remarkably like one I'm fond of making myself: on hearing, evidently, the announcement that "You've reached the So-and-So's", he responded, "No, I haven't, actually... I've reached the So-and-So's answering machine," and concluded with "Happy, happy, happy turkey, turkey... turkey.... Yeah."

Listened to some turkey noises. As I waited for my people to pick me up outside PBI, some spirited soul came over the loudspeaker with "Gobble, gobble! Gobble... gobble... gobble!" Which is, of course, exactly what I did when I got home. It was an excellent Thanksgiving, featuring all the correct food items - sausage stuffing, pecan pie, and so on - PLUS Irish herb butter. Excellent.