The Gambler

I was doing a Google search for Christina's pen name when I discovered that two more of her gambling articles had been published. One is about Vegas buffets (mmm), and the other about using credit cards for Internet gambling.

Plane Insanity

I just finished reading Plane Insanity, subtitled "A Flight Attendant's Tales of Sex, Rage and Queasiness at 30,000 Feet." I'd actually read a number of his columns at Salon.com, so much of the book seemed familiar to me.

Still, it was fun to compare the absolutely awful or outrageous situations Hester and his passengers experienced with the tamer flying life I have seen. Sex, rage and queasiness sums his book up pretty well. There's also some interesting information on the life of an airline employee, but mostly it's just entertaining fluff about the more ridiculous flights. His writing style is a little bit weak -- thick with cliches like "as if Scotty had just beamed me down from the U.S.S. Enterprise", to pick a passage at random.

4 out of 5 stars.

Forsythia

Last year, Christina went to work on the forsythia bush by my garage. She pruned it and predicted that it would look much better this year as a result. She took a picture last year so we'd have some basis to compare. Well, we took a picture again this year, and the difference is fairly impressive.

Passport Stamps

I have previously discussed the stamp I get in my passport when entering the UK. A British reader writes, in part,

i would really like to see what the heathrow stamp looks like cus being from the uk when i re enter the country they don't stamp me i just wonder through,so i was wondering if you could maybe scan me your stamps(heathrow)

Happy to oblige!

Here is the stamp I used to get:



And here's the one that keeps my hand out of the public till:



Sorry for the poor quality of the images, but they correspond to poor originals. The UK seems to use the cheapest ink imaginable.