SFO

"Yes, she should drop her ex-husband from her insurance…"

But do you have to have the whole conversation in a stall in a women’s restroom at San Francisco International Airport?

I am in Terminal 3 at SFO, having landed safely from Amman, via Frankfurt, and am awaiting the last leg of the trip home to Boise. Masha and I had hopes of seeing each other for coffee and sandwiches at a deli we both adore during my layover, but we couldn’t pull it off. So, in honor of my Mashie, I am having a coffee, and wishing I could make myself spend $5 on three small pieces of Dim Sum from one of the airport dining spots.

It’s still weird to say that Boise is where I go "home" after a trip, but that’s another blog. Also another blog, will be thoughts touching the 20 or more things each day I thought to write about while I was in the Middle East again. And, of course, I’ll report on my float in the Dead Sea.

But first…

STOP the cell phone calls at top volume in bathroom stalls! It’s just creepy! While I am certain most women at one time or another have multitasked in the bathroom stall (I’ll cop to slapping on Chapstick while I am sitting there and am rushed to catch a plane), there is just no way I need to strain my brain to identify whether the voice I am hearing in the bathroom is directed at me, is someone who talks to the voices in their head, or whatever. The conversation this lady was having today seemed fairly significant—yes, he has it coming; remember how he treated her; he can get his own insurance; leave him now; he wouldn’t help you out; blah, blah.

Clearly seems weighty enough to have a chat about this somewhere more dignified than the potty.

And somewhere that it’s not punctuated by little tooty noises. Coming from THAT very stall. And I am not making that up.

This touches on why I will weep if they ever start allowing people to use cell phones in-flight on planes. Actually, I’ll be weeping just before I throttle whoever is behind me using their cell-phone yell to communicate over the drone of the 747 engines. It will be WWF in midair, trust me.

Also, on "airport" topics, I think the security folks in the Frankfurt airport are getting testier all the time with US-bound passengers. If I thought their searches were thorough before, I hadn’t seen anything. I want to know why they bother x-raying the bags—they make you open absolutely every compartment and container on the other side of the machine anyway. I am not exaggerating. At least when they pat me down in front of God and Germany and wand every inch of my body for metal, they don’t bother first with passing me through one of the big metal detectors—they just get right down to their frisking business. They need to do the same with the bags—quit the pretense of the x-ray machine and get busy telling me to unzip. That’s my backpack and carry-on, of course.

And they pitched my deodorant, the cretins. My SOLID deodorant—not gel, not aerosol. The very one that made it through security in Boise, Denver and Amman. But not Frankfurt…noooo-ooooo. I am coming through there next time with a bunch of empty bottles for them to open :)