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I’ve started keeping a linklog at del.icio.us. Sooner or later I’ll have the links included on this page in an RSS feed. Expect no particular rhyme or reason to the links I share. Which, of course, is the fun of it.
Nearly midnight and freezing. The return of Arctic chill has cleared the streets; tonight is among the quietest I’ve seen Union Square, before the subway lets out, that is. A young man, stoned and chatty, exits my building with me, asks for the nearest ATM, then disappears. The temperature is easily below zero fahrenheit when the wind whips, which is often. My wool hat itches my widow’s peaks; my earmuffs hush the already quiet side street. I am nicely alone, chilled but peaceful, head filled with sophomoric prose trying to commemorate the evening, impatient to get home.
The dog, on the other hand, charges ahead, wholly unaffected by the cold, straining his leash to investigate every scent and speck, wondering why no other dogs are in the run. Because it’s cold, Dog, that’s why. If only we all had his fur coat.
Cardhouse ran my all-time favorite GIF again this holiday season:
“I think when the movie died in the box office, I remember feeling somewhat relieved. Yes, I played this bizarre dork, but at least no one will ever see it.” âactor Dan Schneider, who couldn’t have been more wrong, recollecting filming “Better Off Dead”
What makes a good bagel? in the New York Times. Agreed! Bagels should be crisp and heavy-doughed. I will have to make a few Saturday trips to the outerboroughs to check these places out for myself. (And while I’m at it, I’ll bring the missus to the Mill Basin Deli, where her cousins still crank out a good pastrami sandwich.)
See if you can make sense of this: JetBlue won’t advance-book the last pet slot on its flightsâbecause it has to leave the space open for people who don’t book in advance.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the policy. Here’s how it works. JetBlue permits three pets to travel in-cabin on any one flight. We called today to put our pet on a return leg from Florida on New Year’s day, only to be told that two pets were booked on our flight, and the third pet slot could not be given to us on the phone.
Why? Because that third slot is for use by airport personnel only.
And what do airport personnel do with that slot? They use it to aid owners who show up with animals unannounced and unreserved.
As a result, even though I followed protocol, and called a week in advance to bring my pet on a flight with space available for pet travel, JetBlue won’t book the pet travel because they need to see if a less prepared customer shows up and circumvents the policy.
On one level, this makes some sense. If I forgot to book my dog for a trip home, I too would want to slip on the flight with him. But JetBlue has taken this to an absurd extreme: yes, there is room on the flight; yes, you could conceivably fly with the pet; but no, you can’t determine this in advance. However, if I show up unannounced with my dog on New Year’s Day, and I’m the first person to do so on the flight, bingo! I can take him.
I can understand reserving theater seats for walk-up sales, but we’re talking about the transport of a live animal, one who will be in Florida and needs to get home to New York with its owners. JetBlue needs to either permit the advance booking of my dog or stop advertising a three-pets-per-flight policy that is a misnomer at best.
The message from JetBlue to me is simple: don’t bother following protocol. Just show up and demand to get on the plane. Yeah, because that will be fun on New Year’s. Looks like my dog is staying homeâand I’m flying American next time.
Update, January 2: After seven phone calls—more than one to JetBlue corporate headquarters—the pooch flew happily home. I still have yet to receive a decent policy explanation from anyone, though. And we will be thinking twice whenever booking JetBlue flights to Florida.
After a good year-plus away from its main site, I have become addicted to Ask Metafilter. The one-stop, no-parameters Q&A is terrific; I have contributed already to discussions on cell phones, minivans and room partitions. The questions are generally thought-provoking or useful. And, of course, once in a while someone posts a real humdinger.
“[New York Yankees owner George] Steinbrenner so despises the Red Sox, whose president, Larry Lucchino, called the Yankees ‘the evil empire’ last winter, that he groused loudly last season when New England clam chowder was on the menu in the Yankee Stadium club restaurant.”
Almost missed this one: New York City’s water is as healthy and safe as bottled water. It also tastes pretty good.
“There really is no reason to go out and buy bottled water in New York City,” said Jim Tierney, the state inspector general for the city’s water supply. “It doesn’t make economic sense. It’s 1,000 times the cost of tap water, and tap water is clean and healthful.”
Me, I keep a jug in the fridge only because it’s cold.