Inappropriate Content: Christmastime Was Here

Flying into Seattle, colors look brighter. I don't just mean the "I'm traveling, no work, a bit of money, gonna see my family" sort of glow you get. I mean the colors are literally brighter: it's almost always overcast, and the sky is dark, dark grey, like you always see in drawings of London. This increases the contrast between colors like red, green, and yellow. As the plane drops down, the buildings and cars seem brightly painted; the grass and trees are more vibrant. Everything seems brightly painted, as if the landscape were exquisitely detailed models from the old Mr. Rogers television show.

Then the plane gets a little lower and it's cruising over power lines and freeways, past the big FedEx planes across the tarmac, and over the runway, floating gently just above the ground. There's a moment suspended in time, and then there's a bump. Just like that the plane has gone from graceful sky-machine to the world's ugliest, most inefficiently designed Greyhound bus, and the first person to get their bag out of the overhead gets a gift card from IHOP, so by all means, use those elbows!

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport is the lower 48's closet airport to Japan, with a dozens of flights to Tokyo, Okinawa, Taipei, Soul, and the other cities in what I like to call "The Area of the World Sadly Within Range of Kim Jong Il's Serious Psychological Problems and Also Missiles." The signs and the pre-recorded admonitions to keep your luggage with you at all times are in English and Japanese. There are customs machines; they look just like e-Ticket machines and have large Japanese characters--Hiragana? Katakana?--directing visitors to slide their electronic passports, place their fingers on the fingerprint readers, and generally pretend this is an episode of Star Trek. Only with Kim Jong Il, who is too unrealistic a character to be in a science fiction show.

I'm taking a Wednesday night course in Japanese this spring, and a weekend Intro to Photography course, mostly to get at a darkroom again. It's the part of the money I inherited I know my grandmother would approve of me spending. The iPod, not so much, but learning is the single most important thing we can do, and school is sometimes a surprisingly good place to learn. I'm looking forward to it, although right now I'm also looking forward to getting into Minneapolis alive: I'm writing on my way back to D.C., and going over the Rockies had more bumps than an M.C. Hammer video.

Note: When you're reduced to making fun of the 1980's, you have nothing more to say. Here are pictures of family in Seattle:

And now it's coming up on midnight at a small hotel in West Bloomfield, which is south of Minneapolis and not, sadly, in Bloom County. So: no Opus the Penguin, but there is a Chili's across the street. Also, I got a free ticket from the airline for being willing to give up my seat on an overbooked flight. So I guess I'll be getting out to Utah sooner rather than later.

The hotel has a banner that reads "FREE WIRELESS INTERNET" in large letters tacked over the side of the roof that faces the freeway. The free wireless internet consists of as many error messages as you can handle in the rooms, free of charge. They also offer free long distance calls, except the phones don't work.

I should have made the airline give me free meal vouchers. I actually enjoy, all things considered, reading in a cheap-but-clean hotel room and checking my e-mail in the lobby by the coffee machine. But the $12.99 I spent on buffalo wings at Chili's is gonna haunt me for a while.