Depending on which way you're traveling, the first three seconds when you get off a plane and are in the hallway thingie that they divert you into can be really beautiful or really cruel, because for those 3 seconds you know what the weather will be like half an hour from then when you finally exit the airport. Since I was traveling north today, cruel.

I continue to be impressed with Delta food service, as we had the choice of five complimentary snacks: peanuts, pretzels, cookies, crackers, or granola bar. Less impressive and much more annoying was this: when I bought my flights on Orbitz I picked seats, but those seat selections disappeared into the ether. So when I checked into Miami, I had a center seat for the first leg and no confirmed seat on the second. Luckily, I complained nicely in Miami and was somehow moved to an aisle despite the flight being overbooked. In Atlanta it was touch and go, and zones 1-7 had boarded before they got me a seat. But then the counter woman took one look at me and decided that me in a center seat was not in anyone's best interests, so she bumped some other poor schmuck from an exit row window seat. So everything turned out much better than I could have expected.

Also, on the Miami-Atlanta leg, I had the aisle next to a 7-9 year-old boy with his 12-14 year-old sister on the window. Two things struck me as notable about this girl: (1) she managed to so exaggerate her Long Island accent as to affect a Puerto Rican accent, and (2) she was easily the youngest person I've ever seen reading Cosmo.