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Magnet #663 - Caroline Herschel

Ok. Just so you all know...one day, I'll be telling my great-grand-nephews and -nieces-to-come about the day that I wifi'd and magnetblogged up in the air. (More likely, we'll be looking up this magnetblog entry in the Internet Archives, but whatever.)

And when I tell them, I'll say, dang, why didn't I take a picture of that 787 Dreamliner airplane magnet I just bought after my Boeing tour last week? Instead, I had to use the most closely tied in magnet that I already had photographed and loaded in my photobucket.

But, I suppose, as far as stand-in magnets go, this one's pretty damn good.

Caroline Herschel, was a German astronomer who looked to the heavens and not only wondered what was there, but discovered several comets to her name. And for a woman in turn of the 18th century, that's pretty freakin' spectacular.

I bought this Herschel magnet at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where one of their permanent exhibitions is Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, a fantastic installation that's basically a giant triangle table with beautifully themed and personalized place settings for the 39 most important women in the history of humankind, with another 999 women inscribed in gold on a plaque.

You can spend hours there reading about all of them. Do it - it makes you want to run out and scream, "I am woman, hear me roar!" Actually, for me right now, it's "I am woman, hear me type and chat and post and Tweet and magnetblog!"

Right from the very skies that Herschel stared at almost 300 years ago.

Oh, c'mon. I know I sound like I'm 90 years old right now, but, honestly, you can't tell me that the Wright Brothers knew that we'd get to this point some day.

Pain something, alright

Magnet #655 - Pain matin

Pain matin. Or, at least, that's what I think this basket of French bread says - morning bread. Or, I suppose it could be just pain squiggle-squiggle.

I bought this magnet during our Zurich airport layover a couple of weeks ago. Mainly, because it reminded me of my dad, and what the Italy trip was going to entail, gastronomically.

One thing we always worry about whenever we travel, is where will my dad eat. I know. He's not five years old, but his eating habits are very particular. He eats only rice with his omnipresent banana, and then [insert seafood (cooked only the way he or mom makes it) here]. Usually fried, and with salt and pepper. No fancy trimmings, no fancy spices, just fry that sucker straight up.

So, when we travel, he ends up eating a lot of bread. A lot. Like seriously. Croissants, mostly. But, probably because that's the easiest thing you can get at any bakery. He'll take a good French bread, or Challah bread, too. But, it's always bread, water and coke, or coffee, in lieu of a meal he won't eat. I mean, we're talking about the guy, who, when we were in high school, had his own button on the McDonald's register to ring up his special order of the plain bread only - from those McStuffin's sandwiches they used to have!

The long airplane rides are what worries us most. If he doesn't have his "bound" - which roughly means his packed meal, then he's left with whatever they serve us on the airplane. Thank goodness that usually includes a roll of some sort. Which we all give to my dad, so that he has something to eat while the rest of us are chowing down on our odd mixed salads and warmish entree and funny desserts. (Though, man, the Camembert that Swiss Air served the last time around? I seriously thought there was a plot to poison all cheese-eaters on the plane. It was so filled with ammonia, I thought I was gonna die right on the spot.)

Of course, I suppose we were lucky that international flights still feed us. I just got off a very pathetic nonstop Delta flight from NY to Seattle, and it was one of the worst flights I'd ever been on. Aside from the brusque service, the $2 earphones, the $6 HBO movies, the stupid DishTV channels that I don't watch, and the crappy seats, I can't believe they make you pay for meals on a 7-hour flight.

I get that everything in the aviation industry is more expensive, but dang! (Although, tip to the wise, don't eat a Whopper meal before boarding - you'll still be tasting the onions 7 hours later. Ugh.)

But, the piece de resistance - and I suppose it's not Delta's fault that they transport rude-ass trendy couples - this Asian chick and her hoarder boyfriend (Dim Sum of All Things reference) who looked like Matthew Lillard abruptly asked me to move to another row, "so that they could spread out." What a jerk. I thought we'd gained a rapport, since I was kicking his ass in inflight trivia. But no. The second the seatbelt sign went off, he got up, and was like, "Would you move to that other row, so that we can spread out?" There was no excuse me on the way out of the row. There was no hi to start the request. And, what's more, there wasn't even a please.

What a pain, ADM in Seat 11F. For those of you keeping score.

What's funny is that he totally knew he was a total jerk about it, too, because he came back to me and apologized for the way he asked and offered to buy me a drink. I told him not to worry about it, *silently* jerk.

Anyway, that's fine. As long as you were comfortable in seats 11F, 11E, and 11D, don't worry about the rest of us poor schmoes.