Terminal Blogging from Chicago O'Hare

I'm on the last leg of a brief trip to Virginia. I didn't take my camera along this time to get any pictures for the Carnival of Virginia, but I wish I had. There was a store in Old Town Alexandria on King Street that had beautiful Christmas decorations. It was just some juniper or similar evergreen boughs with lights woven through it, but the effect was striking. As soon as I saw it, I wished I had it for my own house. My house doesn't have eaves or gutters that allow for hanging lights and the stucco finish is the smooth Santa Barbabra look, so putting holes in it is out of the question. Nothing in my yard is big enough yet to adorn, so all I can manage is a single strand of lights that go over the top of a feature above my garage door, affixed with some plastic hooks glued to the top of the feature. When the lights are down after Christmas, you can't see the hooks. This decoration of evergreen with woven lights would be just the dramatic look that would work for me. Right now, my lights are really undersized for the house.

On the second leg of the trip home, we had a robust, active young lad, less than two years old, I'd say, two rows ahead of me. He wasn't a bad kid, he was just one of those very boyish boys. Full of snails and puppy dog tails. Four hours in an airline seat was more than could be asked of him. From the looks of the little cherub, 5 minutes in one spot was too much. The result was a four hour battle of wills with his mother, complete with screaming and crying and pounding of the chair. She did her absolute best, but she was done in by genetics. He just was born an active little boy and there was no getting around it. There were several lovely moments where he played peek-a-boo with the people seated behind him. I wish I had my camera again. No one seemed to be bothered by the child and everyone got through the flight in good cheer.

On the trip out here I had a surprising discovery about modern journalism. I would argue that People magazine is much closer to reality than any metropolitan newspaper. The person next to me was reading People and the person in front of me was reading the Fort Worth Star Telegram or something like that. People had stories of personal courage and perseverance about hardships overcome and relationships surviving rocky times. The newspaper had murderers, rapists and destruction. I know plenty of people who have overcome hardships in their lives. I don't know anyone who is a murderer, arsonist or rapist. From a strictly statistical point of view, People presents a far more representative window into the world.

There's a blog series in all of that somewhere. Oh well, the battery is running low on the laptop and mine is, too, for that matter.