So, this moment in time finds me back at the Charlotte airport, waiting for my next flight on to DC. Once again I (shockingly) received an upgrade to First Class, seat 2F. Certainly a different/better experience at the front of the plane. I’m not in my seat 30 seconds when the flight attendant asks if I’d like her to hang up my coat (yes) and would I care for anything to drink (yes). So, enjoying my Caligula-like excesses armed with a coffee and orange juice I settle in for the 33 minute flight to Charlotte. Basically, takeoff, use your portables, want a snack?, stop using your portables, landing.

The First Class cabin seems to be a far less friendly environment than the shared shame which is everything that happens beyond the privacy curtain. While you sit back there, brothers in arms sharing gripes and malcontent, we sit up here in near silence, with all of the chatter of a Scientology birth. Other than the terse conversations with the flight attendant, I don’t believe any of the passengers uttered more than a harumpf! over some bit of business ribaldry in the Journal. I think the etiquette is to just mind your own business. Look, we’re all titans of industry up here, there’s no need to talk about it. Plus, no one was cool enough to whip out an iPad, so I just busied myself with my current read, “Know-It-All” by A. J. Jacobs.

(The B6 waiting area is PACKED! There is a giant group of kids -- seriously, like 50 -- wearing shirts that say "Equestrian Trails Elementary." In a CLASSIC moment, one of the kids flipped his wrist to check the time and dumped a Diet Coke on another kid. Surprisingly little anger ensued.)

During my Runco trip, I told Pippa that one of the goals for the year was to read through the Bible. She suggested that I read “The Year of Living Biblically” which is about one man’s attempt to follow a Bible lifestyle as closely as possible for one year. On tracking down that book (also by Jacobs), I found this, which chronicles his quest to read through the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. So far, pretty interesting and he’s got a pretty snappy wit. I’m just up to “D” but here’s a bit I’ve enjoyed so far, as he describes how he has changed since marrying his wife. “Over one early dinner, we made ambitious plans about all the places we’d like to travel: Sweden, South Africa, Portugal. Now Julie knows my actual list of places I want to travel: kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.”

Google searched my hotel and am stoked to see that it comes up as “The Luxury DC hotel” and that it appears downtown enough that the dream of actually visiting Air & Space might become a reality. They have an SR-71 Blackbird spy plane there that I have a strange fascination with. Once, I was visiting a museum in the middle of the country (Iowa? Nebraska? Kansas? Is there even a difference?) and they had a Blackbird on display. I was standing in front of it starring at it with such intensity and longing that a stranger actually walked up to me and asked if I would like them to take my picture with it. (Of course!)

Another interesting factoid; I logged on to check the site’s daily activity and found that I had a visitor who’s IP address was tagged from “Tripoli, Libyan Arab Jamahira.” Turns out they were Google searching “3d tv for dummies” and they found me. This visitor was immediately followed by someone from Copenhagen, Denmark who read “3D: I kind of already hate you.” Love it or hate it, people wants them some 3Ds!