Recently in Travelogue Category

Cindy and I decided to head to Captain Fishbones tonight after work. Capt. Fishbones is located in the Marina Bay area north of Wollaston Beach in Quincy, MA. Parking can be scarce on the weekends, but on a Tuesday night it was not a problem. Located directly on the marina boardwalk, it sports a nice view of the marina. Unfortunately, the enclosed dining area isn't high enough up to really see out into the bay past the ships. But overall, the ambiance is comfortable and pleasant. There is an outdoor area with gas space heaters, but since it was fairly cool and foggy this evening, we stuck to the indoor dining.

The menu included a nice variety of fresh seafood leavened with traditional burgers, chicken, and pasta fare for the land-lubbers. They also have a selection of beers, wine, and cocktails (we stuck to water tonight though). Cindy ordered the fried whole clams with coleslaw and I went with one of the specials, a blackened swordfish steak served on a Caesar salad. The service was quick and friendly and everything looked great when it arrived.

(Despite the fact that I was talking with Cindy about taking a picture of the food when it arrived, I took a bite of mine before I remembered to photograph it. Sorry. ;-) )

Cindy's clams were good with little to no grit - I think she only complained about sand in one of them out of the whole plate. This is a marked improvement over our experiences at Legal Seafoods. For some reason, those guys at Legal can't get the hang of washing grit out of shellfish. But I digress... Cindy's coleslaw was a mild sweet-cream based slaw, something she's had no experience with and thus didn't particularly enjoy. I thought it was delicious (although I tend towards enjoying a hint of mustard in cream based coleslaws). It would make a good side dish choice for anyone trying to avoid spicy foods though.

My swordfish was excellent - cooked to a perfect temperature and seasoned with just the right bite. I'm always nervous when ordering "blackened" fish in the north - while this wasn't up to true Cajun standards, it was still very well executed. The salad was adorned with hearty dark croutons and a well executed Caesar dressing. I'd had the option of adding anchovy fillets, but they turned out to be a little too much salt for my taste. If you're into anchovies, they appeared to be of good quality and were certainly tasty.

The pricing was not outrageous - total price for our dinner with water to drink was $27 (pre-tip). Bear in mind that my salad was only priced at $8 - which was amazing because that swordfish steak was not particularly small. So a typical two-entree dinner should run about $36-40, well within budget for a good seafood meal. Lobster and other market priced seafood was available, but I didn't check the rates.

Overall, I'd recommend Captain Fishbones to anyone interested in some quality dining in the Quincy area. Their website also features a entertaining little flash animation (I'm not normally in favor of splash screens on websites, but this one got a chuckle). Check it out if you're in town!

Captain Fishbones
332 Victory Road
North Quincy, MA 02171
phone: 617-471-3511

Cindy was still feeling sick today, so we decided to skip the Phantom Gourmet BBQ Contest at Suffolk Downs. Instead we went to Olive Garden for lunch and then drove cross town to the Jordan Furniture IMAX theater to see Transformers 2: Rise of the Fallen. Needless to say we were both pumped to see this in IMAX. When we started out, Cindy asked me if I wanted to try to buy tickets online (on the iPhone) before we got there. I told her "No, I'm sure they won't be sold out for a 2:00 showing."

So, we arrived there and we're both excited and everything, and then as we got up to the door, I saw the worse poster possible...

So, after I ate some crow pie, we decided we might as well go in and check out the mall. Neither of us had been there before, and it turns out it was very kid oriented. There was a giant animatronic Wally (the Red Sox mascot) eating a New York Yankee...

and a water fountain that had changing light and water patterns to mesmerize the kids...

and a "trapeze school" for the adults who wanted to get on a trapeze for 2 minutes and get their picture taken...

After taking in the sights at Jordan Furniture, we headed back across town to the theater we normally frequent - with Cindy buying tickets online this time. The movie was... a Michael Bay movie. Unencumbered by character development, it made up for it's theatrical shortcomings by having lots of robots, explosions, and Megan Fox. Also, Linkin Park's new song is feature in the sound track as well. Cindy and I both liked the movie (although I'm probably more critical of the movie's theatrical shortcomings than she is).

After the movie, we headed back to the hotel. Apparently the mystery fog bank that had enveloped downtown Boston while the suburbs enjoyed sunshine had decided it was time to move south and drown Quincy as well. Thus ended our day...

The Clear Registered Traveler program was a service that basically collected a bunch of information about you, ran a background check, then gave you a card that let you skip to the front of the security line at 20 airports around the country. Since Dulles International Airport was one of them, I signed up for the card a little over a year ago. I'd had good experiences with it, and renewed it for $179 in May this year.

Then on June 22nd, Clear abruptly announced that they were closing operations effective immediately. (News which I learned about via Twitter before I learned about it from Clear's customer service email. Viva la revolution!) The first order of business was to call American Express and dispute the charge from Clear. Clear has since announced that they won't be issuing refunds due to the "financial condition of the company". (In other words, they be broke.) This is why you should always use a credit card for purchases, kids. It's a lot easier to dispute a charge on a credit card than a debit card.

Anyway, the more disturbing thing about the Clear closure is that they have a huge amount of personal information about their customers - iris photos, fingerprints, names, addresses, social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. It's really their most valuable asset - to a prospective purchaser or to a hacker. I reviewed their privacy policy again the day I found out about the closure, and it seems to indicate that they can't sell the data. But as this Wired article points out, the policy isn't explicit about what happens if the company is liquidated or acquired.

So now I'm wondering if I should try to get an injunction against them transferring all my personal information to a third party... Good luck with that, right?

Last night I went to sleep listening to Jon Hopkins' song Light Through the Veins on endless loop. I picked it up a few months back when it was featured on the Free iTunes Songs blog. It's a very mellow electronica song that I've enjoyed, and I occassionally like to leave music on when I sleep.

But last night, I repeatedly had the most vivid dreams - dreams that I actually woke up remembering! I don't normally remember my dreams, so to remember not just one but three when I woke up was really unusual. Maybe the music was stimulating my brain?!? Have you had more vivid dreams when listening to music at night?

Cindy says (3:55 PM):
pre sake tucjet ebtrabce wukk be far left lane of the main gate
Daniel Hagan says (3:55 PM):
I'm sorry.... can you tell me that in English?
Cindy says (3:55 PM):
lmao
LMAO
i was staring at my fone when i typed
SORRY
Pre sale ticket entrance will be far left lane of the main gate

Champions!, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

Cindy's boss reserved a box for the company at one of the last Celtics' games of the regular season. We got to hang out with free food, an awesome view of an exciting game and the mix and mingle with the 2008 NBA Championship trophy that the Celtics won last year. It was definitely a cool night!

Since we're in Montgomery, looks like a good time to run to lunch!

So, as part of my planning for heading back to Alabama, I think I'll take a bunch of my camera equipment with me. My friends Mark & Lisa have a Nikon DSLR that they're thinking about buying some extra lenses for and last time I was down we talked about some of the options. I figure I can bring mine down and maybe we can hang out one evening and check them out.

Also, I've unexpected come into possession of a Sigma 400mm f/5.6 lens. While I was talking to Mom about teleconverters, she dug this lens out and said "Oh, I'm not using this anymore, so you're welcome to it if you want." ORLY? So it's not a superb piece of optical work like my Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR, but it's free and it seems to work pretty well. Hopefully I'll get a chance to try it out while I'm in Alabama and see if I can capture some wildlife with my DSLR instead of the Casio EX-F1.

In other preparations, I have about ten pounds of mail to go through. :-/ (Note: If you measure you're mail in pounds, you're probably doing it wrong. lol) So I guess that will be occupying a huge chunk of my time before I leave. I want to run down to the post office today and see if they have a check for me. I got an invoice into work this week, but it was kinda late and I don't know if they'll have paid it this week or next.

Other random updates - I got a Visioneer Road Warrior scanner. After a few failed attempts at calibrating it, I finally got it working. I got it on sale from Staples.com for $149 and for the money I think it's worth it. The quality is hardly on par with a flatbed scanner, but let's face it - I bought this thing to scan receipts and submit expense reports. Mission Accomplished. So if you're a road warrior that is looking for something like this, I'd say "do it".

Well, also on the to-do list before leaving is to get the Christmas tree out of the attic for Mom. So I guess I'll go try to pull the boxes out of there with or without Dad. Wish me luck!

Scarborough Marsh, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

Cindy and I went to Scarborough Marsh ME a few weeks ago. Check out Flickr for some more shots!

Cindy and I were originally planning on going to Maine yesterday, but with Tropical Storm Hanna on the way we decided to head to Plum Island instead. We've been there twice before and always had good luck finding cool birds to watch.

The day started off late, and we went to Legal Seafoods in Burlington Mall for lunch. I know Legal Seafood is supposed to be "da shit", but I wasn't really impressed. The lobster was tougher than I expected and the clams and mussels both had a suprising amount of sand in them.

It was interested to play with their new credit card payment machines that they leave for you at your table. You enter the tip amount on the machine and then swipe your card and it prints out the receipt for you to sign. I was not impressed when the machine told me that my $16.00 tip on a $80.48 meal was "21%". While this gizmo is fine for someone like me, I can't imagine what my grandmother would have done if presented with such a thing after dinner. Maybe they only give it to tables who look like they're down with technology? haha

Anyway, after lunch, we drove to Plum Island and started cruising the wildlife reserve. There was a suprisingly large collection of Great Egrets and Snowy Egrets about the place. We also saw Semipalmated Sandpipers and Greater Yellowlegs in moderate numbers. At one point we had a Northern Harrier cruise past the far side of the marsh - close enough to watch, but not really photograph. There were also a fair number of non-water birds in the bushes and at least one other unidentified hawk that we saw in a far off tree but couldn't identify. Overall it was another enjoyable trip to Plum Island, and we timed our departure almostly perfectly - getting back to the highway right as the first wave of Tropical Storm Hanna rolled into the area.

I've got some decent photos of the egrets, which I'll get onto Flickr as soon as I can get them off the camera. But until then, you'll have to use your imagination. ;-)

Cindy and I survived Tropical Storm Hanna without incident. We had lucky timing and our dinner trip coincided with some gaps in the storm, so we didn't really even have to run through much rain. While we were driving back from Plum Island it was pretty bad - windy and rainy - on the highway. After I got back to the hotel, another big series of storms rolled through. I was afraid that I'd have to move my stuff out to the car in the rain this morning (I'm changing hotels today) but the rain is all gone now - ahead of schedule!

OMG!, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

My plans all center around getting to see my wonderful woman again! Can't wait!!!

Prattville Sunset, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

A not-too-good HDR of the sunset in Prattville AL. Those clouds are the outlying rings of Tropical Storm Fay.

Delayed, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

Want to know what it's like to be delayed at Charlotte (NC) airport? It's just like this...

For this last trip to Boston, I tried out National Car Rental. National's Emerald Club let's you pick your own car from anything on the lot when you reserve a midsize. So when I arrived, I got to check out the lot and decided to take the new Pontiac G8 GT they had waiting.

The G8 is Pontiac's full size sedan, and the GT comes with a 6.0L V8 generating 360 hp through a 6-speed automatic transmission to the rear wheels. As you might expect, this car gets full marks for power! The interior is nicely appointed, and very comfortable.

However, there were a few things that bugged me in this car.

1. The handling really isn't that great. Unfortunately, this is par for the course in my experience with domestic cars. While it was light-years above the Mustang, it still feels a little skittish in the corners under speed.
2. The window and mirror controls are all in the center console. While this gives the car a certain cleanness of lines around the door, it also makes it very inconvenient to try to roll down your window while holding something - like toll money or an id badge.
3. The large LCD display is set low in the center dash. While this isn't automatically a bad thing, there is a large low-res LCD that display battery voltage and oil pressure in the top of the center dash. I'd much prefer my radio and clock displays be higher up so I don't have to lose sight of the road to check the time.
4. The car I drove only had 3000 miles on it, but the tire pressure sensor in the right front wheel was faulty. It would read fluctuating values between 90 psi and 1 psi, and contantly beep to alert me... very annoying! Unfortunately, this is another incident of "Pontiacs break down a lot" stereotype appearing true.

So, overall, I thought the G8 was an excellent rental car, and I won't hesitate to take one again if given the chance... But it still falls short of a car I'd be willing to buy. Which is really too bad, because Pontiac has all the elements of a great sedan in this car, if they could just follow through on the little things.

Cindy has an enviable track record of spotting birds that I miss. (She says it's because she has to look up at the sky to look at me.) Today we pulled up to a red light and she spotted a hawk perched on a telephone pole eating it's latest quarry. So we pulled into a nearby McDonald's for some sweet tea and watched the hawk.

It turned out to be a red tail hawk, although we never established exactly what it was eating. But it was amazing to watch other birds pester the hawk while he tried to eat his meal. At first there was a crow, which at least comes across as a fair match-up in size. But then two grackles started mercilessly hounding the hawk - swooping back and forth around him, and even pecking or grabbing his back during fly-bys! They managed to drive the hawk off, meal in talon, in about 10 minutes.

It was really entertaining to see all this drama unfold, but it was all the more amazing because no one else seemed to notice. This was taking place on one of the main streets in Quincy (outside Boston) and despite the rush hour traffic and heavy pedestrian traffic from the train station, I didn't see a single other person stop and look up. I always feel lucky when Cindy and I get to enjoy a spectacle like this that for all intents and purposes must be invisible to everyone around us.

Bull Frog, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

A fearless bull frog hanging out in a pond in Mt. Auburn Cemetary, Cambridge, MA.

Seneca Rocks, WV, originally uploaded by Daniel Hagan.

Cindy got to experience Wild Wonderful West Virignia on our last trip to the south. This is an HDR image I shot of the rocks at Seneca Rocks on our way to Fairmont, WV.

Apple is known for they're aesetics and marketing for their products, so I'm always disappointed with they go with something that looks good, but sucks. In this case, I mean the earbuds which come with iPods. My girlfriend and I were watching a movie on my iPod Touch during our flight out of Montgomery. She was using her Apple supplied earbuds (retail $40) and I was using a pair of Phillips foam earbuds (retail $10).

She was getting frustrated by how low I was keeping the volume, until she finally took one of my earbuds. Then she suddenly realized that the reason I was keeping the volume so low was that I could hear everything just fine. Her earbuds were so bad at blocking the ambient noise in the plane that she was basically stuck reading the subtitles to follow the plot.

The iPod got a lot of press a year or so ago for the poor quality of their earbuds, and they deserved every bit of it. Considering the premium that is paid for Apple products, it's disappointing that they have to include one of the poorest quality accessories I've ever seen with a high-quality product.

Renting cars is part of the job when you travel full-time, and this time I ended up with my first hybrid - a 2008 Toyota Prius. My friend Kostaki got a Prius right before I left my old job, and I was suprised at how roomy it was. So I was looking forward to driving one for a month to get a real feel for the car.

Cindy and I drove down to Dauphin Island last weekend. It was about a three hour drive each way down to the island, which is south of Mobile, about 2-3 miles into the Golf of Mexico. There's a nice bird sancuary and public beach on the East side of the island.

Since we were doing it as a day trip and we had to fit 6 hours of driving in, we limited our exploration to the pond trail and a little time on the beach. We had some excellent viewing of several Great Blue Heron, as well as Least Bittern, around the pond area. Out towards the beach, there was no end to the Brown Pelicans and Laughing Gulls. Watching the pelicans soar along and then fold up and dive into the ocean was really entrancing. They would kick up a plume of spray three to six feet high when they dove down into the water.

The other neat view of the pelicans was afforded by the lenghy drive across the bridge connecting the island to the mainland. The sea breeze creates a updraft along the entire length of the bridge and the pelicans take full advantage of the updraft to cruise along between the island and the mainland. There were at least a dozen times we would cruise past a pelican about 10 feet away from our car. If you're interested in pelicans, I doubt you can find a closer view of them in the wild.

This week I made an interesting discovery - my Painful Inactivity Threshold (PIT). I work in a fairly stressful environment due to workload and deadlines. Perversely, management has a gift for putting me in the wrong place at the wrong time. So this week I was assigned to a job site where I literally had nothing to do. The computer lab on-site was going into configuration lockdown in anticipation of next week's testing. I tried my best to look busy and help other people out with their issues. But my desk faces away from everyone in a room full of waist-high half cubicles. So there's the stress of hearing people walk in behind me and never knowing if it's the Big Boss or not.

Turns out, I can only stand 3 days of that before I snap and have to find something, anything productive to do. So today I drove up to a different job site and did some spontaneous research on a problem that isn't really mine to solve. But at least it gave me something to put in my status report this week.

Cindy and I saw Blue Man Group at the Charles Playhouse in Boston today. I thought it was going to be a larger show -- it was only 3 Blue Men. But it was awesome. I laughed and smiled so much my face hurt by the end of the show.

If you haven't seen Blue Man Group, I highly recommend it. They do a great job involving the audience. If you're not in a great mood afterwards, you really need to get some professional help.

As a full-time traveler, rental cars are a fact of life. There's always an element of luck in getting a good car when you rent. This last time around, I managed to get a Ford Edge -- Ford's new SUV. While I'm not a fan of domestic cars, I'd heard that they were starting to catch the Japanese in quality. The Edge could be an example of that. I'm reserving final judgement, but so far it seems a nice car. Very roomy, nice set of power features, including memory seats. Power could be better, but rental agencies are notorious for getting the low-priced models, so Ford may have a higher power version.

Not actually, thank goodness. But I enjoyed a wake up call at 2:30 am last night courtesy of the local air raid sirens. A major storm front blew though Alabama last night, including a radar detect tornado. As it turns out, the radar detected tornado just means that there's a cyclonic doppler return at altitude in the storm system. There's no guarantee that a "radar detected tornado" will turn into a will turn into a "kill the wicked witch tornado". But it is guaranteed to get the radar watchers jumpy and pushing the alarm buttons...

Today I set out to return to Alabama. Lots of fun stuff has happened since my Day 0 entry, but those are stories for another time. Today it's all about the joys of traveling professionally.

The day started off well enough. Breakfast with the parents, a leisurely drive into Dulles International Airport, and an on-time arrival at the terminal. Unfortunately, it was all down-hill from there. My flight was booked with US Airways. So of course, I went to the US Airways desk to check in. The first sign of trouble was when the e-Ticket kiosk couldn't check me in.

After the US Airways clerk found a second person to help me, they eventually figured out that I couldn't actually check in at the US Airways desk. Yes, I had book through US Airways, my itinerary said US Airways, everything was US Airways. But I had to check in at the United desk. (I haven't been getting enough exercise lately, so fortunately for me the United desk is at the other end of the terminal!)

For those of you who don't fly, the airlines do something called "code-sharing". A code-share flight means that you book and pay for a flight on one airline, but you actually fly on a plane owned by another airline. Most of the time, this is not something you even notice - you deal with the airline you booked through, you just happen to board a plane with a different logo on the tail. But for some reason, US Airways and United couldn't play nice today, so I had to deal with United.

Well, as soon as I had to give my bag to one airline with the anticipation of receiving it from another airline at my destination, I knew I was screwed. So I pretty much assumed my bag would get lost today.

When the boarding passes were printed, the first one had the quadruple S emblem all over it. For those of you who avoid the friendly skies, the "SSSS" flags you for special screening at the security check point. So I obviously thought it was turning out to be my lucky day....

Surprisingly, the special screening turned out to not be a bad thing. In the "old days" (you know, two years ago), the "SSSS" meant you got hand searched and everything was a pain in the ass. Now they have the new chemical sniffer machines, so they just make you walk through that and then hand search your carry-on. Since only a few folks are picked for the extra screening, there was no line. I actually got through security quicker than if I had gone through the regular screening!

My flight plan today was a three flight extravaganza - way more connections than a professional traveler normally accepts. But I had a one hour layover in Raleigh and a two hour layover in Charlotte. I figured it wouldn't be a problem to make the transfers, and I don't actually mind the little CRJ commuter jets.

Arriving on-time into Raleigh, I start wandering around to find my connecting gate. Well, we arrived at gate B19 (or something) and I had to connect to gate A22. In pretty much any airport I've ever been to, you can get from one gate to any other gate without much effort. Not so in Raleigh! Terminal A is on the other side of the airport and the only way to get there from Terminal B is to walk outside and through the parking garage to the other terminal. (Raleigh makes it easier by not putting any signs up explaining the situation either. I had to ask at an information desk to figure out what the hell was going on.)

Not only is this an asinine design for the comfort of travelers, you have to leave the secure zone and go through security again to make your connection! I wasn't planning on all that excitement when I looked at the hour layover. Fortunately the lines at the security check were short, so I made my connection. But Raleigh is off the list of airports from now on!

After my adventure in the Raleigh airport, I finally made it to Charlotte. In my book, Charlotte is everything Raleigh is not. There are five concourses, all connected to a main terminal building. Everything is within the same security zone. The architecture is nice and open, with huge windows in the main terminal and most of the concourses. There are LOTS of restaurants and cool shops along the terminal and concourses. They even have rocking chairs along most of the terminal windows, so you can just sit down and relax if you want. In short, it's an excellent airport to have a layover.

Relaxing in Charlotte gave me a chance to eat some lunch and get my shoes polished. The shoe polishing thing may sound anachronistic, but for $5 I got a fresh shine on my shoes and some entertainment as the shoe shine ladies gossiped and joked.

After that, it was on to my gate to relax and read some more of Al Gore's new book - The Assault on Reason. I borrowed the book from my dad this morning, and I've already finished about 80% of it. Even though there's a tinge of partisanship once in a while, Gore approaches things with an even keel for most of the text. I'd highly recommend it to anyone serious about where our country is going - regardless of whether you agree with Gore's politics or not.

Finally arriving in Montgomery, I was not surprised in the least when my bag never showed up on the baggage claim belt. So 45 minutes later, I've got the baggage claim paperwork from US Airways and I can finally head to the hotel. Poor Charley, the coworker who got screwed into working the last two weekends, had to orbit the parking lot for an hour waiting for me to get out of the terminal. I think he was happy to finally escape the airport!

There's another flight in at 8:30 tonight, so with any luck my baggage will show up before the morning....

Well, that should give you a taste of a day in the life of a traveler. Sounds fun, eh? ;-)

Update: My bag showed up around lunch the next day. Everything was intact, save a small cosmetic cut on the front. So now I can look forward to a shower with my shampoo tomorrow. ;-)

Well, got up this morning with the mission of getting to Alabama. Dad drove me down to Dulles and dropped me off. I've only packed two bags - my 25" pullman and the new rolling laptop bag. I was going to try and fit everything into my 21" carry-on bag, but with the new restrictions on fluids (3 oz. containers only), there's just no way to pack for 3 weeks of travel in a carry-on. So, the upside is I have more room in my bag.

I left behind the big camera and my backpack. I'm treating this as a dry run for packing for Japan. When I hit Japan, I know I'll bring my backpack. So this is a reduced-luggage version of the packing regime I expect to follow.

I also dressed the part of a business traveler this time. Normally I just wear jeans to be more comfortable. But I must say that the airline people don't pester you with all the usual bullshit when you're dressed for business. Check-in and security check went smoothly. The first glitch was that the flight from Dulles to Charlotte didn't have a gate listed on the display boards. But the US Airways folks guessed it would be Z9, and they were right.

I got a shot of the flight display boards with one of those funny Microsoft error messages on it, but I was having a hard time getting it loaded on Flickr. I'll try again in a bit.

The flight to Charlotte went off without a hitch. While I was laying over there, I had a beer and bought Madeleine Albright's new book The Mighty & The Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs. I've only read the first few chapters, but it's been both entertaining and very insightful. I don't have any particular memories of Ms. Albright while she was Secretary of State under Clinton, but the book meshes with my recollection of the events she describes. She's been very good, so far, at putting America and religion in both a historical context and a current events context. I'm interested to see how the whole book develops.

The flight to Montgomery was on a smaller commuter jet. I carried my laptop bag on, but I could barely fit it under the seat. Fortunately it fit after enough prodding. As the exit row person, it wouldn't do to have my bag sticking out impeding traffic. The flight was unremarkable, and I didn't have any neighbors in the row to bother me.

Arriving in Montgomery, it was moderately humid. Not hot enough to assault you when you disembarked the plane, but hot enough to be noticed. I ended up sharing a taxi with a lady in the Judge Advocate General (JAG) here. We had an entertaining discussion about Japan and how much being in Alabama is not like being other places we'd both have enjoyed more.

The hotel is actually an extended stay suites place. Nice, in the "one room with everything you need to live" kind of way. The staff and I had a good laugh while I hung out and harassed them with questions, though. So hopefully it won't be too bad here for a week. Oh, and I almost forgot - the girl at the front desk is from Boston. haha! So even though I didn't fly there, I still get to meet a Bostonian. Go figure...

Well, I'm waiting for my new coworker to arrive while I slowly starve. He better not have eaten before he arrived here!

UPDATE: Here's the shot of the flight departure board at Dulles....