I also like the deep conversations that it seems isn't possible to have outside of really long road trips where you've been on the highway for so long and you're road-weary and bored and you've already talked about all the normal things you can.

Oh yes. I do love a road trip. Except that as a non-driver I'm deadweight. However, I do have excellent navigation skills.

Kat, the Army actually has a "we overpaid you but it would be a real hardship to pay back exception". Any chance the district has something similar?

Nope.

Basically ANY person who took family medical leave or any long term disability time was overpaid and the district WILL take it back. Also people who are fucked are anyone with an unusual salary above base pay, so if you worked extra you were screwed. My friend the librarian owes over $12,000 because she works all year.

And frankly, it's not as bad all the people who weren't paid at all for months on end because of the new payroll system.

I'm just sick at the thought of this.

IE won't stop crashing on my work computer. It's destroying my will to live.

Yeah I hate the air quality, and cramped seating in air planes even though I have almost no plane fear.

The new 787 will have air at higher pressure and humidity, so it should be more comfortable....

United, eh?

Well, United is getting a reputation for really poor maintenance. When the cabin lights started flickering, the flight attendant expressed surprise because usually the maintenance information they receive to pass to passengers has nothing to do with the actual problem. Also, when I worried about scheduled ground transportation, she asked if give the airporter my flight number. When I said yes, she told me not worry about it. Everybody knows that that there is a good chance of United flight coming in a couple of hours late, because they have problems like this all the time. Not every flight she assured me, just "a whole lot of the time". So airporter dispatch would check my flight number. (I still called into the airporter on my cell once we landed.)

DH loves to drive and, being a motor journalist, he does a LOT of it. Not only is he always driving a review car, which means he drives when we go places together, car journalists also have many events they go to during the year where all they do is drive. He just got back from a trip to Ford in Detroit, and he raved about the "84 acres of pure asphalt" he got to drive on. And just ask him about his trips to Willow Springs to drive on the racetrack--the guy will wax rhapsodic.

How are they taking it back, Kat? Spreading the pain, I hope. That's just not right. Not that they're wallowing in money that I know of, but what's been spent's been spent and there's no way this can't hit hard.

The 787 looks like a really nice plane. I think Boeing has a better feel for the airliner marker than Airbus does right now.

So sorry Kat, that really sucks.

Don't give in shrift, that's just what IE wants you to do.

Statistically most airline crashes do have survivors. Being able to get to the exit in time with proper equipment is statistically part of what separates the survivors from the dead. Also being in the right seating section. (I forget where, but statistically, some sections are more likely to survive a crash than others.)

As a rule, back of the plane is better than the front.

Also, wear natural fibers, and particularly (although less of an issue these days) women should never wear stockings since resulting fire and heat can melt these on your skin.

Also, wear natural fibers

but not leather!

(not a fiber, but certainly natural)

The description I heard was "shrinkwrap"