Month: November 2005

I’m back in Brooklyn safe and sound with P-. Here’s the last part of the travel recap; some summary thoughts to come this weekend.

Tuesday: Can’t get a late checkout, so we have to get packed before noon. I get my laundry done early, chatting with a couple from Florida and a guy from Minnesota. Then the clothes are compressed with Travel Space Bags that we got from the As Seen on TV store at the Ward Center Mall (they actually work – you roll the bags, forcing the air out a valve at the end, that creates a vaccum and compresses your clothes.)

Get on the road by 11 am. We take Interstate H1 to Interstate H2 (just think about that one for a moment), and then up the Kamehameha Highway to the North Coast. We make a pit stop at the Dole Plantation and spend an hour trying to get out of the world’s largest outdoor maze (this was a roadblock on the Amazing Race one season). Continued further north to Haleiwa and the row of shave ice stores including the famed Matsumoto (all the Japanese tour buses go ther) and competing store Aoki (pretty much the same, except nobody goes there — personally IMHO, I think that Waiola makes the best shave ice with the finest ice crystals – Matsumoto and Aoki are too much like snowcones for my taste.) Had lunch at Haleiwa Joe’s on their outdoor deck and spent most of the time swatting at flies that wanted a free lunch. Saw a monster rainbow over the nearby bridge; drove farther up the road and had a clear unobstructed shot at it.

Drove back and got off at exit 2 on H2 to load up on gas at Costco. $2.59/gallon is much cheaper. While waiting on the gas line, saw an extremely rare double rainbow – see the pictures.

Got back to the hotel, where they let us use a hospitality suite to take a shower, and then we went to the Ala Moana Mall for last minute shopping, a haircut (the Vietnamese-Chinese hairdresser on the ground floor pulled off an excellent haircut in 7 minutes for only $11!) and buying an airplane/cig lighter adapter for my laptop to replace my lost adapter. Race to the airport, blowing past the rental car lot – made a quick U turn and made it in. We check in, and P-‘s baggage is 6 pounds overweight. After a quick redistribution, we get it just within 50 lbs.

Meal #1 = turkey sandwich from the airport. P- gets the AA snack pack, which makes me sick. We get into LAX, and I get Burger King crossandwiches, which is the only thing open at 6 in the morning. This no food thing just sucks if you’re in a rush. I don’t know what’s up with the seats either, but after 12 hours, my tailbone was just in so much pain. At our final landing at JFK, we hit the ground pretty hard – a couple of the gas masks fell out of the ceiling in the forward right compartment. In any case, we were 1 hour ahead of schedule and got back safe, so not too much to complain about.

Salute to veterans. And, to the war that didn’t end wars (but that Woodrow Wilson wished it did anyway) (ok, so I missed posting this at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, but the wishes for peace and good will are there).

Breaking News from TVGuide.com – Fox is canceling “Arrested Development” by January! Jerks! And WB is (finally) ending “7th Heaven.” I feel bad about “Arrested Development.” Not so much about “7th Heaven,” as it had a nice long 10 year run and will likely get itself a 2 hours series finale befitting a show that lasted this long. And, probably even get reunion movies and stuff like that.

“Alias” last night was more fun than it has been in awhile: the rookie agent Rachel learns how to be a femme fatale; Rachel seems to be developing rapport with the other new agent (but not a rookie) Tom; Sydney misses the late lamented Vaughn; Jack, her dad, is still being creepy – but has yet to realize his At-Best-Misunderstood-At-Worst-Evil Best Friend Sloane is betraying him (again); poor Nadia’s still in a coma (doesn’t Sydney visit her own half-sister? Why is Sloane, Nadia’s father, the only one visiting?); how far Sloane will go to cure Nadia?; Dixon was hilarious posing as a love-sick man to distract the Indian fiancee of the Chinese General who had the code Sydney has to steal; Rachel fights her ex-friend/Evil Agent (whom I shall henceforth call Evil Fred, since actress Amy Acker played nice Fred on “Angel”); and tech support man Marshall referred to his infamous past attempt to fight the enemy with (you guessed it) a spork.

Interesting Linda Greenhouse article on the earliest days of the Chief Justice John Roberts:

At the end of the first week of the Supreme Court’s new term, the justices assembled to discuss the week’s cases, and, following protocol, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. stated his own views first. Then, in keeping with the court’s tradition for the justices-only conference, the new chief called on the others, one by one.

He did so in order of seniority, referring to his colleagues in the most formal terms. First, “Justice Stevens,” followed by “Justice O’Connor” and then “Justice Scalia.”

Justice Antonin Scalia interrupted. “I will always call you Chief,” he said. “But to you, I’m Nino, and this is Sandra, and this is John.”

This vignette, described by Justice Clarence Thomas at a judicial conference in Colorado Springs late last month, is deliciously revealing of a Supreme Court in the midst of a generational shift. [….]

But by their very nature, these courtroom meetings were not meetings of equals. Now when John Roberts joins the other justices on the bench or around their conference table, he is not only their equal, but first among them.

Although Chief Justice Roberts has appeared at ease in the courtroom from the moment he took his seat on the first Monday in October, the transition can only have been dizzying. Just months ago, he was a court of appeals judge who took the subway to work. Now he is called for each morning and delivered home at night in a Supreme Court car.

By his choice, it is an ordinary car, a sport utility vehicle, in contrast to the limousine used by his predecessor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. The limousine has gone the way of the four gold stripes that the “old chief,” as the late chief justice is now almost universally referred to within the court, had added to each sleeve of his judicial robe. Still, the car and driver is a perquisite enjoyed by none of the other justices, who drive themselves to work in their own cars. [….]

Justice Thomas, whose silence on the bench has lasted for weeks or months on end, asked questions on two occasions during a single argument on Tuesday morning. [….]

One court official commented after the morning’s session, “They’re loose on the bench, and they’re loose behind the bench.”

The explanation for the court’s mood is no mystery. It is relief. The justices who lived through the long year of Chief Justice Rehnquist’s battle with thyroid cancer are survivors of a collective trauma, the dimensions of which are obvious only in retrospect.

Flash forward barely two months to an ordinary argument day in the courtroom, when a light bulb above the bench suddenly exploded with a jarring bang that brought court police officers to their feet. There was a tense silence before the benign explanation became clear. It was “a trick they play on new chief justices all the time,” Chief Justice Roberts commented.

The incident occurred on Halloween, not a day when the chief justice could linger in his chambers. He had to get home, where, disguised as Groucho Marx, this father of two young children greeted the neighborhood trick-or-treaters at his front door.

J. Thomas, speaking during oral arguments?! Gasp! Ch.J. Roberts dressing up, to take his little kids trick-or-treating? Wow. This is like an alternative universe Supreme Court.

Another “Pride and Prejudice.” While this time, Mr. Darcy isn’t played by dear Colin Firth, and Elizabeth Bennett is played by Kiera Knightley, hmm… Well, we’ll see. Dare I watch this one?

An ancient crocodile is found – or the fossil of it anyway – nicknamed Godzilla, it lived in the ocean. The Associated Press article on it strangely amused me. Maybe it was the headline that Yahoo (or AP?) had for the article: “Evidence of Huge Ancient Crocodile Found” – and the soundbites AP had pushed on the imagination:

“This animal was one of the latest members of its family and certainly the most bizarre of all marine crocs,” said Diego Pol of Ohio State University, one of the authors of the report.

Lead author Zulma Gasparini of Argentina’s National University of La Plata said the “animal’s anatomy is really a contrast with that of the other sea crocs that developed during the Jurassic,” about 135 million years ago.

The long narrow snout and small teeth of most crocs indicate feeding on small prey, Pol said, while Dakosaurus’ large serrated teeth indicate a carnivore that would have hunted large prey.

“This was a top predator that probably was 13 feet long and swam around using its jagged teeth to bite and cut its prey, like dinosaurs and other predatory reptiles did,” Pol said.

Scary. Roar!