Yay for things going well for Scola.

In the spirit of both balance and testing August to see how many Buffistas can fit into the hospital, I was back in the ER last night.

Stop that.

Please?

Asking for a little travel ~ma.

Best of luck, Dawn, and I hope you have a great time once you get there.

Hi! I'm posting from work, rather than from Chicago, because my flight (to the same con as Dana) was cancelled outright.

Ah, damn. I hope you can make it at some point.

Having been treated as a level 2 threat by airport security while leaving Israel on a non-El Al flight - I was a non-Jewish woman who had been there for 10 weeks and been all over the country, consorting with who knew who - I have to say that I don't know if the security increase gained from this kind of screening is worth the resentment it builds in travellers. I'd rather see everybody's shampoo randomly screened than just mine because of my religion or lack thereof (they took me into a back room and hand-checked all my luggage, including things like holding my shampoo up to the light).

Also adding my yay's for Mr. Scola's speedy recovery. I'm very glad that ita is staying home today. Your head is being very mean and it probably needs to stop doing that now.

Best of luck, Dawn, and I hope you have a great time once you get there

Thanks Lee! I get to see my brother yay! I haven't seen him in 8 months so I'm really looking forward to it.

Theo, that just sucks. I'm sending travel~ma your way.

um, my dossier is complete and in the mail to Ethiopia. MEEP!

I get to see my brother yay!

YAY

um, my dossier is complete and in the mail to Ethiopia. MEEP!

YAY and meep.

Interesting how military recruitment has changed over the years. My brother went into the Army after high school, which involved a recruiter visiting the house a couple of times. He met me (then 19) and asked if I might be interested. I politely said I planned to continue in college, and that was that.

(ETA: OTOH, this was during the serious recession of the early '80s. Finding recruits wasn't the most difficult thing in the world then.)

Thanks Lee! I get to see my brother yay! I haven't seen him in 8 months so I'm really looking forward to it.

Here's hoping getting there isn't too much of a hassle.

YAY MSBELLE!

I'd rather see everybody's shampoo randomly screened than just mine because of my religion or lack thereof (they took me into a back room and hand-checked all my luggage, including things like holding my shampoo up to the light).

My brother and his friend were searched, separately interrogated about all their movements (Where did you have dinner? How long did it take to walk there from your hotel? etc.) and then left to cool their heels for a few hours while their answers were compared. They were flying from/back to Moscow, though, which maybe affected where they fell on the security risk chart. (It will not surprise many of you to learn that my bro is not particularly Arab-looking. Nor Chechen, for that matter.)

When I was traveling on El Al last summer (with a tour group that had already pre-screened me), I got about five minutes of questioning. Why was I traveling to Israel (to see stuff), had I ever been to Israel before (no), was I Jewish (yes), what's my Hebrew name (Yehudit), what's the Jewish holiday where you eat matzoh (Passover), did I have a bat mitzvah (yes), how old was I then (12), what was my parsha (Lech L'cha), what happens in that parsha (Abraham lets Pharaoh believe that Sarah is his sister, not his wife), and they asked me to verify my date of birth, place of birth, and middle name several times in the middle of all the other questions.

On the way back, my bag was searched several times. I had a possibly-dangerous t-shirt that every inspector had to look at.

Was it this one: [link] ?

(Sorry, just can't stop laughing at that.)