Another short trip to the US - this time with Rade to visit John, Eileen, Kaye, Suzanna and Keith.

No timeline, it is too embarrassing that I keep forgetting to write towards the end of the trip

• The suitcase carts at Newark that were free last year now cost 2 bucks.
• Since I still have US citizenship, my son and I can go to the citizen's line, which is *much* shorter than the poor "rest of the world" line who has to be fingerprinted and who knows what all.
• At the citizen's line, we are filmed from a little USB ball camera mounted at eye level. The lady asked Rade what his birthdate was - hard question for a guy just learning English. He answered "70th of January" and we all had a good laugh. Then she noticed the strange birth place, so we had to explain that he was adopted. But we got in without much further ado.
• I went to the ladies room to have a few bytes of my lovely Pink Lady apple before ditching it in the bin - no apples allowed in the US, I know this from previous visits. While waiting for our suitcases a guy in uniform with a dog comes up. I assume the dog is drug sniffing, but no - it is sniffing for fruit. The handler asks me very politely if I have fruit. I answer that I did, but just pitched it. The dog gets a dog treaty. A few guys on down, the dog finds more fruit. The guy gets a special mark on his entry card, I bet the pull his suitcases apart looking for contraband apple seeds!
• Rade decides on the ride to Conneticut that we need to buy a car here, the cars are much "cooler".
• Kaye and Suzy are such sweeties - Kaye is such a good talker now. Suzy just smiles, doesn't say a word despite her 15 months.
• We have gorgeous New England winter days - bitter cold, sunny with blue skies. I even spend half an hour on the rocking chair on John and Eileen's porch, reading - bundled up in warm, warm clothes!
• Watched the Super Bowl, the "World Championship" (World = USA) in American Football. Football is still as boring as ever. During the half-time Janet Jackson had her breast bared by Justin Timberlake. Eileen remarked: we get agitated about a bared breast, but have no qualms about declaring war on other countries if we feel like it...
• My brother used TiVo to digitally record TV and replay stuff when they want to listen to it. Just read on CNN today that TiVo actually was watching what people were watching and could thus record which commercials were watched more than once (the farting horse seems to have won) and determined that people re-watched the Janet Jackson stunt ("wardrobe malfunction", what a wonderful phrase) more than anything else.
• Microsoft is not only responsible for selling an operating system that is so full of security holes that we suffer the con sequences almost weekly, but they also are not capable of overviewing what exactly they are selling. In Word you can use the fun font Bookshelf 7, which included two Swastikas. They have apologized.
• Walking down a street can be quite unsettling if cars park in and out as you go. It seems to be all the rage to have your car acknowledge their owners existance by beeping when people lock or unlock their cars. I always think of a horn as a warning signal, so I tend to jump a bit at all this beepiness.
• My son left his CD collection with his prize CDs in the seat pocket of the plane over. It took 4 days of calling SAS in order to speak to a human being, but they actually found the CDs and did not throw them out. We picked them up on the way back. He was so very, very happy - extra points for SAS and their honest cleaning crews!